That's a fine opinion, but I and others in Berlin would also prefer not having to have high rises just because there are speculators. The issue in Berlin is not really lack of units, this is not San Francisco. The problem here is purely the rampant speculation.
I don't follow the same economical dogmas you do. In my opinion it's not about supply or demand, but purely about a certain group of investors fucking up everyone lives. I'd prefer to attack this problem head-on rather than having bandaids that involve destroying Tempelhofer Feld or removing the Kleingarten, like other people suggested.
And this is why house prices are high in every urban centre. We see this same unexpected alliance everywhere between the environmental left that wants to preserve as much greenery as possibly via zoning rules, and the crony right who just wants to cynically increase property prices. The end result is a lot of human suffering and nothing to show for it.
Property investors really aren't the root problem because they lease the property back onto the market and that supply doesn't vanish.
This is not dogma. Quite the opposite. The impact of supply caps due to zoning has been studied to death by economists.
The "preserve greenery" perspective is just a highly privileged one and a false choice/false dilemma to boot. You can build vertically without sacrificing greenery or destroying your parks and bushland. Why not just do that and solve the entire problem? Oh wait that is illegal...
Nobody said "property investors who lease back" are a problem anywhere... The problem is merely a small group of entities with too much purchase power distorting the market and making the city worse for everyone. Maybe this is something that your favourite branch of economics likes to pretend doesn't exist, but, again, different people have different opinions.
I don't follow the same economical dogmas you do. In my opinion it's not about supply or demand, but purely about a certain group of investors fucking up everyone lives. I'd prefer to attack this problem head-on rather than having bandaids that involve destroying Tempelhofer Feld or removing the Kleingarten, like other people suggested.