BERLIN — Berlin’s leftist parties have a radical answer to the capital’s worsening housing crunch: seize the properties of the real estate giants they blame for ruining the city.
That plan has become the most hotly contested issue in an election that takes place Sunday, with a coalition of left-wing parties poised to oust the conservative mayor of Germany’s capital and potentially usher in the first far-left mayor since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“The housing issue is the central social issue facing our city, and I have always said that, if I become mayor, I will pull out all the stops to make Berlin affordable again and lower rents,” said Elif Eralp, the lead candidate for the Left party.
Eralp’s far-left party maintains a narrow lead in polls heading into the vote Sunday in Berlin, just ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which currently holds the mayor’s office. If her Left party is able to eke out a win, it’s likely to lead a coalition of left-wing parties that excludes the conservatives, who have fought such plans.
The Left party, which traces part of its history to East Germany’s communist party, is enjoying a political revival after winning a new wave of support from young voters mobilized by the far right’s rise. For its Berlin campaign, the party has taken inspiration from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, employing his focus on cost-of-living issues as a model.
Once a city known for cheap rents that helped cultivate an international, bohemian culture, affordable housing has become a particularly pressing issue in the German capital in recent years. Fewer than one in six residents of the city own the home they live in, while rents have risen by about 70% over the past decade.
The Left party is running on a plan to expropriate properties from real estate companies that own more than 3,000 apartments. It’s an idea that has widespread support in a city that has historically leaned left.
Nearly 60 percent of voters backed expropriating properties from major real estate companies in a 2021 referendum. The organization that initiated that referendum estimates that the city could forcibly buy as many as 220,000 apartments for up to 60 percent of their market value — amounting to a total of €18 billion. That money, they argue, could be recovered by the city over the course of a century from rental income.
Stefan Evers, the CDU’s lead candidate in Berlin, says fear of a Left party win is already causing harm to the city’s real estate market.
“Many housing companies are steering well clear of Berlin simply because this debate is already taking place today, because there is a political party that may come to power and actually wants to implement this,” he told RTL television. “It will prevent new apartments from being built — apartments that are already in short supply today. And it will drive up rents. And that is exactly the opposite of what we want.”
Leftist ‘paradigm shift’
The Greens in Berlin, polling in fourth place with around 15 percent support, are the only other party to fully support the expropriation plans, and have expressed their ambition to push it through in coalition with the Left party.
“The question is whether, after this election, the right policies will finally be put in place and we can usher in a paradigm shift,” said Katrin Schmidberger, a Green lawmaker sitting in Berlin’s state parliament.
That leaves the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), polling fifth with 12 percent support, as a potential moderating force. The Left party would need both the Greens and SPD to have enough seats to form a government in Berlin. But the SPD’s lead candidate, Steffen Krach, opposes expropriation, favoring other measures to lower rents.
Krach may have somewhat limited scope to hinder the plans following a corruption probe involving accusations he accepted illicit campaign donations while he held an earlier office in Hanover. Krach, who denies any wrongdoing, has lost political capital as a result of the accusations.
Right-wing parties have meanwhile railed against the expropriation plans in Berlin, including the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is polling at an unexpectedly strong 18% — putting it in third place, just a few percentage points behind the Left party.
“With the Left party, above all, what you get is new socialism,” Kristin Brinker, the AfD’s lead candidate in Berlin, told Welt TV. “We know — if we look back — that Berlin has already experienced socialism, and given the state of the real estate market at that time, that’s something many people don’t want.”
Legal hurdles
The AfD has no chance of taking real political power in Berlin, as all other parties have ruled out working with the far right. But a potential left-wing coalition would still need to overcome many hurdles.
Although an expert commission concluded in 2023 that the expropriation proposal is legally feasible, implementing it would be tricky.
Such a move be founded on Article 15 of Germany’s constitution, which allows “land, natural resources, and means of production” to be transferred to “common ownership.” But that provision has never been applied.
If implemented, the expropriation policy would almost certainly be challenged before the constitutional court, with experts arguing the judges could rule either way.
Merz’s government has vowed to prevent the expropriation of real estate companies at the state level by adopting a national law against the practice. But that text hasn’t been drafted and experts are, once again, divided on whether the federal government would have the legal ability to block local efforts.
Despite the obstacles, the Left party, believes it will prevail.
“As for the federal government’s proposal, I’ll say this very clearly: we don’t want any interference … And as a lawyer, I’ll also say clearly that I have very serious doubts about whether that is constitutional,” the party’s lead candidate Eralp told reporters in Berlin earlier this month. “That’s why we stand by our position: We want to expropriate.”
Berlin election campaign centers around radical-left drive to seize properties
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