Lawmakers in Berlin are moving to create Germany’s first official rent registry, marking a major shift in housing policy as the city moves to tighten controls on rising rents.
A draft law by the city's black-red (CDU/SPD) coalition government would create a housing and rent price register for 1.75 million apartments in the capital. Landlords charging rents set above legal limits could then be identified and prosecuted.
The potential law change is being brought five months before elections to Berlin's House of Representatives, seemingly as an effort by the city's conservative and centre-left leaders to showcase their efforts to support renters' interests.
If passed, however, it would represent a meaningful step toward enforcing the city's rent control rules. And if it proved to be successful it could then serve as a model for federal legislation to follow.
Mietenkataster
The draft law calls for the creation of an official housing and rent register (Mietenkataster).
Landlords would therefore need to share information about:
- The address of their rented apartment(s)
- Living space in square meters
- Number of rooms
- Agreed net cold rent and included monthly utility costs
- Equipment (for heating etc.)
- Eligibility for social housing (WBS)
- Start and duration of the tenancy
- Any modernizations
- Information about property taxes owed
Landlords would be required to input this information in a digital portal no later than twelve months after the law comes into force. Changes would need to be updated within one month going forward.
In the draft law, which was reported by local media outlet BZ, Berlin's CDU/SPD coalition had deleted questions about furnishing surcharges and administrative costs.
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The proposed law does include penalties. If a landlord provided false information, they could be fined up to €10,000, or up to €100,000 for repeat offenders.
How would the registry help renters?
The purpose of the registry would be to create transparency into the real conditions within Berlin's housing market, and also give authorities the ability to more aggressively enforce rent control laws.
According to the draft law, after the registry is created, the legality of rents would be reviewed and potential violations of rent control laws would be flagged directly by district housing authorities and potentially passed to the public prosecutor's office.
If all goes according to plan, the draft law would represent the first time authorities are given the power to enforce the rent price brake (Mietpreisbremse) at scale.
Berlin, and also Germany, have relatively robust rent control laws in place, but as The Local has reported, these controls have been scarcely enforced - in part because authorities have lacked the ability to investigate and prosecute landlords who violate rent price limits at scale.
So far renters have been left largely to their own devices to try and enforce rent control laws, sometime with the help of tenants' unions or legal service providers.
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Notably, the registry would not be made available to the public, so tenants wouldn't have the ability to check their rent price as compared to their neighbours'.
And here comes the debate...
As this proposal is currently a draft law, it still needs to pass some legislative hurdles before taking effect and, given the pushback that can be expected from landlords and related business interest groups, there is a decent chance that revisions to the draft could be made within that process.
The owners' association Haus & Grund, has already issued harsh words against the proposal, calling it a "punitive measure against landlords" and suggesting that the law is "unlikely to be compatible with data protections".
On the other side, however, Berlins' lawmakers will be feeling pressure to make real and visible efforts in support of tenants ahead of the next election.
SPD parliamentary leader Raed Saleh recently acknowledged that high rents were the issue worrying Berliners most. His CDU counterpart, Dirk Stettner, voiced support for the rent registry, saying it would target a small number of rogue landlords while avoiding excessive bureaucracy.
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