In some buildings the owners have found ways around the rules, like selling the building to investment funds with enough money to tear it down and build a new one. Or maybe made enough renovations to make larger rent increases legal, but some building owners seem content to just get the steady income without doing much about it.

The big rent increases mainly come from all the new or completely renovated buildings and those are mostly owned by large investment companies.

I personally hope we eventually get enough grip on our cities to tell those investors who are foreign to go fuck themselves and seize their buildings, but it’ll probably take some time until we get to that point. Or maybe it won’t, around 30% of the population supports it or something similar.

Yes, yes, I know this is communism and will bleh bleh bleh, but we can’t keep letting the wealthy herd the poor around like this and expect our society to remain positive about our democratic ideals.

Anecdata #1: a long-established barber shop paying a fifth of the rent that the very similar empty unit next door was advertised for.

Anecdata #2: just too many ‘businesses’ which offered little of interest and which never seemed to have any customers; some shops even only opened for a fraction of the year (eg those selling Fasnacht regalia).

I.e. in Munich, the average rent per square meter is about 10€, while the average for new offers is almost 17€.

This is a problem because nobody is moving out of their places, so people get stuck in the wrong flat. Old people won't leave their too big places after their kids left, young people with kids live in places that are to small.

(No shade thrown at the old people, I'd also not want to leave the place I lived in for so long. But on a bigger scale, it's an issue.)