European renting - who owns all the properties?

NewFrockTuesday

As someone who is mulling over whether to buy or rent at the moment, I keep popping in here to have a nose about and see what people are thinking. Based not on this site alone, I have decided that I will buy as rent is pretty much the same and in some cases cheaper with the sort of property I want to buy. The end result will depend on mamagement fees, tax, stamp duty, ES fess and solicitors fees and all those costs that I will no doubt find piling up along the way.


I have a question. I keep seeing here the statement that renting is so much more common, acceptable and protected on the continent. Everybody seems to rent and 3 years in Germany tells me this is correct. But who owns the houses that are rented? If everyone is renting, is there a small percentage of the population holding most of the property? Or is it the government. I know the HLMs in France are like our council flats here, but that comprises at most I would (mad wild guess based on no evidence whatsoever) maybe 15% of the population? Are there varying levels of government ownership…I mean for example – tier 1 = HLM, tier 2 = fairly decent flats in fairly decent neighbourhoods, tier 3 = plush housing and private buildings. How does the European market differ so much from ours that there is a huge amount of property for rental? Who owns these properties? Are there a select few who own alot? If so, are there laws against cartelling , price fixing ec?


Thanks for any help understanding this. Links etc appreciated.

Senna

In Germany, in particular, they had a huge shortage of housing after WW2 right up-until the 70's. During this time the government and public corporations built a large number of flats and houses, which they still own today. In effect many of the public are renting off the government and due to rent controls, the government subsidies the rent.
Germany's property prices are cheaper than most other countries, but renting is much much cheaper than buying. That and the German tradition of renting meant they didn't get caught up in the cheap credit bubble like we did.

inforfun

Senna wrote: »

In Germany, in particular, they had a huge shortage of housing after WW2 right up-until the 70's. During this time the government and public corporations built a large number of flats and houses, which they still own today. In effect many of the public are renting off the government and due to rent controls, the government subsidies the rent.
Germany's property prices are cheaper than most other countries, but renting is much much cheaper than buying. That and the German tradition of renting meant they didn't get caught up in the cheap credit bubble like we did.

Same goes for Holland.
You might be able to find private owned, furnished houses for rent but you have to look hard.
I think it is still about 50% of all homes are rented out by corporations.
Of course there are cowboys to be found in these corporations but you ll not very likely end up with a landlord who thinks he is only duty is to collect rent.
Government is not renting out but you can apply for a kind of rent allowance.

jdivision

A lot of pension funds and investment funds own residential property in Europe - they'd own several thousand units in a scheme. It's less prevalent here but there are some examples, on a much smaller scale and done usually by private syndicates.

shoegirl

jdivision wrote: »

A lot of pension funds and investment funds own residential property in Europe - they'd own several thousand units in a scheme. It's less prevalent here but there are some examples, on a much smaller scale and done usually by private syndicates.

Yes, correct, the reason is also because the way these funds work are very equitable to both landlord and tenant, I've often thought they could be very useful here to fill the gap between social housing and the amateur part time landlord.