In order to relieve the real estate market, the state housing company should build 10,000 apartments by 2025. But that’s a long way off at the moment: Because the need is great – and because more solutions are needed instead of announcements.
In the distant year of 2018, there was a moment when rent-plagued city dwellers seemed to be able to breathe a sigh of relief. Prime Minister Markus Söder announced big things. In order to relieve the housing market, which is particularly tight in conurbations, a state housing company called Bayernheim will be founded – and with it 10,000 new apartments will be created by 2025.
Which brings us to 2022, which on the one hand feels very different than 2018, but on the other hand offers consistency in one thing: Apartments are still scarce and expensive and the planned 10,000 are mainly theoretical. According to the Supreme Audit Office, Bayernheim only had 848 of them in its portfolio at the turn of the year. And that’s only because they were bought, not built additionally, as one might have guessed from the announcement at the time. Even Bayernheim itself is expected to miss its target: in an interview with a real estate magazine, its boss asked the private sector for help.
So what remains of the beautiful plans? Sobering for the moment. Perhaps their basic problem is that in the end even success could bring too little relief. Because, among other things, the prospect of jobs makes Bavaria an immigration country. In 2020 alone, a year marked by Corona, 33,238 more people moved here than left. Before the pandemic, there were even around 58,000. They all want to live somewhere, preferably affordable. 10,000 apartments are not nothing, but also not enough.
What also remains is the long list of problems that make building as expensive as it is tedious. Complex regulations, scarce land, real estate as an object of speculation, a lack of skilled workers and raw materials – the state government cannot solve all of this on its own. Nevertheless, she has to be rightly asked what she did about it. Of course there were a few ideas, so the building code was reformed; but the big hit was obviously not there. Instead, Söder preferred to rotate happily through the Ministry of Construction, where Christian Bernreiter is now the fourth minister since 2018. In order for people in Bavaria to actually be able to catch their breath, urgent announcements are needed that go beyond the status of theory.