i love Germany,and while it has some problems,most of them are improving ,slower or faster

**however,one sector i see NO real improvement is the housing market,**

on the contrary,land prices are exploding,and they account for an increasing share of the total housing cost; housing costs are rising as well

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some things are not under our control,namely the current **construction materials crisis**; Germany can’t set the price for it

but others are ,n**amely the land prices crisis,are totally under our control**

an increasing proportion of the total cost of housing is made up of the cost of land

i don’t understand why to this day many German cities are selling land and Sozialwohnungen,when they are literally a goldmine for the government

i perfectly understand local and national governments renting land for 50 years,for 100 years ,for whatever time

but selling it?

how can any rational person agree with it?

in 30 years,that piece of land,in an average German city,will be worth 300-400% more

Vienna’s model of public ownership of housing and land has allowed it to maintain relatively decent prices,and the local governments are even buying more and more land

[https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/03/in-vienna-public-housing-is-affordable-and-desirable/](https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/03/in-vienna-public-housing-is-affordable-and-desirable/)

**Germany is going in the opposite direction**

This is not even socialism vs capitalism,this is the monopolisation of a public good by a handful of investors,and creates huge profits with no societal benefits

5 comments

  1. I don’t disagree with you, but you really need to double check your definition of “monopoly.” By definition, a “handful of investors” (acting independently of each other) are not a monopoly.

  2. I am not aware that cities are still selling Sozialwohnungen, as you claim.

    Maybe you are mixing it up with the end of the “Sozialbindung”.
    Sozialbindung means that Wohnungen have to be rented as Sozialwohnungen for a certain period of time because the owner got special grants from the cities or state.

    When this period ends the Wohnung can then be rented for regular prices. The number of Sozialwohnungen is therefore decreasing as the number of newly built Sozialwohnungen is not big enough to make up for the lost Sozialwohnungen

  3. I dont think that making living in a big city cheaper is a good long term solution. This leads to other regions dying which causes a whole host of problems. Living somewhere else should be made more attractive and easier, esp. with increased home office or by getting companies to the region. People follow jobs.

    Overall, we probably need to reduce our population (which is already happening through demographic changes) to be ever able to get environmentally sustainable. This will also fix the housing issue if done correctly.

    That being said, poor people should be able to live as well (after all the society also needs people that can work the low wage jobs; no use in having 100% software engineers) and for those sozialer Wohnbau can be a great option. The state has a corruption and incompetence issue here which is why privatization was done (also done because of more corruption of course). In theory, that would be an okay idea if the companies had to be non profit. Have competent people manage them and leave politicians out of it. But as of now, the big Wohnbaugesellschaften drive (rent) prices up to increase their shareholders’ dividends or at least try to profit as much as possible from it. The same happens in eldery care, btw.

  5. Ages Ago,

    developers/investors got tax deductions when they errected social housing structures,

    depending on the time and choosen level, those erected housings had to be available for social housing for 30/40/50 years.

    And simply, those times frames are running out, so the numbers drop.

    In the mid 90´s the politics made the investment in social housing not interesting anymore,
    parts by cutting the deductions, parts by changing the cash flow,
    it was from the welfare office directly to the landlord, so the rent was a safe bet,

    but they changed it from the welfare office to the tennant and when to the landlord… to get a stigma off the tennat

    which resulted in a lot of revenue loss for the landlords.. which stigma? a Social welfare tennat was great, since the rent was safe at 100%…

    So the ammount of errected structures for social housing dropped.

    And yes, its reddit where you get downvoted for the truth.

    EDIT

    > perfectly understand local and national governments renting land for 50 years,for 100 years ,for whatever time
    but selling it? how can any rational person agree with it?
    in 30 years,that piece of land,in an average German city,will be worth 300-400% more

    This is called Erbpacht, and is another can of worms…. and has little to do with the decline of numbes in social housing.

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