The representative of the new project development company Sendlinger Loch, a man in a sailor shirt, promises nothing less than “a revolutionary solution” on the small stage in front of the gigantic hole in the ground that is as wide as a block of flats.
For years, there has been a 15 meter deep hole in Sendling in the south of Munich where a residential building should have been for a long time. From above it looks like a giant has put out his cigarette. The plans of the M-Concept company, which owns the property at Alramstraße 14, can be read on a board: “Light-flooded 1 to 5 room condominiums”. What is not included: Around 18,000 euros per square meter purchase price.
The man in the sailor shirt – Christian Stupka, whom you meet in Munich at almost every fight against real estate speculation – and his fellow campaigners have now put up a second banner with slightly different numbers: 8.49 euros per square meter rent.
How about, they ask, because one may still ask, if one creates affordable living space instead of the luxury apartments that have been announced here for years? “We don’t need any Schufa information from you, just the seahorse,” says Stupka, who is involved with the Munich initiative for social land law, among other things. The pump, which often keeps the hole from filling up here day and night, you can simply turn off, let in a city pool, put a few houseboats on the water and swim towards utopia on air mattresses.
On this not-so-serious evening, with accordion and swimming rings, there are quite serious questions: Who owns the city? Who is building where? And for whom?
A pump keeps the hole in the construction site in Alramstraße from filling up.
(Photo: Lorenz Mehrlich)
Matthias Weinzierl, one of the initiators, says: “This hole shows how much the real estate market in Munich has gotten out of hand.” That’s why you have to sit down with the city, the troupe thinks, the Sendlinger district committee has already submitted an application for the city to buy the property.
SPD chairman Markus Lutz says that there is agreement across all parties that they do not want luxury apartments, and the sentence also echoes from the audience: they should build them in Bogenhausen, but please not in Sendling. A district with many cooperative apartments and a few Hugo glasses, where you live close to the wholesale market and far from Maximilianstrasse. A luxurious new building that looks like it has been transplanted from Manhattan to Munich, and originally planned with a concierge service, does not go down well here.
And so you could already guess on Google Maps that something was amiss since the Sendlinger Loch was listed there as a tourist attraction: “Fantastic hole! Friends of the oversized excavation will get their money’s worth here” – “Only a few places in Munich offer nor this flair of lack of prospects, dying hope and paralyzing despair.”
The value of the property skyrocketed
You have to know where there is a hole today, the whole district used to meet. In the now demolished supermarket, also at the fruit stand next to it, whose owners are still waiting to be allowed to sell again. The speculation began in 2015. At that time, an heir sold the area for 30 million euros to the company Eurytos Wohnbau from Vaterstetten. In April 2017, she obtained a preliminary decision from the city, a preliminary stage to the building permit, for the construction of a new residential building with retail. With this decision, the value of the property, which is about the size of a soccer field, skyrocketed. Eurytos sold it in July 2017 for more than double that, for 73 million euros, to 14 Alramstraße GmbH & Co. KG, a subsidiary of M-Concept based in Grünwald.
M-Concept, one of the larger Munich property developers for luxury apartments, planned around 130 condominiums with a supermarket and daycare center. “In 2020, assuming that the final building permit would be granted in the short term, we decided to start excavating the excavation pit,” says Stefan Mayr, founder and boss of M-Concept. “We wanted to buy time because we knew that once the demolition started, it would take 18 months just to dig the hole. It sounds crazy, but it really does take that long.”
According to him, the work went according to plan. The excavation pit has been finished since February 2022, fifteen meters deep for the three basement levels, a supermarket and two levels of underground parking. The excavation cost “an almost double-digit million sum”, says Mayr, which is about ten percent of the total construction costs.
In the spring of 2022, the building permit was issued, with which M-Concept wanted to get started, and sales began in July. However, the real estate market collapsed shortly thereafter, mainly because interest rates skyrocketed after years of cheap credit. “We sold the first apartment in September, but that was it in Munich,” says Stefan Mayr. In May 2023, reservations were only registered for five apartments at the land registry.
Many citizens from the district demonstrated at the Sendlinger Loch.
(Photo: Lorenz Mehrlich)
Mayr says that the advance booking rate is already 15 percent (the supermarket may already have been sold). According to his own statements, he needs a quota of 30 percent. Only then will he get the loan from the bank that he needs to finance the construction. Many other investors are currently struggling with these pre-sale quotas. And if Mayr has his loan and can continue, there will be another construction period, which he estimates at 28 months. “When we can start and when we’ll be finished,” he says, “I can’t say that seriously at the moment.”
Christian Stupka, the captain at the front of the stage, says: “We’re trapped. Given the high level of interest rates, it’s to be expected that nothing will happen here for years.”
Perhaps real estate manager Stefan Mayr will soon have an offer in his mailbox, with kind regards from the Sendlinger Loch project development company: You would like to use the property temporarily. You are also willing to pay 500 euros a month.
Be better than nothing.