GERMANY: Berlin Hunts Down On Holiday Apartments

Berlin is about to shut down as many holiday apartments as it can. But while the city's nightmarish rental market needs relief, sites like Airbnb say the law won't lower rents, but will drain money from the city.

Berlin's tight housing market will get some small, but possibly much-needed relief on May 1, with the end of the transitional phase of its new law banning unregistered holiday apartments.

From the end of this month, landlords in the German capital will have to apply for special permits to rent their apartments out to tourists, or face fines of up to 100,000 euros ($113,000). Renting out single rooms is still allowed, provided the landlord also lives in the apartment.

Major online mediators have already taken steps to ensure their users are abiding by the law. "Die Zeit" newspaper reported on Wednesday that Airbnb has begun removing some Berlin entries from its site..

Some 6,300 apartments could be brought back onto Berlin's regular rental market as of next week - though some see that as a drop in the ocean in a city of 1.9 million apartments and an estimated housing shortfall of over 100,000 units.

Major problem, or not?
Rents in Berlin are rising fast. The city is welcoming some 40,000 new inhabitants every year (not including the influx of some 50,000 refugees that arrived in 2015). In an analysis published in January, the real estate investment firm CBRE found that there had been an average five percent rise in rent prices across the city since 2014, and a seven percent increase in the city's central Mitte district.

But it's unclear exactly how many apartments in Berlin in total are being rented out to holidaymakers and other visitors. A study last year by the German property developer GBI put the figure at 24,000 - which suggests that only about a quarter are being rented out legally. Wibke Werner, deputy director of the Berlin tenants association, says estimates vary from between 12,000 and 29,000 apartments.

Since the new law was introduced in 2014, local district councils have started appealing to residents to report suspected holiday apartments via a special anonymous online portal. Now the authorities are ramping up the pressure even more - with some 34 additional positions being created to carry out spot checks, while online services like Airbnb and Wimdu are being forced to pass on information about landlords.

The new ban represents a major headache for such businesses - Berlin is by far the biggest market in Germany for private holiday rentals. GBI estimated that some 6.1 million overnight stays in the capital per year are in private properties - more than three times as many as the second city on the list: Hamburg, where there were two million privately rented overnight stays.

Not cheaper
So it's unsurprising that Roman Bach, CEO of the online portal 9flats, is pretty blunt about it. "This law is one of the most stupid pieces of legislation that ever happened in Germany," he told DW. He also questioned whether there really are 24,000 holiday apartments for rent, arguing that many apartments may have been counted twice because they appear on different platforms.

"However, let's assume this 20,000 number is real," he said. "Even if you get those 6,000 back onto the market, how many cents per square meter do you think your current rent will be lower, or your new rent, with 100,000 or 140,000 units still lacking on the market? Do you think you will get a cheaper apartment?"

Werner, of the Berlin tenants association, agrees that the direct impact of the law will be small - but that doesn't make it unnecessary. "It's more of a signal," she told DW. "We have to make clear that rental apartments that exist and are affordable should be available to tenants. The rental market is getting tighter and tighter and we have to try and protect every single rental home."

Werner also thinks it's more than high time that something was done. "The government could've acted quicker," she said. "The law depends on there being an intense property market, and for many years the Berlin government denied this."

Other holiday home platforms argued that the negative impact of holidaymakers are more than matched by the benefits: "We understand the concerns of the authorities in Berlin, although we do not share them," Aye Helsig, regional director for the international platform HomeAway/FeWo-direkt, said in an emailed statement.

"The vast majority of guests in holiday homes are families who do not pose a particular disturbing factor in residential neighborhoods. It is worth noting that families on holidays contribute much revenue to the local economy."

East Timor: Timor-Leste Facts And History

Capital:

Dili, population about 150,000.

Government:

East Timor is a parliamentary democracy, in which the President is Head of State and the Prime Minister is Head of Government. The President is directly elected to this largely ceremonial post; he or she appoints the leader of the majority party in parliament as Prime Minister. The President serves for five years.

The Prime Minister is head of the Cabinet, or Council of State.

He also leads the single-house National Parliament.

The highest court is called the Supreme Court of Justice.

Jose Ramos-Horta is the current President of East Timor. The Prime Minister is Xanana Gusmao.

Population:

East Timor's population is around 1.2 million, although no recent census data exist. The country is growing quickly, due both to returning refugees and to a high birth rate.

The people of East Timor belong to dozens of ethnic groups, and intermarriage is common. Some of the largest are the Tetum, around 100,000 strong; the Mambae, at 80,000; the Tukudede, at 63,000; and the Galoli, Kemak, and Bunak, all with about 50,000 people.

There are also small populations of people with mixed Timorese and Portuguese ancestry, called mesticos, as well as ethnic Hakka Chinese (around 2,400 people).

Official Languages:

The official languages of East Timor are Tetum and Portuguese. English and Indonesian are "working languages."

Tetum is an Austronesian language in the Malayo-Polynesian family, related to Malagasy, Tagalog, and Hawaiian.

It is spoken by about 800,000 people world-wide.

Colonists brought Portuguese to East Timor in the sixteenth century, and the Romance language has influenced Tetum to a large degree.

Other commonly-spoken languages include Fataluku, Malalero, Bunak, and Galoli.

Religion:

An estimated 98 per cent of East Timorese are Roman Catholic, another legacy of Portuguese colonization. The remaining two per cent are divided almost evenly between Protestants and Moslems.

A significant proportion of Timorese also retain some traditional animist beliefs and customs from pre-colonial times.

Geography:

East Timor covers the eastern half of Timor, the largest of the Lesser Sunda Islands in the Malay Archipelago. It covers an area of about 14,600 square kilometers, including one non-contiguous piece called the Ocussi-Ambeno region, in the northwest of the island.

The Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara lies to the west of East Timor.

East Timor is a mountainous country; the highest point is Mount Ramelau at 2,963 meters (9,721 feet). The lowest point is sea level.

Climate:

East Timor has a tropical monsoon climate, with a wet season from December to April, and a dry season from May through November. During the wet season, average temperatures range between 29 and 35 degrees Celsius (84 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit). In the dry season, temperatures average 20 to 33 degrees Celsius (68 to 91 Fahrenheit).

The island is susceptible to cyclones. It also experiences seismic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis, as it lies on the faultlines of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Economy:

The economy of East Timor is in shambles, neglected under Portuguese rule, and deliberately sabotaged by occupation troops during the war for independence from Indonesia. As a result, the country is among the poorest in the world.

Close to half of the population lives in poverty, and as many as 70 per cent face chronic food insecurity. Unemployment hovers around the 50 per cent mark, as well. The per capita GDP was only about $750 U.S. in 2006.

East Timor's economy should improve in coming years. Plans are underway to develop off-shore oil reserves, and the price of cash crops like coffee is rising.

Prehistoric Timor:

The inhabitants of Timor are descended from three waves of migrants. The first to settle the island, Vedo-Australoid people related to Sri Lankans, arrived between 40,000 and 20,000 B.C. A second wave of Melanesian people around 3,000 B.C. drove the original inhabitants, called Atoni, up into the interior of Timor. The Melanesians were followed by Malay and Hakka people from southern China.

Most of the Timorese practiced subsistence agriculture. Frequent visits from sea-going Arab, Chinese, and Gujerati traders brought in metal goods, silks, and rice; the Timorese exported beeswax, spices, and fragrant sandalwood.

History of Timor, 1515-present:

By the time the Portuguese made contact with Timor in the early sixteenth century, it was divided into a number of small fiefdoms. The largest was the kingdom of Wehale, composed of a mixture of Tetum, Kemak, and Bunak peoples.

Portuguese explorers claimed Timor for their king in 1515, lured by the promise of spices. For the next 460 years, the Portuguese controlled the eastern half of the island, while the Dutch East India Company took the western half as part of its Indonesian holdings. The Portuguese ruled coastal regions in cooperation with local leaders, but had very little influence in the mountainous interior.

Although their hold on East Timor was tenuous, in 1702 the Portuguese officially added the region to their empire, renaming it "Portuguese Timor." Portugal used East Timor mainly as a dumping ground for exiled convicts.

The formal boundary between the Dutch and Portuguese sides of Timor was not drawn until 1916, when the modern-day border was fixed by the Hague.

In 1941, Australian and Dutch soldiers occupied Timor, hoping to fend off an anticipated invasion by the Imperial Japanese Army. Japan seized the island in February of 1942; the surviving Allied soldiers then joined with local people in guerilla war against the Japanese. Japanese reprisals against the Timorese left about one in ten of the island's population dead, a total of more than 50,000 people.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, control of East Timor was returned to Portugal. Indonesia declared its independence from the Dutch, but made no mention of annexing East Timor.

In 1974, a coup in Portugal moved the country from a rightist dictatorship to a democracy. The new regime sought to disentangle Portugal from its overseas colonies, a move that the other European colonial powers had made some 20 years earlier. East Timor declared its independence in 1975.

In December of that year, Indonesia invaded East Timor, capturing Dili after just six hours of fighting. Jakarta declaring the region the 27th Indonesian province. This annexation, however, was not recognized by the UN.

Over the next year, between 60,000 and 100,000 Timorese were massacred by Indonesian troops, along with five foreign journalists.

Timorese guerillas kept fighting, but Indonesia did not withdraw until after the fall of Suharto in 1998. When the Timorese voted for independence in an August, 1999 referendum, Indonesian troops destroyed the country's infrastructure.

East Timor joined the UN on September 27, 2002.