The decline in building permits continues. In August, the authorities approved the construction or conversion of 28,180 apartments, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Tuesday. That was 9.4 percent less than a year earlier. According to the information, the number from January to August totaled 244,605 - a drop of 3.0 percent compared to the same period last year. According to estimates by the Main Association of the German Construction Industry, high costs and uncertainty are slowing down new residential construction.
The general manager of the construction industry association, Tim-Oliver Müller, demanded that politicians counteract this with appropriate investment incentives that would also meet the high housing construction targets. Regardless of the energy price crisis, the federal government wants to achieve the goal of 400,000 new apartments per year. This should succeed with around 190 measures agreed last week by the construction industry, trade unions, federal states, municipalities and other associations in the “Alliance for Affordable Housing”.
A total of 211,636 apartments were approved for new residential buildings from January to August. That was 3.0 percent or 6622 fewer apartments than in the same period last year. The number of permits for single-family homes fell significantly by 15.8 percent. However, a year earlier the child benefit had increased the number of building permits here. According to the Wiesbaden statisticians, the funding contributed to the fact that in the period from January to March 2021 alone, almost 7,400 more single-family homes were approved than in the first three months of the current year.
In the case of two-family houses, the number of approved apartments fell by 2.8 percent to 21,176 units in the first eight months. In the case of multi-family houses, on the other hand, there was an increase of 5.2 percent to 130,746 apartments.
The number of building permits is an important indicator of the housing shortage in many cities. However, approved apartments are often not built at first because craftsmen and construction companies do not have the capacity. Increased prices for building materials and building land are also slowing down.
Building permits August
