Red-Green-Red coalition plans cap for housing corporations in Berlin

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Red-Green-Red coalition plans cap for housing corporations in Berlin.

In Berlin, private housing corporations should be allowed to own a maximum of 10,000 apartments in the future – a potential coalition of the Left Party, Greens, and SPD wants to socialize everything above that and cap total compensation to owners at 16 billion euros. This emerges from the joint exploration paper presented by senior politicians of the three parties on Saturday afternoon. The rbb reports.

From 3,000 to 10,000 – the threshold moves far upward

The most substantial change compared to earlier plans: instead of targeting companies with 3,000 or more apartments as foreseen in the 2021 referendum, socialization should now only kick in from 10,000 apartments. This brings the Left Party and Greens closer to the SPD, which had recently been cautious on the issue of socialization. For you that means: cooperatives, public-interest actors, and smaller private landlords stay out of it – the regulation targets exclusively the large, privately organized corporations.

16 billion euros as compensation cap

Affected companies are to be compensated – but the total of all compensation payments is capped at 16 billion euros. If the actual value of the holdings to be taken over exceeds this sum, owners would have to accept a discount. How the individual sums are to be calculated remains open in the exploration paper. What is clear is that compensation will not be at market-standard levels.

"We will work on socialization from day one." – Elif Eralp, lead candidate of the Left Party, on rbb24 Abendschau on 17.10.2026

Three years until the law – on the basis of Article 15 of the Basic Law

By mid-2028, the three parties want to introduce a socialization law. The legal basis would be Article 15 of the Basic Law: "Land, natural resources and means of production may be transferred to public ownership or to other forms of public enterprise by a law that regulates the nature and extent of compensation." Article 15 has never been applied in the Federal Republic – the project would be unprecedented nationwide.

What is to run in parallel until 2028

Eralp said on rbb24 Abendschau that transferring private housing stock into public hands takes time. Therefore, a rent cap for state-owned housing companies is to be introduced in parallel, along with the creation of an agency that reviews rent increases. This is an important step to prevent speculation on the real estate market in the future – "but of course this is not the only tool we will use," said Eralp. In addition, representatives of the three parties announced a new-construction offensive at a press conference on Saturday.

What remains open – and what is already decided

It has not yet been clarified which companies exactly fall under the threshold, in what timeframe holdings will actually be transferred, and what consequences this will have for existing rental agreements. Already decided, however, is the exception for new construction: apartments built after January 1, 2021, or still under construction are not to be touched – a signal to investors that newly created housing does not fall under socialization.