Whether you just moved here yesterday or have been settled for several years, we are all well familiar with the joys of flat hunting in Berlin. I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories, scamming stories, funny stories, and even the nudist stories.
And now this collective flat search experience has been transformed into a hilariously cathartic online game known as Berlin Flat Quest.
Created by Bastien, the man who runs the Settle in Berlin blog, Berlin Flat Quest commemorates this rite of passage by combining people’s flat search stories gathered from the Facebook group berlin EXPATS.
Read on…
by Aisha | Entertainment
Our city is changing. As long as we’re loud enough, it can change for the better.
My body is still sobering up from excessive new years celebrations when I leave my apartment on Karl-Marx-Allee on this frosty Thursday morning. I might feel like trash, but stepping through the elegant row of columns guarding the gates to the monumental ‘Stalin-palaces’, I live in, just gives me something grand each time.
I’m on my – semi-thought-through – mission to keep it that way: I’m buying my apartment! – I’m 25, I just finished my studies, and my savings got me as far as a new MacBook… Turning around the corner to Ostbahnhof, nervously fiddling with the pile of signed documents in my right hand, I ask myself: Have I gone mad?
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by Andy | People, Stories
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Renting an apartment in Berlin has become outrageously expensive and doesn’t fit the anti-capitalist flair that many residents are here for. In fact, rents in Berlin have almost doubled in the last 5 years. The more often I talk to friends about the situation, the more I get used to it. And that’s even scarier. The other day, a friend who recently moved to Berlin told me that, she pays a staggering 920€ for 35m2 in Sonnenallee. That’s over 25€ per sqm! Allegedly luxuriously renovated and provided with a plush fitted kitchen.
We think that’s the new normal – but it’s still illegal. Indeed, even a rent of 10€ per sqm is often already illegal. To prevent rents from rising any further, the government passed a rent control law – the so-called Mietpreisbremse. That law has been in place for more than three years. So why has hardly anyone used it so far? Why do rents continue to rise?
We did some research on this and want to show you three different options for how you can actually and effectively lower your rent. We will start with the online service of wenigermiete.de, than compare it with going it through lawyer or a tenants rights association.
Read on…
by Franziska | Stories
The recent sale of dozens of iconic buildings inhabiting thousands of people along Berlin’s grand boulevard Karl-Marx-Allee by a private real estate company is symbolizing the sinister developments in the city’s housing market. But is it all just sell, sell, sell, cringe and carry on, or who has the final say here?
700 apartments in Berlin’s famous, postwar, palace-like apartment blocks along what was formerly known as GDR’s prestigious ‘Stalinallee’ change ownership. The buildings were acquired by ‘Deutsche Wohnen’ – the largest private real estate firm in the capital region, often criticized for its rigorous rental increase politics. – Oh my. I live there myself. What now?
Read on…
by Andy | People, Stories
