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. 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. And it will drive up rents.
And that is exactly the opposite of what we want.” 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. 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.
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