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HOUSING

Financial crisis could raise rents

The German tenants’ association, or Deutscher Mieterbund, is expecting rents in Germany to rise as a result of the financial crisis, the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel am Sonntag reported Sunday.

Financial crisis could raise rents
Photo: DPA

“We are seeing a clear rise in rent increases again,” the President of the association Franz-Georg Rips told the newspaper. “Tenants’ queries about rent increases have doubled in the last two or three years,” he added. This development is blamed on the number of foreign investors who have bought apartments in Germany looking for short-term profits.

“There has been much activity in the market for buying rent-able apartments in Germany recently,” Rips said, “Around 1.5 million flats have changed hands.” A large proportion of these have been taken by Anglo-American investors, who often expect a 25 percent profit.

In the current climate, this is barely realistic, and Rips says that only two options are available to the investor to haul in such a profit: either to neglect or postpone renovations, or to raise rents.