The Berlin Senate froze rents for roughly 1.5 million apartments in February 2020, capping them at 2019 levels and threatening landlords with fines up to 500,000 euros for charging more. Politicians sold this as relief for working Berliners getting priced out of their neighborhoods. What actually happened: developers stopped building. Why pour capital into a city where bureaucrats set your return? New listings on the market dropped by nearly half while listings in Brandenburg, just outside Berlin's jurisdiction, surged. Landlords quietly shifted units to the unregulated short-term market. Supply tightened further. The Federal Constitutional Court killed the law in April 2021, ruling Berlin lacked jurisdiction over rental law. Rents jumped immediately as landlords collected back-payments they had legally reserved the right to claim all along. Tenants who thought they were protected suddenly faced bills they could not afford. The Berlin Senate manufactured a crisis inside the crisis it was supposedly fixing. Price controls reduce housing supply, not housing costs. Every euro of rent a landlord cannot legally charge is an investment signal that dies before a single foundation gets poured. You end up with fewer apartments, not cheaper ones, and eventually the law collapses anyway and you absorb the full price shock at once. These people never learn.