A warning from Berlin

Posted: April 9, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Financialisation, Germany, Housing associations, Privatisation, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally published on my blog for Inside Housing.

The large demonstrations in Berlin on Saturday demanding the expropriation of the property of the city’s two biggest landlords are a warning to their counterparts in this country about what can happen when public and political opinion turns against you.

Yes, there is a particular context for the demos, with communism in East Berlin and an expectation of cheap rents in West Berlin predating the free market pressures of a global capital city.

And yes we are talking about two large private corporate landlords that own more than 100,000 homes each.

But to bring things closer to home, both companies identified in the protestors’ placards – Deutsche Wohnen in particular but also Vonovia – have their roots in social housing and grew out of communal housing associations.

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The price of everything and the value of nothing

Posted: April 27, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Land, Local government, Privatisation | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Originally posted on April 27 on my blog for Inside Housing.

Sometimes a conjunction of different news stories shines a new light on things and makes the obvious more obvious.

That’s exactly what happened this week when two excellent long read features on housing and a select committee report made me see familiar issues in a slightly different way.

The first was in Tuesday’s Guardian, an investigation by Holly Watt into the scandal of the privatisation of Ministry of Defence housing.

The big picture is that in 1996 the MoD sold its housing stock for military personnel to Annington Homes for £1.67bn and then rented them back at a big discount to market rates for 25 years.

That may have made short-term financial sense but the long term is a different matter altogether. The homes are now worth £6.7bn and the 25-year discount runs out in 2021. After that there is nothing to stop Annington charging full market rents.

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