[HackerNewt-doms]

There is a scheme that is sometimes used by landlords in Germany in which an apartment is only rented out if the tenant agrees, before the rental contract is signed, to buy a fully fitted kitchen that is already installed — and usually at a price that is far from cheap. Otherwise, the prospective tenant does not get the lease. Given the current shortage of affordable housing in Germany, this puts the prospective tenant under considerable pressure to buy the kitchen from the landlord.

The landlord is fully aware that when the tenant eventually moves out, the landlord can require the tenant to take the kitchen with them — after all, it is the tenant’s property, not the landlord’s. The landlord can therefore demand that the outgoing tenant removes the kitchen. This again puts the tenant under pressure, because fully fitted kitchens very rarely fit into a new apartment.

At that point, the landlord can make an offer to buy the kitchen back from the departing tenant so that it can remain in place — but the purchase price is then only a fraction of what the tenant originally had to pay the landlord when moving in. In this way, the landlord can indirectly force one tenant after another to buy the kitchen and later sell it back.