2.5.5 / Alternatives / Land - not just any commodity

Every year, the real estate groups afford themselves a so-called value adjustment. In 2020, for example, Vonovia raised the assessed value of its properties by €1.4 billion. Their explanation: ever more expensive land prices. Former SPD leader and mayor of Munich Hans-Jochen Vogel demanded in a manifesto at the end of 2019: "Land needs a new classification". Land is not an arbitrary commodity, but a basic prerequisite of human existence -- like air and water. The Federal Constitutional Court had also stated: "The fact that land is not reproducible and indispensable forbids its use to be left entirely to the incalculable play of free forces and the whim of the individual." Almost 50 years after the late Hans-Jochen Vogel, Dieter Reiter is the mayor of Germany's most expensive city. He wants to bring Vogel's manifesto to life. The price of a square meter of building land in Munich has risen by 39,390% since 1950. That's "profit without benefits" and always same story: "A few landowners get rich because the municipality creates infrastructure, roads or subways. So the value of the surrounding land goes up, which directly affects rents." As Reiter says, today, 80% of the costs of a new building are already incurred by the purchase of the building site. This is madness. Without a fundamental change in land law, new buildings can no longer be financed for normal income earners in the city. Land is not a commodity which can be traded. A society that wants to avoid social unrest cannot want price rises just for the sake of a hands-off approach. The land belongs in municipal hands and should then be lent for building projects via hereditary building rights. "Then we will have a host of new opportunities due to the businesses closing in the city centre. Then the rent explosion will soon be a fairy tale from market-obsessed times