ABSTRACT
The situation on the housing market was far from ideal for property owners in the years preceding the First World War. In Berlin, the property market collapsed in 1912 due to extensive credit problems. The Chamber of Commerce in Berlin wrote of the almost cut-throat competition that had suddenly emerged in the city. In 1914, there was certainly no housing shortage in Berlin. Like in many other major German towns, the vacancy rate considerably exceeded the normative housing shortage limit of 3 per cent. The relatively large number of vacant flats undoubtedly had a dampening effect on property owners' terminations. The local property owners' associations in Berlin that had worked for rent rises in 1917 came to make a decisive contribution to the introduction of state rent control. Rent tribunals, which had previously merely played the role of intermediary, through the Tenancy Protection Act immediately gained an implemental function.
