Rent price brakes

One solution for the issue of rising rents that’s been tried in Germany is the Mietpreisbremse, or ‘rent price brake’. Essentially, it’s a law that is supposed to stop landlords from raising rents by more than 10 percent of the local average. Berlin became the first German state (it’s a state as well as a city) to adopt the policy in 2015.

Yet the policy isn’t working as intended: the German government has recently been looking at tightening the law, as landlords have simply been raising rents by just under the 10 percent threshold. Time, of course, will tell if tighter regulations – which are supposed to come into effect on January 1, 2019 – will be more effective.

Despite calls for regulation, among certain segments of the population, informal rental contracts are as popular as ever, no matter how dim a view government agencies may take.

In Dubai, buildings like the Princess Tower (the secondtallest residential building in the world) and its 97 stories above ground are home to literally thousands of young professionals from all over who can’t afford to stay in the city’s famously highpriced hotels and aren’t yet sure exactly how long they plan on staying.

To move into such a building, all it takes is a quick search on a website like Dubizzle, a call to the landlord, and voila: a no muss, no fuss place to unpack the suitcases and lay one’s head for a while.