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Yes, and that is exactly the reason why the energy transition in the heating sector (insulation, conversion to heat pumps, etc.) is proceeding so slowly in Germany! - The incentives for landlords to invest in energy-saving measures are simply non-existent if increased heating costs (higher gas prices) can always be passed on to the tenants anyway…
There are compounding issues too:
- Most cities, even more pronounced in Western Germany, have lackluster district heating networks — meaning green district heating concepts like in Denmark wouldn’t work nearly as well.
- There was a huge privatization wave in the 90s. Residential buildings in many cases now need to make a profit every year. High-capex measures that bring mediocre/hard-to-forecast opex improvements (entirely dependent on the price of fossil gas vs. electricity) like heat pumps are not going to win you fans among profit-driven investors.
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This is why gov’s need to start applying minimum energy and water efficiency standards to existing structures and fining registered owners for properties that don’t meet those standards. If you can’t afford to uplift a property long term, you don’t deserve to own it. I rent an old-ass 1960’s unit with single pane windows and seals that are fucking decades old (possibly original) so it’s a nightmare to heat/cool. The shower uses something like 3-5x as much water as newer properties just to maintain hot water. The boomer owners don’t give a shit because why would they? They don’t have to live with it and there’s nothing to motivate them to change… The amount they charge for rent won’t change enough to profit off it anytime soon.
It’s illegal to build new properties as inefficient as my rental, with heavy fines and forced remediation for non-compliance, yet every existing structure can get away with efficiency levels that became illegal decades ago and consume significantly more resources than everyone else coz gov’s protect capital first and foremost.
This is why the heating bill was so controversial. The old version already included a forced switch of the heating system every 30 years, by going with 65% green energy you basicly force in heat pumps, which cost a lot of money for landlords. If you own your own home that is not a big deal, as you profit from lower heating costs long term. So the poor old lady living in a way to large house along on a tiny pension is really not the problem here.
Anytime I’ve looked into it, energy efficient upgrades rarely pay for themselves if doing it solely for the energy savings. Requiring them would just increase the cost of home ownership. They do often justify the marginal cost increase compared to less efficient options, so if something needs to be done anyway it’s a good idea to go with the more efficient option.
Interestingly enough, Canada tends to offer a lot of grants/rebates for people to do energy efficiency upgrades to their house, but they don’t apply to rental properties. Seems like those kinds of things would be a big benefit for tenants that tend to be paying the utility bills.
I disagree with you on that. Living in Norway, the small house I bought 9 years ago used electric panel heaters, about 1000w in every room and 2000w in living room. I changed that shit out with a heat pump and small oil radiators in bedrooms.
My heating bill first few months after upgrade was nearly 30% lower than before, despite colder months (oct-nov vs feb-mars).
Given the difference in cost of electricity back then, I paid off my heat pump in 7-8 years. With recent pricing, it would be 5 years.
That’s fair. I forget energy costs in Europe are significantly higher than I’m used to (like 400% or more for electricity compared to Canada) so that does change things a lot.
It shouldn’t be about achieving savings for landowners (existing capital/assets). It should be about achieving savings for renters (the people with the least capital/assets), reducing overall consumption of resources, and ensuring a minimum standard of housing and energy/water consumption for all residents.
The housing affordability angle is disingenuous. Homes are already out of reach for the majority of younger generations. 10k extra on a 500k property (most of which is land value) is irrelevant. As you noted, gov’s craft subsidies and regulations to benefit landowners (existing capital), and completely neglect renters. This has been the SOP for decades and is not unique to Canada; politicians protecting and supporting existing capital, at the expense of the rest, is one of many drivers behind the housing affordability crisis worldwide, and wealth inequality in general.
Flipping subsidies, regulations, rights, and protections to directly improve the standard of living, quality of life, and financial wellbeing of renters, instead of landowners, would make housing a less attractive investment, and could ultimately increase affordability. At the very least it’ll improve the day to day lives of those priced out of the market. Minimum efficiency standards would result in most renters having more savings (spending less on energy), at the expense of existing capital/asset owners.
That’s just a wild guess. Switzerland is facing the same situation and yet, landlords are investing frenetically in the energy transition of their buildings to increase value. We’re in a vicious circle of renovation and increasing rents where it has become an everyday struggle to afford rent. At least in thd cities.
Council housing provides housing for 5million Germans. Another 5million live in cooperative housing.
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Germany is also last when it’s about ownership in general though. Germans have pretty low net worth considering the country’s economic power because they love their Girokonto and their Sparbuch (aka money gets eaten by inflation).
The money of Germans is in the Rentenkasse and is not considered net worth in these studies. It’s like not counting 401k’s for Americans.
But it’s also in the company’s and state’s hand. Every part of German economy is allowed to have wealth. Every part but that, who sells their work for it.
Because it’s different than the 401k. The money you pay into the Rentenkasse is converted into points which are a “promise” that you may get old-age pension someday in the future. It’s not like a saving account where you put away your money.
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Have you tried finding a place to live in Germany? lol
One of the major reasons that no one seems to mention is that renter’s are well protected by right’s and are nearly impossible to kick out. Rental contracts are usually signed without any expiry on the lease and agents are only allowed to raise rental prices every few years. People are expected to live in their rental for decades, to the point where rentals come without kitchens because people are expected to buy their own and use it for 20 years
Right. That’s one major reason not to buy real estate in Germany for renting it out. Tenants can basically destroy your property and there’s hardly anything you can do about it. There are other kinds of assets to build wealth though.
Thanks because I was completely confused
I don’t understand still… so single property and they live there? Aka, not a landlord?
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Can’t it be both? I think property in Germany is fairly concentrated, but I also don’t think the CEOs of corporations with many, many houses are renting themselves.
Seriously it is renters vs owners, well in terms of households owning the home. Link from Eurostat:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-1a.html?lang=en
Isn’t this the same?
If 6 out of 10 households own and actually live in their owned property, than 60% own and 40% rent.
I think regarding the numbers in this statistic you are right. But there are people who don’t have their own property, but also don’t rent, for example homeless people or if you let your family live on your property without taking rent of them.
Homeless account for 0.3% of population in Germany, that is negligible.
And you are not allowed to let your family live on your property without taking rent of them. Search for it if you don’t believe it.
Erlaubt ist es, aber:
- der Mieter muss dann Schenkungssteuer zahlen, und
- der Vermieter muss evtl. Zweitwohnsteuer zahlen, und
- der Vermieter kann natürlich keine Ausgaben (Renovierung etc.) bei der Einkommenssteuer ansetzen.
If someone owns property, but doesn’t live in their own property, they are probably renting. Or how do they live?
They live in their own property, but they own more than one property.
It’s the same number though. 50.5 % of people in Germany rent the place they live in.
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In the EU in 2021, 70 % of the population lived in a household owning their home, while the remaining 30 % lived in rented housing.
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I am afraid you understood it wrong.
This map is about the percentage of people who own the property they are living in and the opposite is who is not the owner but the tenant of their home.Pretty sure it is just the map that is badly created and needs context
The USA is pretty close to Europe in total %.
Me: wait, what about England? …oh! Oh……
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The UK is still in Europe, but no longer in the EU
I don’t understand why it’s missed out here
Especially since they included Switzerland, which was never in the EU.
Norway and arguably Iceland should be included as well, and the Balkans. Norway would be same as Sweden, Iceland and Balkans no idea.
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It seems like their is some misunderstanding of the map.
Here is the information that has been provided on Instagram for this post:Being an owner or a tenant of your home is something that differs significantly among the Member States.
In the EU in 2021, 70 % of the population lived in a household owning their home, while the remaining 30 % lived in rented housing. The highest shares of ownership were observed in Romania (95 % of the population lived in a household owning their home), Slovakia (92 %, 2020 data), Hungary (92 %) and Croatia (91 %).
Of all the countries analysed, Switzerland and Germany were the only ones where renting was more common than owning.
FYI there’s a duplicate sentence there:
In the EU in 2021, 70 % of the population lived in a household owning their home, while the remaining 30 % lived in rented housing.
There are two kinds of people. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
I know they are out of the club but maybe still interesting.
In England and Wales, the figure for 2021 was 62.5%, down from 64.3% in 2011 (~500k households fewer).
Source: ONS
It’s alright, I wouldn’t see Turkey in the club either
I wonder if it plays a role in mid/eastern europe that many work in Germany etc and are then able to afford a house in their homecountries.
It’s just not common in Germany to buy apartments. People either rent, and if they want to buy, they buy a house. Most apartment buildings belong to big companies and not to smaller landlords, making it also not cheaper or in any way attractive to buy an apartment.
In Eastern Europe apartment ownership is very common on the other hand. All the old Soviet blocks have individual ownership of each apartment in it, and the buildings are maintained by groups of people who own the apartments in that building (I forgot the word, not a native English speaker, sorry. But basically like a union out of each owner in the building, there’s monthly meetings to decide stuff etc). Landlords usually will not be big companies like in Germany, but just private persons who have had the apartment in their family for a long time. This also makes it easier to buy an apartment, if you don’t want to rent.
It’s just very different structures and mentalities. When I still lived in Germany I found it stupid to ever buy an apartment and would have just rented forever, since house prices are astronomical. Now I live in Eastern Europe and it took some time to adjust, but it’s really just the norm here to buy or own an apartment at some point in your live and most natives I know here own one, or live in a place that a family member owns.
All the old Soviet blocks have individual ownership of each apartment in it, and the buildings are maintained by groups of people who own the apartments in that building (I forgot the word, not a native English speaker, sorry. But basically like a union out of each owner in the building, there’s monthly meetings to decide stuff etc).
The word you’re looking for is probably “cooperative”
Nope a cooperative would own the entire apartment building and the residents own shares in the cooperative. What Lost is describing is a homeowner association. There the individual apartments are directly owned by the residents.
HOA would be the American term.
I thought it would be a condo (condominium) board or association, since they’re ‘apartments’ not detached single family homes.
The concepts don’t translate neatly. Generally I don’t think most Europeans have different words for condominiums and apartments. And in my experience detached homes rarely belong to HOAs.
Most people in Germany simply can’t afford to buy an apartment, let alone a house.
Thanks for explaining
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Probably not. My assumption would also be that this trend hasn’t been going on for long enough to be a decisive factor yet.
If only there was some historical reason to explain why Eastern Europe doesn’t have that many landlords.
I thought the Soviet Union was famous for monopolising houses in the hands of a rich elite /s
I would guess that property prices in big cities are just not as inflated as in central and western Europe.
No, what does is that a lot of the countries sold the government owned houses built in the communist era for cheap to the tenants. So that helps a lot and only happend a generation ago. Germany unfortunatly did not do that and sold the East German housing to mainly west German companies or individuals.
I constantly see the same title but a different map with different numbers.
I looked up the stats for denmakr
They were basically 50/50 on renting vs owning
But i only found 2015 data.
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Because this is about the EU and no one likes egoistic thinking. And we all know that was the reason for the Brexit, even if it didn’t work out well. 🤡
And as you can see other non EU countries are no included as well.
And the Swiss and Lichtenstein are good partners with the EU for decades now.
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You are right I don’t know why the UK isn’t included.
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But in the description I added later on.
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Why don’t you try to fight for better bilateral relations with your fellow Europeans, in the UK instead of blaming other in the internet for your misses?
We all know the reasons for the Brexit, and it really doesn’t reflect well on the UK. Xenophobia, egoism, populism, which many have been only too happy to be blinded by, and a few trifles in return for many positive things.
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