The political debate over the socialisation of large housing companies in Berlin is ostensibly conducted as a tenant protection measure. In the assessment of Munich lawyer Dr Christoph Brandenburg, founder of Brandenburg.Legal, a law firm specialising in public construction and planning law, this classification falls short, however. The demands are fundamentally aimed at a structural transformation of private-sector ownership relations in the housing sector.
Constitutional background and historical context
Article 15 of the Basic Law serves as the constitutional foundation, enabling the transfer of land, natural resources and means of production into public ownership or other forms of collective economy. This provision dates back to a period in which the economic system of the Federal Republic of Germany was still openly debated; for instance, the CDU called for the socialisation of major industrial sectors in its 1947 Ahlen Programme. As early as 1954, the Federal Constitutional Court clarified that the Basic Law does not prescribe any specific economic order. Nevertheless, Article 15 has never been applied in practice since the constitution came into force in 1949.
In his analysis, Brandenburg emphasises that Article 15 of the Basic Law is not merely a tightening of traditional expropriation, but enables the reorganisation of entire sectors of the economy. An examination of political proposals reveals clear parallels between current demands and earlier programmatic writings. For instance, position papers by the Interventionist Left from 2012 and 2018 envisaged systematically reducing the earning capacity of private housing stock through regulatory and tax interventions, thereby facilitating municipal acquisition on the back of falling property values.
Parallels in the election manifesto and proposed regulations
According to Brandenburg's analysis, similar approaches can be found in the Berlin Left Party's election manifesto for the House of Representatives election on 20 September 2026. This calls for a socialisation law intended to mark a deliberate break with private-sector commercial logic. The manifesto also outlines specific measures to restrict private-sector structures:
- —Complete abolition of the modernisation levy
- —Increase in property transfer tax from six to eight per cent
- —Regulatory restrictions on share deals
- —Reintroduction of a municipal right of pre-emption at reduced, public-welfare-oriented purchase prices, alongside the decriminalisation of squatting
The lawyer, who after two decades of legal practice spent around ten years as managing director of a project development company managing Berlin housing portfolios, highlights the significance of these signals for the real estate industry. Investment decisions in residential construction span decades. Political framework conditions that deliberately target the profitability of existing portfolios have a lasting effect on valuations and planning certainty for market participants.
The economic repercussions of such interventions were already seen with the Berlin rent cap, which was declared void by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2021 due to the federal state's lack of legislative competence. From Brandenburg's perspective, an objective and transparent debate is therefore required. What is at stake is not merely the capping of rent levels, but the fundamental question concerning the future role of private property in the provision of housing.
