At the beginning of the year, the CDU member of the Bundestag, Christina Stumpp, was looking for an apartment in Berlin.

She posted on the intranet of the Bundestag that she could be given tips.

The apartment should be in the government district, at least not more than four kilometers away from the Reichstag.

60 square meters or more, gross rent not exceeding 800 euros.

The Business Insider portal entered their wishes into a common apartment search engine.

There was only one offer that came close to meeting the requirements: 750 euros basic rent, one room.

However, it was only 14 square meters.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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For a long time, Berlin was also attractive because you could live and live there cheaply.

The old apartment with wooden floorboards at a ridiculous price was the epitome of being in a city that had nothing in common with Hamburg, Munich or Frankfurt am Main, where only the rich could live in the better districts.

These advantages of Berlin still apply to going out in pubs and restaurants, but no longer to renting.

The Berlin housing market is more competitive than almost any other in the republic.

The average rent per square meter has risen from around seven euros to just under eleven in ten years. Today, new rentals often cost 14 or even 18 euros per square meter.

The price for a condominium, which cost an average of 1700 euros per square meter in 2012, has more than tripled.

Affordable living space is now difficult to find for average earners, and even run-down shacks are being sold.

Reasonably cheap apartments are so rare that within a few hours six, eight hundred or more inquiries are received on internet platforms such as Immoscout24.

Due to this rush, the providers switch off the offer after a short time.

Housing is the top issue

Some people are looking for a house of their own right away.

But homeowners also have a hard time in Berlin, because they usually can't get away with less than one million.

Those who struck 15 or 20 years ago were lucky, their property and house are often worth three times as much today.

The part of Berlin-Mitte where CDU Ms. Stumpp looked for her apartment is now the most expensive place in the republic after Hamburg Hafenstadt.

No wonder that housing is the top issue in Berlin politics - ahead of the ineffective administration, the problems in the schools or crime.

In the Berlin election campaign last year, housing was the main argument.

The debate was fueled by a successful referendum.

He calls for the large real estate companies in Berlin to be expropriated.

Franziska Giffey, the new governing mayor of the capital, has made housing a top priority.

She wants to tackle the problem with a new building program.

20,000 new homes are to be built every year, and 200,000 are to be built by 2030.

Such numbers were last managed in the 1990s.

For this project, Giffey launched an “Alliance for New Residential Construction and Affordable Housing”.

The idea came from Hamburg, where today's Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz implemented it.

Supported by politics, private and municipal housing companies and cooperatives in the Hanseatic city are pulling together.

Every year 10,000 new apartments are built there, one third each for owner-occupied, normal rented and social housing.

Few move

Giffey's unwieldy name for the alliance shows that the new building will be difficult.

Good money is still being made with real estate in Berlin, especially with expensive commercial and office buildings.

What is missing are apartments for the lower and middle classes.

In Germany's largest city, which has 3.7 million inhabitants, there are almost two million apartments.

Not just a little.

The special feature: Of these two million, 1.7 million belong to the so-called old stock, in which the rental prices are still moderate in a nationwide comparison.