Why don't construction prices go down?

IMHO this also has to do with the buyer group of private landlords. Until recently, people (to put it simply) went to the bank, took out a loan, bought an apartment, and rented it out. This buyer group somehow seems underrepresented in the overall calculation and in the current housing promotion plans they are rather portrayed as greedy bloodsuckers from whom tenants must be protected.

Assuming I am faced with the decision whether to go ahead with buying an apartment. On one hand, my costs go up, on the other hand my returns are at least threatened because the brilliantly failed Berlin rent cap construct is now being discussed nationwide.

I see the currently much-discussed weakening of efficiency guidelines as a surrender to the fear campaigns of populists – if I, as a buyer, spend money on an efficiently built apartment, then I get a real value in return that yields an annual return and, by the way, is a quality feature for the entire lifetime of the apartment. Loosening this now is, in my opinion, the wrong step.

So, the evil landlords. As a landlord, of course, at least according to the tenants' association, one has only one interest for decades: gentrification! Yes, I was accused of this because I dared to install a gas central heating system instead of oil stoves! Back then there was shouting and outrage, and when I even considered renovating the house from an energy perspective a little (!) with torches and pitchforks they came. With the insulation "I just want to enrich myself at their expense." Result: No renovation. Now, in the same house, people are whining that heating costs are so high.

Just ask tenants what they do against climate change. Immediate answer number 1: "I can't do anything to the apartment, I'm just a tenant." So: The bloodsucking landlords should kindly renovate everything immediately – but of course the windows must stay just as pretty and nobody wants to pay for it either.

So now people who have some savings and consider what to do with it say: "Pay more and get less? No thanks." Then they just don't invest in the retirement-income-property apartment. Then the developer stands in front of the residential complex and no one buys the apartments, the money is invested elsewhere and/or people are just more cautious.

And regarding the comparison to Munich: Here, even if it's hard to believe given the tenant poverty that actually exists in some districts (because after deducting the warm rent, hardly anything is left for living), a new record for amortization duration has been set: Nowhere else do you have to rent out an apartment for so long in order to justify the purchase price as in Munich. In the past, a purchase price factor of 20 was calculated, here we are above 40.

So all that remains is the eternal hope of eternal value increases. That worked fine as long as it worked well. The house pays for itself through appreciation. If now a) I can no longer fully rely on eternal appreciation and b) I get scared by headlines like "Real estate prices fell by 10%!" then I also have no interest in real estate anymore.

It is not populism, but someone has to pay the refugee costs. And that will be the property owners. Property tax, further increases in additional costs such as garbage, water, sewage.

Of course, the costs for you as a tenant will also increase. But the government will on the one hand cap the rents, which is already happening, and on the other hand restrict the ability to pass on costs. I expect a dramatic increase in property tax and the abolition of the pass-through to tenants. Here I see risks. Furthermore, there will be attempts to levy pension and health insurance contributions on rental income profits from private landlords.