Comment by Thomas Aigner, Managing Director of Aigner Immobilien GmbH
The city of Munich is planning to introduce a “rent monitor”: A digital tool will automatically scan publicly accessible online advertisements, compare them with the rent index and point out the legal requirements to landlords in the event of suspiciously high rents. Sounds good at first and is certainly popular with the electorate – but on closer inspection it becomes clear: It is a “disservice” for Munich’s tenants. There would be small measures that would have an immediate effect without any effort.
The four biggest disadvantages of the “Rent Monitor”
1.) New costs for high debts: Such a tool definitely needs new staff. In times when the city is already in a mountain of debt, however, such additional costs are more than questionable.
2.) Fatal signal for housing construction: Such control and confrontation measures are intended to deter landlords. However, private investors who invest in urgently needed housing construction are deterred above all.
3.) Not a single new apartment: The core cause of Munich’s housing dilemma is not the greed of individual landlords (contrary to the public image, the majority of landlords are anything but greedy), but a shortage of housing that has persisted for decades, especially in new buildings! Neither rent brakes nor expropriations nor digital surveillance instruments create even a single square meter of additional living space that would relieve the situation for tenants.
4.) Allocation “under the table”: The city has no legal intervention at all. The whole thing only serves control and wants to create pressure. As a consequence, the “rent monitor” will lead to private landlords no longer advertising their vacant rented apartment in public at all, but simply “underhand” by posting it in the house or by word of mouth. For apartment seekers – especially for people who want to move to Munich from outside – this makes the search even more difficult. But maybe that’s a desired effect, because the “newcomers” in Munich don’t have a vote for the time being. A rogue who thinks evil of it …
Immediate measures for rapid relief
Instead of relying on symbolic surveillance machines, real political courage and pragmatic instructions would be needed to noticeably relieve the housing market. That would have an immediate effect:
1.) End of the “watering can subsidy”: The rent freeze at the municipal housing company Münchner Wohnen costs the city 30 million euros in taxpayers’ money per year! The unfair thing about it: This only helps those tenants who have been living with a municipal company for decades at absolutely below-average rents and are spared from a rent increase that is otherwise common everywhere for ideological or electoral reasons. And all this without individual examination, so that even high-income tenants are always subsidized with foreign money!
By reversing this rent freeze, Münchner Wohnen would once again have its own liquid assets for the urgently needed maintenance and new construction of its portfolio and would no longer be dependent on annual subsidies, which are simply no longer feasible in the current financial situation.
2.) Consistent implementation of the SEM: The urban development measures (SEM) must be consistently pushed forward – even in the face of sometimes lengthy resistance to citizen participation – with clear reference to the acute rent crisis in Munich. This is the only way to realize new building areas and affordable apartments on a large scale.
Conclusion: The end does not justify all means
The “Rent Monitor” is one thing above all: loud, but ineffective – typical clientele politics, just like the rent brake. The most important voter group always benefits from this measure: those tenants who already have an apartment.
The tool suggests zest for action on the top election campaign topic of the new mayor, but has the opposite effect: In the end, it harms the tenants themselves, as the real problem – the lack of housing – remains unsolved. Finally eliminating this through effective measures would help EVERYONE. The end does not justify all means. Sometimes the means are also contrary to the intended end.
