In July, significantly fewer housing permits were granted in Germany than in the same month last year. The industry is complaining about a regression to the level of 2012 – and the lack of growth impulses.
The decline in building permits in Germany has continued at the start of the second half of the year. In July, 17,000 new apartments were approved, 19.2 percent fewer than in the same month last year, according to the Federal Statistical Office. The decrease was even slightly greater than in June (19 percent). “After 27 months of uninterrupted decline – the last 22 months of which saw double-digit declines – we have now reached the approval level of February 2012,” said Tim Oliver Müller, General Manager of the German Construction Industry Association. There is no sign of a turnaround in the trend.
The federal government had wanted to make 400,000 new homes possible each year – but in the first seven months of this year, statisticians only registered 123,600 building permits, 20.8 percent fewer than in the same period last year. The decline was most pronounced in single-family homes: there were 22,100 building permits from January to July, 28.4 percent fewer than in the first seven months of last year. Müller spoke of a “pincer grip of high interest rates and high construction costs” that is causing housing construction to fall by the wayside.
But building permits also fell for other building categories – for two-family houses in the first seven months by 14.7 percent to 7,600 permits and for multi-family houses in the same period by as much as 21.6 percent to 65,600 apartments. The real estate industry is urging action: “We now need speed, speed, speed: quick political decisions, accelerated planning plus approval and rapid construction of extra apartments so that more people have a chance of having an affordable home again,” said the president of the Central Real Estate Committee, the leading association of the industry, Iris Schöberl.
Source: Stern
