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Bavaria reports heavy damage after overnight storm

Police have reported significant damage in Bavaria after heavy storms and torrential rain battered the region on Tuesday night.

Published: 12 May 2010 12:13 CEST
Bavaria reports heavy damage after overnight storm
Photo: DPA

The Franconia and Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz) regions were particularly affected by the storm, with damages including flooded cellars and roads blocked by uprooted trees.

A fire in the Upper Palatinate town in Nittenau reportedly started by lightning and inflicted costly damages amounting to an estimated €250 000. Fire fighters in the region were on duty throughout the night to put out the blaze and clear felled tree branches that damaged vehicles and blocked roads in the area. Road construction works were also blown over by high winds.

River traffic in Upper Franconia was also severely affected by the storms. Authorities introduced a temporary suspension to boat travel after several embankments collapsed on the Rhine-Main-Danube canal in the district of Forchheim.

Meanwhile a 12-metre-long embankment parallel to the canal was also washed away, resulting in further disruption to water transport.

Though no-one was injured in Bavaria, a 46-year-old man in the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemberg was struck by lighting as he was opening an umbrella. But he survived with just light burns, according to the police.

Meanwhile more rain is expected to concentrate in the region for the next few days, the German Weather Service (DWD) said on Wednesday.

Heavy rain from the Lower Rhine to Baltic Sea coast and south of the Danube River will set in for most of Wednesday, with high temperatures between eight and 20 degrees Celsius across the country.

Overnight more rain is expected in the south, with heavy storms concentrated near the Alps. Temperatures could get low enough for ground frost to form, the DWD said.

The south will continue to see rain on Thursday, with scattered thunderstorms in the Alps. The rest of the country will have thick cloud cover and scattered showers with highs between a cool 7 and 14 degrees.

The soggy weather will likely continue in central and southern regions overnight, and low temperatures will bring ground frost and drop the snowfall line to about 1,500 metres.

Friday’s weather won’t improve much for the south, where more rain is expected, but western and northern regions will be mostly dry with a slight increase of temperatures ranging between 8 and 15 degrees, the DWD predicted.

Click here for The Local’s weather forecast.

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BERLIN

Why are Berlin rents soaring by 20 percent when there’s a rent brake?

The Berlin Tenants' Association says rents rose by 21 percent last year, and a recent report confirms a similar increase. Germany's rent price brake put in place in 2015 was intended to hold rents steady, so why are they continuing to soar?

Published: 18 April 2024 13:14 CEST
Why are Berlin rents soaring by 20 percent when there's a rent brake?

A report released Wednesday by two leading real-estate firms found that asking rents in Berlin rose by 18.3 percent to €13.60 per square metre despite the rent brake that’s meant to control the increase. 

The report was compiled by real estate financier Berlin Hyp and the global real estate service provider CBRE.

The report also notes that the number of rental apartments offered in Berlin shrank drastically.

In the real estate market however, prices have come down somewhat. The report suggests asking prices for apartment buildings fell by 11.7 percent, and asking prices for condominiums fell slightly by 1.4 percent.

These findings are based on evaluations of 23,300 rental offers, around 28,400 purchase price offers for condominiums and apartment buildings as well as 220 new construction projects with around 34,900 apartments in Berlin for 2023.

Where are rents the highest and the lowest in Berlin?

According to the report, Berlin’s rental prices top out in Charlottenburg and Friedrichshain – at rates up to €26 per sq/m.

Marzahn was the kiez or neighbourhood that had the lowest rents, at €16.03 per sq/m at the most. Spandau and Reinickendorf were the next cheapest neighbourhoods. 

The range of rent prices was wide across every neighbourhood in Berlin. Across the capital city, rents on the bottom end were as low as €6 per sq/m – amounting to a difference of nearly €20 per sq/m between rents in the upper and lower market segments.

READ ALSO: Is there any hope for Berlin’s strained rental market?

While Berlin’s rapidly increasing rents combined with its severe housing shortage makes moving to or within the city notoriously frustrating, it does not have the highest rent prices in Germany.

According to Statista, Munich has the highest rent prices by far, at a rate of €19.23 per sq/m in 2023. Frankfurt am Main had the next highest rent on average, at €14.80 per sq/m.

Close behind, Stuttgart has held the third highest rents in Germany in recent years, but as of 2023 it looks like Berlin has caught up.

Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Cologne all had rent prices between €12 and €13 per sq/m on average.

Is the rent price brake failing?

In an attempt to slow the rapid rise of rents in competitive housing markets, the German government introduced a rental price brake (Mietpreisbremse) in 2015, which was recently extended until 2029.

But it appears that the rent brake has done little to slow the rise of rents in Germany’s most competitive markets.

The Berlin Tenants’ Association (BMV) welcomes the extension of the rent brake, but says that it needs urgent tightening and strengthening to adequately keep rents affordable.

Mieten runter "rents down"

The words “Rents down” are graffitied on the wall of a rental building. About 75% of Berlin rents are set illegally high, a legal expert told The Local. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Monika Skolimowska

The rent brake is intended to prevent landlords from asking for rents more than 10 percent above local comparative rates. But with no significant consequences for violating the rent brake rule, the BMV says landlords regularly raise rents well above the legal limit.

According to the BMV, rents were excessive in 98 percent of the cases that it reviewed in 2023.

“Many landlords ignore the requirement, and try to circumvent the rent brake and demand excessive rents,” says Managing Director of the Berlin Tenants’ Association,  Ulrike Hamann-Onnertz.

“At the same time, the enforcement of the rent brake is associated with a great deal of effort and legal risk for tenants.”

Renters in Germany’s high-demand rental markets can invoke the rent brake to reduce their rent, if they find that their ‘cold rent’ (the base rent without additional costs) is set more than 10 percent above the average rate for a comparable unit in the same neighbourhood. Average rates are recorded local indexes, called Mietspiegel. Here’s one for Berlin.

READ ALSO: German rent brake to be extended until 2029: What you need to know

However, there are a number of exceptions to the rent brake. Perhaps the most frustrating of which is a loophole that allows landlords to maintain an overpriced rent if the previous tenant did not challenge it. 

“Rents agreed in violation of the rent brake can also be included in the rent index and in turn lead to an upward spiral of rents,” Hamann-Onnertz said.

The BMV recommends three policy adjustments to fix the holes in the rent brake which include: applying sanctions to landlords who violate the rent brake, eliminating most of the exceptions to the rent brake, and supporting tenants’ in enforcing their rights through municipal inspection bodies.

Whether policymakers in Berlin (and beyond) will heed any of the BMV’s advice is another story.

READ ALSO: ‘Tense housing situation’: Why a Berlin renter can’t be evicted for two years

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