Rising rents in German cities have led to an intense debate about the need for tighter rent controls in housing markets. In April 2015, the so-called rental brake was introduced, which imposes upper bounds for rents in new contracts, in order to immediately slow down the increase of rents in...

The paper aims at measuring the rental housing market regulations in Germany between 1913 and 2015. Four classes of housing policy are considered: Rent controls, tenant protection, rationing of housing, and fostering of social housing. Based on a thorough analysis of federal and regional...

This paper empirically analyzes the effects of a second generation rent control. We make use of an uncommon policy intervention in the German housing market and translate the generated variation into a difference-and-differences setup, augmented with elements of a discontinuity design, to...

Since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, the presence of institutional investors in housing markets has steadily increased over time. Real estate funds (REIFs) and other housing investment rms leverage large-scale buy-to-rent investments in real estate assets that enable them to set...