BERLIN’S left-wing municipal government has given the city’s tenants a five-year rent freeze, starting today.

The move affects 1.5 million households in the German capital and the majority of its residents. Renting is more common than home ownership throughout Germany.

Berlin is the first German city to intervene so directly in the housing market as it seeks to address concerns about soaring costs.

“It is correct that Berlin should try to stop the spiralling rental costs,” said German Tenants Association Ulrich Ropertz. “The federal legislature has missed the opportunity to pass effective measures in recent years.”

The freeze will keep rents at current levels for all flats built before 2014. It was announced by Social Democrat Mayor Michael Mueller, who heads a coalition authority alongside the Greens and Die Linke, last autumn. But it is opposed by Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats — who are the opposition in Berlin — and is subject to challenges in court, with some advising tenants to hang onto any savings in case the freeze is declared unlawful.

Berlin’s Christian Democrats declared yesterday that “the freeze does not help anybody if, in the end, saved rent has to possibly be paid back,” skirting over the fact that their own resistance to the policy increases that threat.

The policy has been held up as an example to other expensive cities where people find it increasingly difficult to afford to live near their places of work, including London. But construction firms say it is bad for business and landlords that they have no incentive to carry out improvements to properties if they cannot then raise rent.