Why Germans Love Renting Their Homes

Generali

http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/?

michaels

Did that piece actually answer the question?

CLAPTON

michaels wrote: »

Did that piece actually answer the question?

clearly it doesn't answer the question.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Didn't realise the Germans spend almost exactly the same percentage of after tax household income on housing as the British do.....

lvader

1950's onwards Germany has had lower average inflation than the UK. Higher inflation makes home ownership more attractive.

Joe_Bloggs

The key thing is that German residents are happy to be tenants.There may be contrasts to be made with UK tenants trying to save for a deposit whilst paying increasing rents.

@Hamish do you have any data from this decade ?

ruggedtoast

One of my friends is German. His family are wealthy and middle class, and over the years built a very successful business in Berlin employing several hundred people.

They didn't start out wealthy though, and unsurprisingly for Germany, they were given a nice family house with a protected social rent.

What is surprising (or surprised me anyway) is that they lived there all through most of their working lives, until eventually building their own house to spec in the countryside in their 50s. For all that rest of the time, with the beaten up VW turning into a top of the line new Mercedes, they were were quite happy with their council place for them and their boys.

This seems to be quite normal in Germany. People don't see property as a get rich quick scheme, or renting as some kind of mark of shame, the losing side of the zero sum game with speculators and the speculated.

They are given security of tenure, can have families and pets and can make reasonable changes to their properties without having to beg some spiv who can evict them for no reason.

Council stock is plentiful and high quality, and people aren't clambering over one another to move to a better post code when they dont need it any more. It is intended to provide a decent stable home for people to stay long term and thrive without being flung off the greasy pole of social one upmanship.

It is basically, the exact opposite of what housing is about in the UK. Germans have less housing wealth than us, and they are immeasurably richer for it.

CLAPTON

ruggedtoast wrote: »

One of my friends is German. His family are wealthy and middle class, and over the years built a very successful business in Berlin employing several hundred people.

They didn't start out wealthy though, and unsurprisingly for Germany, they were given a nice family house with a protected social rent.

What is surprising (or surprised me anyway) is that they lived there all through most of their working lives, until eventually building their own house to spec in the countryside in their 50s. For all that rest of the time, with the beaten up VW turning into a top of the line new Mercedes, they were were quite happy with their council place for them and their boys.

This seems to be quite normal in Germany. People don't see property as a get rich quick scheme, or renting as some kind of mark of shame, the losing side of the zero sum game with speculators and the speculated.

They are given security of tenure, can have families and pets and can make reasonable changes to their properties without having to beg some spiv who can evict them for no reason.

Council stock is plentiful and high quality, and people aren't clambering over one another to move to a better post code when they dont need it any more. It is intended to provide a decent stable home for people to stay long term and thrive without being flung off the greasy pole of social one upmanship.

It is basically, the exact opposite of what housing is about in the UK. Germans have less housing wealth than us, and they are immeasurably richer for it.

are you sure?

I thought there was very little publicly owned property and that most was rented privately

ruggedtoast

CLAPTON wrote: »

are you sure?

I thought there was very little publicly owned property and that most was rented privately

Thats what they told me. Though private rental in Germany gives the same kind of security of tenure that a council house does here anyway, minus right to buy.

Jason74

ruggedtoast wrote: »

One of my friends is German. His family are wealthy and middle class, and over the years built a very successful business in Berlin employing several hundred people.

They didn't start out wealthy though, and unsurprisingly for Germany, they were given a nice family house with a protected social rent.

What is surprising (or surprised me anyway) is that they lived there all through most of their working lives, until eventually building their own house to spec in the countryside in their 50s. For all that rest of the time, with the beaten up VW turning into a top of the line new Mercedes, they were were quite happy with their council place for them and their boys.

This seems to be quite normal in Germany. People don't see property as a get rich quick scheme, or renting as some kind of mark of shame, the losing side of the zero sum game with speculators and the speculated.

They are given security of tenure, can have families and pets and can make reasonable changes to their properties without having to beg some spiv who can evict them for no reason.

Council stock is plentiful and high quality, and people aren't clambering over one another to move to a better post code when they dont need it any more. It is intended to provide a decent stable home for people to stay long term and thrive without being flung off the greasy pole of social one upmanship.

It is basically, the exact opposite of what housing is about in the UK. Germans have less housing wealth than us, and they are immeasurably richer for it.

Your last paragraph is so so true. The obsession with "property wealth" is as much the "british disease" today as poor industrial relations was in the 1970s. It's no coincidence imho that tge Germans have both a healthier attitude to housing than us, and a much better economy generally.

For all it's hardship, the financial crisis gave us a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring about a real change in approach. Sadly, our "leaders" chose instead to just get things back to "normal" as soon as possible, much to our long term detriment as a society / economy

CLAPTON

Germany has a similar level of housing wealth as the UK; in Germany however it is all concentrated in large companies and not distributed amoungst the majority of ordinary people.

There is very little public ownership in Germany.


I'm unaware that countries with lower owner occupiers tend to be richer. Is there evidence to support this?