Berlin The possible new federal government has set an initial target in building and housing policy: 400,000 new apartments per year. “That means just under 1100 newly built, ready-to-move-in apartments every day from Monday to Sunday – 46 an hour, three apartments every four minutes,” calculates the federal chairman of the Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt (IG Bau) industrial union, Robert Feiger. “It’s a round-the-clock task. And that requires full strength, full political commitment and full weight at the cabinet table. “
Feiger is not the only one who advocates an independent Ministry of Construction and Infrastructure. Living and building should be a “top priority”, demanded the housing industry at their annual meeting on Tuesday. This is the only way to ensure affordable, climate-friendly and sustainable living for all people in the country.
There is also support from science: the topic has not been approached with the necessary determination, especially in the past four years, said civil engineer Lamia Messari-Becker, professor at the University of Siegen and former member of the Advisory Council for Environmental Issues, Handelsblatt. This is primarily at the expense of tenants and climate protection.
Priorities of a future traffic light coalition:
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1. Create living space, provide for skilled workers
The need for new apartments is still high in the metropolitan areas. The grand coalition wanted to provide 1.5 million new apartments – 1.2 million were created. After all, with the increasing number of new buildings, it was possible to slow down the rise in rents.
The subject of skilled workers is becoming more and more urgent. “Construction needs people. Above all skilled workers, ”warned IG Bau boss Feiger in September. “In residential construction alone, the industry is pushing an enormous mountain of approved but not yet built apartments: over 780,000 apartments are on the ‘construction waiting list’ – that is how large the current construction overhang is.”
In addition, according to Feiger, the construction industry must prepare for a “strong decade of renovations”. The new federal government will have to do everything possible to create significantly more climate protection renovations.
The senior-friendly renovation of existing apartments is also urgent. Much more senior citizens’ apartments will be needed in the future than they are today, says the IG Bau boss. The baby boomer generation is about to retire.
2. Reduce CO2 emissions
Germany wants to be climate neutral by 2045. The building sector accounts for a third of energy consumption and is very important. In order to get even close to climate neutrality in existing buildings, enormous efforts are required, for example when replacing old oil or gas heating systems, insulating the building envelope or replacing the windows.
It has long been clear that the urge for ever higher energy requirements in building and renovation does not bring the desired success. Billions of euros have flowed into the energetic renovation of buildings.
The umbrella association of the housing industry, GdW, regularly calls for a paradigm shift: away from increasingly expensive energy-related renovations and more and more insulation, towards decentralized, low-CO2 energy generation and better building technology.
3. Reduce building regulations, accelerate planning and approval processes
Germany is a country with slow planning and approval processes and excessive building regulations. The need to build in a way that is far more resource-efficient and sustainable in future is almost a dilemma – because the industry does not need new regulations.
It is therefore important to use smart policies to lead the construction industry towards a circular economy that is based, for example, on more domestic building materials such as sand, gypsum and wood and uses recycled material in components.
4. Provide cheap building land faster
There can be no cheap living space on too little and too expensive building land. One of the demands of the housing industry is therefore directed at the municipalities, which would have to provide more affordable building land, but would also have to enable much more and faster roof extensions and redensification.
5. Make small and medium-sized towns more attractive
The housing market situation is very different from region to region. High-growth regions with housing shortages contrast with rural or structurally weak regions in which rents and prices are stagnating or falling due to a decline in population and vacancies.
70 percent of Germans live in small and medium-sized towns. For a long time, more speed has been demanded here in the expansion of the digital, transport and social infrastructure so that fewer people are forced into the metropolitan areas.
6. Ensure stable framework conditions
The companies in the sector are facing huge investments which, the housing industry warns, they could not undertake on their own. Mainly because many tenants are unable to refinance their investments by paying a higher rent. “If housing is the social issue of our time, then it is the state’s task on the one hand to make the necessary investments possible and at the same time to ensure financial compensation for people who cannot afford the costs incurred on their own”, said GdW President Axel Gedaschko. The social housing subsidy must be increased to five billion euros and co-financed by the federal states.
On the list of unfinished business is the question of whether landlords receive a share of the CO2 price for the provision of heat. So far, the tenant has borne the additional costs that have been incurred since the beginning of the year.
7. Make more property
There are around 42 million apartments in Germany. With a share of 53.5 percent, rental apartments are in the majority nationwide. A survey by the opinion research institute Forsa for the Immobilienverband Deutschland (IVD) recently showed that almost three quarters of all tenants in Germany would like to live in their own property regardless of their party preferences.
But economists see the grand coalition’s handling of property formation as disappointing. “The Union and the SPD have limited themselves to introducing the Baukindergeld and slightly improving the housing premium,” said Michael Voigtländer, real estate economist at the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW).
According to Voigtländer, the grand coalition did not get any support in the form of state-guaranteed surety loans to give more people access to home ownership, nor did the coalition look for solutions to relieve people of real estate transfer tax.
Worries about further regulations
There are great fears that the traffic lights could lead to further regulations. The susceptibility to this is particularly high among the SPD and the Greens. On Tuesday, the German Tenants’ Association (DMB) again called for a “nationwide rent freeze” to be anchored in the coalition agreement. The rent burden in German cities is too high, said DMB President Lukas Siebenkotten. Almost half of all tenants paid more than 30 percent of their household income for their warm rent and were thus financially overloaded.
More: Final spurt of the coalition negotiations – talks are going “very, very well”