Living: More and more prefabricated houses are being built in Germany

More and more people in Germany are fulfilling their dream of owning a prefabricated house.

Last year, almost every fourth building permit for single and two-family houses was for a building prefabricated in the factory. At 23.1 percent, the proportion of prefabricated houses in building permits in 2021 was higher than ever before, according to the Federal Association of German Prefabricated Construction (BDF), citing figures from the Federal Statistical Office.

According to the information, a good 110,000 single and two-family houses were approved by the building authorities across Germany last year. Of these, almost 25,500 houses were to be built using prefabricated timber construction. This corresponds to an increase of 8.1 percent compared to the previous year. In contrast, the overall market for single and two-family houses grew by only 3.8 percent. The number of annual building permits for prefabricated houses has doubled since 2007. The market as a whole grew by a good quarter during the period.

There is a clear south-north gradient in the popularity of prefabricated houses. In Baden-Württemberg, 39.4 percent of building permits are now for prefabricated houses, in Hesse their share is at least 37 percent and in Bavaria 26.1 percent. In Schleswig-Holstein, prefabricated houses have a market share of 16.8 percent, in North Rhine-Westphalia it is 16.3 percent and in Lower Saxony it is only 8.8 percent. Eastern Germany is in the middle. In Thuringia, 26.9 percent of the building permits were for prefabricated houses, in Brandenburg 22.9 percent and in Saxony 22.3 percent. The outlier is Saxony-Anhalt with 11.8 percent.