I don't know... maybe because you need an apartment for yourself, and you now can afford to actually buy the lot because you do not have to compete with investors expecting a dividend of 20% on their investment?
Do you really think that suppressing professional home builders to make room for homesteaders building their own homes by hand is a good idea for Berlin?
Why not get rid of greedy farmers so people can grow potatoes in their backyard? Why this longing to re-implement the failed policies of East Germany? Is it nostalgia for police states and shortages?
> Do you really think that suppressing professional home builders to make room for homesteaders building their own homes by hand is a good idea for Berlin?
No, and it isn't what I am suggesting. The point is that just that it becomes uninteresting for investors, it isn't for people actually living there. That doesn't exclude the professional execution of housing projects. I seriously doubt that people can build their home with their own hands and comply with German regulations. Especially in cities.
Housing developers might expect a lower margin, and if the margin is too low for such a business, people can take on the risk themselves and contract professionals to execute a joined housing development. People are already doing that.
Well if homes are not built by homesteaders then they will be built by for profit companies that are funded by investors.
If your goal is to have more of something then you tax it less and impose fewer costs on it. If your goal is to create less of something, then you tax it more and impose more costs on it. People understand this with cigarette taxes and carbon taxes but suddenly when it comes to apartments the signs are reversed? No, getting the sign right is important. If you want more homes, then reduce the costs of building homes -- or in your parlance, make it "more interesting" for investors.
I agree with you that increasing the supply side will decrease the price.
However, housing is not a consumable (a large part of the houses are over 100 years old). It is not movable (a house in Hamburg does not satisfy demand in Berlin, Potsdam only to a limited degree). And it is a basic need (everyone needs exactly one).
However, the demand side is driven not only by local demand for housing, but also but "external" demand using housing as a source for investment and rent seeking.
The prospective home owner and tenant has to compete with their local salary and capital against international capital buying mostly existing property.
But all that money does not make new space appear. There is no factory to build "space".
So, like the cigarettes, we want to have less "consumers" of property, and that's why I think it makes sense to lower the demand side by making it less attractive to buy housing for investment.
For the people living there, it is a basic need, and that will keep the demand from going to zero.
