According to DIP partner Aengevelt Immobilien, the establishment of a federal housing association currently being prepared by the Federal Ministry of Building does not make an effective contribution to alleviating the overdue housing shortage in the structurally strong cities. The real estate house sees no added value in a new project management company that has to be built up for years, which would be confronted with the same structural problems as thousands of private, state-owned, municipal and cooperative property developers in Germany. Instead, the structural problems of construction and housing in Germany must finally be tackled effectively.
The establishment of a “new federally owned housing company” was called for in the program of the coalition partner SPD for the 2025 federal election in order to relieve the housing market and create housing for federal employees and civil servants. However, the coalition agreement only included that the Federal Institute for Real Estate (BImA) can use its own income to provide housing for federal employees. Nevertheless, after a year of a black-red coalition, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil has now presented a three-page sketch of ideas for the establishment of a “Federal Company for Affordable Housing”, which is to be developed into a concept in the next six months together with Federal Building Minister Verena Hubertz. Because housing construction is currently a matter for the states, however, an amendment to the Basic Law would be necessary for a federal housing company, for which it is hoped that the Left Party’s quorum-creating approval would be achieved.
The exact tasks of the new company have not yet been specified. According to the ideas of the Federal Minister of Finance, the new federal company to be established should mobilize federally owned land in cooperation with the BImA, develop projects in cost-saving serial construction, put them out to public tender and provide private property developers with low-interest loans. To this end, Building Minister Hubertz wants to pass on the favourable financing conditions that the federal government enjoys through its AAA rating to the property developers selected for tenders.
From Aengevelt’s point of view, however, an additional federal construction company would not offer any advantages over the existing constellations of actors. With the BImA, there is already a federal real estate company that has been operating nationwide since 1 January 2005 – i.e. for over 21 years – and can also provide land for residential construction. KfW and the housing development agencies of the federal states also benefit from the favourable rating and, depending on the funding model, grant low-interest loans or grants to builders. In addition, thousands of private, state-owned, municipal and cooperative property developers, housing companies and family offices and institutional investor groups are available to carry out construction projects with decades of market experience, competence and personnel – which a new federal company would first have to build up step by step with all the bureaucratic obstacles. In addition, these property developers, most of whom operate locally / regionally, have established contacts with the municipal planning and approval authorities as well as with the local construction industry. Aengevelt is unable to see the added value of a new federal company, which is mainly to carry out planning tasks from Berlin.
Jan-Marco Luczak, the building policy spokesman for the coalition partner CDU, who has had relevant experience over many legislative periods, is correspondingly skeptical. In his view, “a new state-owned housing association would be confronted with the same structural problems in construction” as the previous builders. Among these structural problems, Aengevelt counts insufficient building land designation by the municipalities, resulting in a lack of availability and a (too) high price level of suitable building plots for affordable housing, high construction costs due to a jumble of regulatory requirements from the federal, state and local governments, as well as overly demanding standards, planning specifications that often fail to meet the necessary mix of uses, which drive up costs and make serial construction more difficult, complex quota requirements of the municipalities, as a result rental income that does not cover costs, sustainably insufficient tax incentives.
The EBZ Business School – also a long-standing DIP partner – assesses the project to found a federal construction company in its “Real Estate Analysis Episode 47” as “a symbolic, visible, action-simulating political project – but not an effective contribution to solving the housing crisis”. And: “Anyone who reacts to this structural crisis by founding a new federal company replaces root cause analysis with organizational romanticism.”
Dr. Wulff Aengevelt, Managing Partner of DIP partner Aengevelt Immobilien: “The main problem of housing construction is that housing policy is not a priority despite the housing shortage that has been incessantly worsening for years: Everything else is more important – climate protection, landscape protection, tree protection, accessibility, parking spaces, playgrounds, whatever. These requirements make construction so expensive that the rental income, which is also capped, is not sufficient to present projects economically. The initiative to found a new federal company is only intended to distract from the real causes and strengthen the state for ideological reasons.”
