Meet the Berlin Hosts: Berta’s Story

We have always believed the best way to understand the positive impacts of home sharing in Berlin and around the world is by hosts sharing their stories. We want everyone to get to know Berliners who share their homes, to hear their stories and to understand how home sharing benefits Berlin. The current law concerning home sharing is too broad, confusing and is badly flawed.

Meet Berta

Berta is a lifelong Berliner who shares the guest room in her apartment in Berlin Neukölln. For two years this has been her way of “bringing life into her home”. For Berta, home sharing means opening both your own home and your daily life to a guest and allowing them to become part of it all.

In the cosmopolitan city of Berlin, hosts are faced with complex, confusing and disproportionate rules and regulations. Berta wants the situation to improve for home sharers and for Berlin to introduce clear and simple home sharing rules that distinguish between home sharing and commercial operators.

Learn more about Berta and her wishes for local politics:

When Berta started hosting, she had a list of recommendations prepared for her guests, which she later turned into BertaBerlin, a Berlin pocket guide. Berta’s first Airbnb guest played a key role; Audrey was the editor of the English content. Today, Audrey has moved to Berlin and they are close friends and also neighbors.

Together with the home sharing community in Berlin, and across Germany, we can secure clear, fair and proportionate rules for home sharing in Berlin.