Apartment and Tax Story

 Focus brought up this topic today.....'exportation'.

Locals in the city of Berlin are working on an initiative called “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen und Co.”

The idea....collect enough signatures to force a city referendum.  Within this....the idea would be public seizure of private company 'assets' (apartment buildings).

Somewhere in paragraph 14 of the Basic Law (the Constitution)....there is an allowance where private property can be seized....but in turn....you have to compensate the losing party.

Over and over, it's been mentioned to the referendum supporters....the compensation part of this scheme basically comes back to the city or state....meaning if you seized forty-odd buildings valued at one billion Euro....someone from the city or state would have to cough up the billion Euro, and taxpayers in the end....would be assigned the task of covering the money.

The figure on the Berlin apartments played with?  They suggest for the full 243,000 apartments....the amount of money comes up to a minimum of 29 billion Euro, and could even go as high as 39 billion (depending on how you view the true value).

Focus then brings up this curious fact.....back in 2002 timeframe....the city sold these public apartment buildings, for the price of roughly 2.2-billion Euro.  Under-valued?  Maybe, but there's simply not enough data to suggest that's factual.

So you stand back and look at this landscape.  Politically, this is all charged up and everyone is convinced the rate of advancement for rent increases is a serious problem, and already way more than what they should be paying (at least they believe that).

Several political parties have agendas that lean toward the expropriation idea.  Where the billions would come from?  Well....obviously these parties aren't advertising this part of the deal, and there's a serious point where the public wakes up and realizes the tax required.....can only come from themselves.

So a bigger problem brewing?  Property taxes somewhere down the line....for the city of Berlin.....are going to explode.  The public apartment buildings might avoid this issue, but the regular people around Berlin won't be able to avoid it, and they will be frustrated to a major degree.