Real estate: Fewer building permits for apartments in the current year

In Germany, the authorities have so far issued fewer building permits for housing this year than a year earlier, despite an increase in April.

From January up to and including April, the construction or conversion of 123,659 apartments was approved, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Friday. According to calculations by the Wiesbaden authority, that was 1.5 percent less than in the same period last year.

After two months of declining numbers, however, there were more building permits for apartments in April than a year earlier: 31,152 were 5.1 percent more than in April 2021.

In the first four months of the current year, 107,507 apartments were approved for new residential buildings, 1.4 percent fewer than in the same period last year. The number of building permits for single-family homes fell by 22 percent to 27,506. The number of two-family houses also fell – by 1.2 percent to 11,170 units. The statisticians recorded an increase in building permits for apartment buildings with plus 11.6 percent to 66,107.

Craftsmen are also missing

The number of building permits is an important indicator of the housing shortage in many cities. However, apartments that have been approved are often not built at first because craftsmen and construction companies do not have the capacity due to high demand.

Another problem is the shortage of skilled workers. According to the trade union Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt (IG BAU), the number of vacancies in construction in Germany has quadrupled since 2010 to 191,000 most recently. “There is a labor vacuum in almost all companies in the construction industry. Construction workers are desperately wanted », stated Carsten Burckhardt, member of the federal board of the union. Despite rising profits, many construction companies have failed to make working in the industry more attractive in recent years.