Berlin, a mecca of culture and creativity

[DiggerD21]

That is right. For example that rents are not allowed to be raised more than 20% over the course of 5 consecutive years for the same tenant. Only if the old tenant has moved out and the owner is looking for a new tenant, he might charge much more from the new tenant right away.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by Suburbanist

there are some explanations. According to our real estate professor here at the University, in a seminar held couple months ago, two of the main reasons are:

(1) lack of fiscal incentives (like extensive mortgage deduction) for people to buy houses at any cost

(2) the German Central Bank has stronger regulations regarding mortgage, making it less attractive for banks to finance 2nd, 3rd homes or corporate investment portfolio.

There are no fiscal incentives here in the UK either but still everybody wants to buy rather than rent if they can.

Probably the tenants rights are a big factor, private rental accommodation can be good here but also can often be poor quality homes and insecure tenancies that are only really suitable for student house sharing rather than long term family living.

Also people tend to have the attitude that as they are going to have to pay every month anyway they might as well repay their own mortgage rather than a landlord's mortgage. Pay mortgage for 25 years and you own a house at the end of the period, pay rent for 25 years you have nothing but your landlord is rich!

[nicdel]

i can tell you guys, Berlin is sooo huge and diverse (at least for German conditions) that you can find any housing situation. Berlin isn't exclusviely make up of "hip" and "gritty" areas on the one hand and "poor" and social housing" areas on the other hand. For Instance, I live in the most prosperous borough of Berlin (Steglitz-Zehlendorf) with the highest per capita income of all Berlin boroughs and therefore its quite tidy and organized here, thus, a bit boring and suburban. Yeah that's also Berlin: (is that enough "stuffy", "clean" and "German" for you? )




as compared to "run-down" areas like Neukölln:

[Czas na Żywiec]

Doesn't look very run-down to me. I've seen worse.

Berlin is definitely an interesting city. Everytime you come out of the U-bahn it seems like you are in a different city each time, it's different than typical German cities but it somehow works. I always enjoy every opportunity I get to be in the city. It's much better than the cities in Sachsen-Anhalt at least.

[Wunderknabe]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

So how come housing is so cheap there?

Well, my rent went up by 15% in two years now..

Its getting more expensive. But still Berlin is very affortable (and will remain so in the next years).

[Dr_Cosmo]

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by Wunderknabe

Well, my rent went up by 15% in two years now..

Its getting more expensive.

Yeah, no doubt, but compared to other West European capitals and major cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam etc I think you are doing well

[Dr_Cosmo]

Happy New Year & Frohes Neues Jahr !

[Dr_Cosmo]

Freunde von Freunden

[Tiaren]

The speaker has a weird accent. As if he's speaking with a hot potato in his mouth. First I thought, it might be one of those overpronounciation cases, where non native English speakers try SO hard to sound English/American. But he definatey isn't German, as the messes up German pronounciation as well. Is he really a native English speaker?

[Dr_Cosmo]

The wild, decadent ways of the Weimar era are alive again in Berlin - Wall Street Journal

Quote:
Today, with the city's post-Berlin Wall reconstruction nearly complete in physical and emotional terms, there are signs that the wild, wicked Berlin of the 1920s has returned. The city's avant-garde art scene is flourishing; stars like Olafur Eliasson and Daniel Richter now call Berlin home. (Chinese artist Ai Weiwei accepted a post at the Berlin University of the Arts after his imprisonment last year.) World-class filmmaking has returned to the famed Studio Babelsberg; soundstages where Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg worked are now being used by notable subversives like the Wachowskis and Quentin Tarantino. The contemporary nightlife scene is unmatched in its enthusiasm for all-hours partying and sheer volume of venues and events--many inspired by a past golden age.

[Dr_Cosmo]

Berlin as global lifestyle center is again seen as one of the movers and shakers...

Hub Culture 2012 Zeitgeist Ranking

4. Berlin (2011 rank: 4)

Berlin is like your hipster friend who went into local politics and ended up raising your property taxes. All the cool kids are still there, but the city's evolution into political power player is complete, and that's replacing the hip factor with raw power. Berlin is calling the shots across Europe - from the Greek crisis to EU interest rates, and so for every underground dungeon slash disco there are now two lawyers in a coffee shop talking about work. That's life.

image hosted on flickr


Source

[Dr_Cosmo]

The Telegraph

Quote:

Berlin is the coolest place to move to these days if you’re young, creative and broke – as glamorous as London but infinitely cheaper. Young people started going in the early 1990s after the fall of the Wall, taking over flats abandoned by East Berliners as jobs disappeared with the collapse of communism. More recently, it is fledgling designers, young creatives with no hope of affording the stratospheric rents at home in London, Paris, Stockholm or New York, who have been drawn to Berlin, to revel in some of the lowest shop and flat rents in Europe.

As a result, the city is packed with pop-up cafes and clubs, gallery spaces in old factories, and more small fashion and design stores than you might find in Hoxton, the Marais, Söderholm and Williamsburg put together.

image hosted on flickr

Source

[Dr_Cosmo]

Richard Quest reports on Berlins creative scene...

Berlin: 'Poor, but sexy' - CNN Video


Copyright spreephoto

[Dr_Cosmo]

Young Israel's New Love Affair with Germany- Der Spiegel

Quote:
But Berlin is more than just the latest New York. It's a stage on which they can role play and explore their senses of belonging and identity -- a kind of what-if game: What if I had been born in Germany? Who would I be? What would my life be like today?

[Metro007]

Originally Posted by Dr_Cosmo

Young Israel's New Love Affair with Germany- Der Spiegel

Quote:
But Berlin is more than just the latest New York. It's a stage on which they can role play and explore their senses of belonging and identity -- a kind of what-if game: What if I had been born in Germany? Who would I be? What would my life be like today?

Berlin is indeed a nice city. Not more and not less.

[El_Greco]

Originally Posted by Dr_Cosmo

The Telegraph

Quote:

Berlin is the coolest place to move to these days if you’re young, creative and broke – as glamorous as London but infinitely cheaper. Young people started going in the early 1990s after the fall of the Wall, taking over flats abandoned by East Berliners as jobs disappeared with the collapse of communism. More recently, it is fledgling designers, young creatives with no hope of affording the stratospheric rents at home in London, Paris, Stockholm or New York, who have been drawn to Berlin, to revel in some of the lowest shop and flat rents in Europe.

As a result, the city is packed with pop-up cafes and clubs, gallery spaces in old factories, and more small fashion and design stores than you might find in Hoxton, the Marais, Söderholm and Williamsburg put together.

image hosted on flickr

Source

Im really surprised that estate agents and developers havent moved in and priced everyone out yet! Thats what happened to Shoreditch and Spitalfields here in London...you pretty much have to be a banker with large bonus to be able to afford to live there...

[hmueller2]

I don't know about the UK but in Germany tenants used to have a very good protection by the law.
You can't just buy a building and then double the rent.

[yabbes]

Originally Posted by Chrissib

Berlin should start to get rid of it's communist rubbish buildings and replace them with dense and packed residential and office areas. Narrowing the streets and building on unnecessary green space on wide streets will give life back to Berlin, after it was raped by the Nazis, the WWII bombings and then the communists in the east and leftist urban renewers in the west, who replaced good buildings of the 1871-1914 period with commieblocks and unnecessary greenery.

The problem of Berlin is not the buildings from socialist times in the East, it is its people. This pseudo-alternative hipster culture is ruining the city. Compare it to Warsaw, there you have a city worthy to be the capital of a great country. Hard working people live there and you notice it immediately. In Berlin, when you visit, you get the impression nobody works there, everybody just "hangs around". So really, this is not a question of socialist relics, it's rather a question of how the society is made up.

Berlin will never rid itself from this newly achieved image in the near future. The Anti-Capital, where everything is different to the ordinary, boring Germany.

I must say that we Germans lost our capital thanks to the nazis. If Berlin at one moment of time was worthy to be the capital of an united Germany it was between 1871 and 1930, I think afterwards its spirit was lost forever and West Germany should have better chosen a city like Frankfurt to be its new capital after the Second World War. It would have had the historic legitimation required.. It is strange to me that Adenauer was against this option, given his scepticism of Prussia.

He is quoted saying : "Crossing the Elbe river, the Siberian steppe begins"

The problem is greater than only Berlin. It encompasses the whole of former Prussia. The Nazis ripped and misused the last bits of the Prussian soul there was. After them former Prussia is devoid of culture. In the East this void was temporarily filled with socialist ideology, this explains why the GDR tried to be the model state among the Warsaw Pact. They didn't have any foundation other than socialist ideology. After the Fall of the Wall the void was there again, and this time it got filled with pseudo-anti-ideological alternative Hipster creed.

[Dr_Cosmo]