German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/53, pp. 6355-6356.
Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
“To Better Protect Renters”, so is the undertitle of the called-for motion. The here presented demands from the Linke party for a supposed rescue of an, in part, no longer functioning rental market which is unfortunately covered to a not insignificant degree with similarly knitted regulatory aims of the governing coalition – we have just now heard a bit of it – are all too well known, in a longer view massively detrimental, and stamped with a fundamental scepticism vis-à-vis owners of real property and the functionings of market forces: A sharp rental price brake, a limitation of existing rental increases, a more temporary rental freeze [Mietenstopp], a substantial restriction or indeed abolition of indexed rentals, a regulation or a ban on furnishing supplements [Möbilierungszuschlagen], a strong regulation of short-term rentals, a massive restriction of owner use terminations [Eigenbedarfskündigungen], expansion of grace period payments, an introduction of agreement and transparency obligations, etc. etc. The supposedly all-knowing state – instead of market reason and realism – shall thus set it right. Ladies and gentlemen, this false, as even so hostile to freedom, spirit with which the presented motion breathes, we reject outright.
Instead of creating the statutory and economic conditions so that business builds new housing, and owners of housing space are not, with all force, more or less deterred from renting, socialization [Vergesellschaftung] fantasies are spread – by means of expropriation and by means of ever additional shackles laid upon the owners – and become salonfähig in bürgerliche milieux. Thereby is private rental law reconstructed into an additional sozial right, instead of finally, vigorously addressing the actual problems of the present housing market misery.
In fact – this proceeds from a current, representative Civey survey – it is expected that the regulation of indexed rents, planned by the Federal government, as it happens threatens to become a veritable housing construction brake. Since by the long-term value guaranty of inflation protection, building projects often only become more calculable and feasible. The additional statutory guidelines – be it here in excessive form of the Linke motion, or in form of the declared views of the governing coalition – only expand and deepen this problematic still further.
In the end, still fewer rentable dwellings are available, and the stock worsens ever further because renovation and reconstruction measures will simply be omitted due to a lack of sufficient return on rentals. That could well enough be seen, for example, in the DDR, and that, we no more want here, ladies and gentlemen.
What have Bund, States and local governments under leadership of the old parties – including the Linke, for example, in Thüringen – done for an improvement? Nothing, with penetrating effectiveness. They much more withdraw, by plan and incisively, from the rental market and sell their stock. In climate madness, they make massively more expensive the energy and construction costs. In the bureaucracy madness active in recent decades, every construction contract means an incalculable time risk for builders of every kind. You raise, in combination with the States and local governments, striking taxes like the real estate transfer tax [Grunderwerbsteuer] and the property tax [Grundsteuer]. And thus it plainly comes to, besides the actual rent, additional, sprawling rental side-costs which have long since attained the level of a second rent. It is thus primarily your false, anti-renter and anti-landlord policy which has created the dilemma of the high rents.
An additional, essential price-driving aspect was in any case recently named by the German Renters Union. The number of renters has risen in the past five years by around 3 million people, which has naturally, additionally and clearly intensified the dwellings supply situation. And if you all do not want to hear it: Behind that is the unplanned, uncontrolled and overwhelming migration which we self-evidently reject.
Ralf
Stegner (SPD): I thought you had forgotten something!
The means of the Linke as also of the coalition – still more regulation and still deeper intervention – further does not help here, but even intensifies the situation. From this muddled situation, only a great new start helps, and which is only possible with the AfD.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]