The city of Munich draws the conclusions from the basic judgment of the Federal Administrative Court on the municipal right of first refusal in conservation statute areas and changes its housing policy. The city council decided on Wednesday to waive the right of first refusal for five apartment buildings and also to re-examine five notices that are not yet final. In future, the city council will only decide on the pre-purchase if at least half of the apartments in a house are vacant or the building is in dire need of renovation.
The tenants of the five houses, for which the city waived the pre-sale on Wednesday, are left behind. These are the properties Milchstrasse 1, Balanstrasse 31 (both Haidhausen), Gabelsbergerstrasse 77 (Maxvorstadt), Griegstrasse 51/53 (Milbertshofen) and Ohlstadter Strasse 6a (Untersendling). But the judgment of the Leipzig judges also has an impact on five cases in which the city has already entered into the purchase contracts, but in which the decisions are not yet final because the period of action is still running. For two of these properties – Westendstrasse 5 (Schwanthalerhöhe) and Georgenschwaigstrasse 26 (Milbertshofen) – the city council should have revoked the exercise notices on Wednesday at the suggestion of the municipal department. The administration had signaled that nothing could be done after the Leipzig judgment: no prospects of success in the ongoing legal proceedings, in the worst case, claims for damages. But the city council postponed the decision in a closed session until January.
The administration wants to take a closer look at the other three cases anyway, because they have “peculiarities”. In addition to the property at Ligsalzstrasse 35 (Schwanthalerhöhe) and Frankfurter Ring 18a (Milbertshofen), this includes the listed building at Agnesstrasse 48 (Schwabing-West). The case hit the headlines several times: The 15 apartments have been vacant for about two years, and the tenants have been driven out step by step. When a Grünwald investor wanted to sell the house to a Starnberg investor for 35 million euros, 54 percent above the officially determined value, the city withdrew its right of first refusal at the end of September – albeit at a price of only 22.7 million euros, i.e. the market value that the municipal valuation office has determined for the property.
“Do we really want only wealthy people to live in the city centers?”
The decision of the Federal Administrative Court met with incomprehension and horror among local politicians from the left to the CSU, as the debate on Wednesday showed. “We just have to adhere to the law,” said Kathrin Abele (SPD), shaking her head. The tenant protection has been massively undermined. Stefan Jagel (Die Linke) spoke of a “bitter judgment”, Sibylle Stöhr (Greens) of a “pitch black day for the tenants”. The right of first refusal practice, as exercised by the city of Munich, is thus “buried for the time being”, and the result is foreseeable. “Do we really want only wealthy people to live in the city centers?” Asked Stöhr.
The vast majority absolutely wants to prevent the city council from finding out anything about house sales in conservation statute areas in the future. “We want to know what is happening in our city,” said Abele. Because at first the municipal department no longer wanted to submit the cases to the city council in which it cannot intervene, i.e. all objects that are more than half let and are in good condition. But an amendment from Green-Red and the left was approved by a large majority. Thereafter, the city council will continue to be informed as far as possible of the key data on all sales, i.e. on the location, purchase price, number of apartments, land and living space as well as buyers. The parliamentary group of the FDP and the Bavarian Party voted against and against all other resolutions.
In principle, the verdict from Leipzig should be revised politically, if the Munich city council has its way. Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) was commissioned by the majority to campaign in Berlin for paragraph 26 of the Federal Building Act to be changed and that as soon as possible. Munich’s CSU boss Georg Eisenreich demands that “the federal government should change the legal situation so that municipalities can exercise pre-emptive rights as before”. The Leipzig judges themselves had opened the door to this way out: It was up to the legislature to revise the wording of the relevant legal text – “against the background of new developments and urgent problems on the housing market”.
Whether that actually happens depends on the FDP, which co-governs in Berlin – and is extremely skeptical of the right of first refusal. Your representative in the city council, Jörg Hoffmann, has already announced that he will “urgently ask” his party friends not to “change anything in the current legal situation”.