Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw3838 | Hacker News Reader

And as always it will backfire on users!

Now it is impossible to find unlimited rentals, every contract has yearly extensions! In some countries landlords even rotate tenants every two years, else they would get extra rights from long stay.

View on HN

In Russia literally everyone does 11-month rental contracts that are extended every 11 months because a year or more means the tenant would get more rights and they would also need to pay taxes.

Limited rentals are actually banned unless you have a very specific reason (you plan to occupy the flat yourself, you plan to renovate extensively or the flat is meant for temp workers - so no extensions and much shorter intervals) in Germany as well.

This is misleading. I moved to Germany last year and there's a whole secondary market - much bigger than I've seen in any other country, in sublets. While you officially need anmeldung (city registration) to live anywhere in Germany, there are at least as many sublet apartments without anmeldung available as official rental apartments on the open market. They're usually a good deal cheaper too. Lots of people (immigrants especially) have their 'official' anmeldung with a friend or relative, and move between short term sublets (1 - 6 months, but usually 3 or less) for years at a time. There doesn't seem to be any regulation of this sublet market at all - except by the management of individual apartments (where the subletter is in violation of their own rental agreement).

I don't think it is misleading, it is simply a different class of problem. And as you said yourself, in most cases these subleases are not actually legal.

Seems to work well in Germany, though.

Because limited rentals are mostly banned, and being caught on a violation is quite bad.

But isn't that the exact point? That strong consumer protection enables business to earn money in a way that at least prohibits the worst behavior towards the consumers?

So essentially what OP stated?

The trick is to keep the rules reasonable.

If the owner could go to a small cases court and get a bad tenant kicked out with minimal cost, he wouldn't try so hard to defend against the rule.

I don’t know from which countries you got such pessimistic view, but for me that’s unheard

Reply on news.ycombinator.com