Geywitz on housing construction: the construction target can be reached in 2024 at the earliest

According to the federal government, 400,000 new apartments are to be built every year. Federal Building Minister Geywitz expects that the goal will not be achieved in either 2022 or 2023. But the aim must be to reach this goal from 2024.

Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz believes that the goal set by the federal government of building 400,000 new apartments per year will only be achievable from 2024. “I do not assume that the number of 400,000 apartments can be reached in 2022 and 2023,” she told the “Web.de News” portal. The goal must be “to get to this number in 2024 and 2025 through prefabrication and digitization,” she said.

The politician referred to the deteriorated framework conditions caused by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, which led to rising interest rates and supply bottlenecks. The statistics on the completions in the past year will only be received in May. However, she does not expect that the target of 400,000 apartments will have been reached. According to their assessment, this will not be possible in the current year either. However, the minister intends to stick to this for the future.

As early as 2021, fewer than 300,000 apartments were completed. “We have a structural problem where more billions for housing alone will not help.” The construction industry has been very busy in recent years. According to the construction minister, digitization, more industrial prefabrication and more skilled workers are what are needed.

Demand could continue to rise

The goal of 400,000 apartments “no one just came up with,” it’s based on analyzes by several institutes. According to Geywitz, the demand could probably be even higher in the future due to the immigration of around one million Ukrainians last year.

In view of the increasingly tight housing market, particularly in the big cities, the federal government wants to see 400,000 new homes built in Germany every year. However, there are strong doubts that this goal can be achieved in the foreseeable future. The Federal Association of German housing and real estate companies (GdW) published an assessment a few days ago, according to which only the construction of 200,000 apartments per year is realistic, at least in the medium term.