Housing construction in Germany reached its highest level since 2001 in the corona crisis year 2020.
The number of completed apartments increased by 4.6 percent to 306,376 units, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Thursday in Wiesbaden.
The increase that began in 2011 has thus continued.
The last time there was a higher number of completed apartments was in 2001 (326,187).
Housing construction in Germany also boomed during the Corona crisis.
However, completions remained below the federal government's target of 375,000 new apartments per year. The black-red coalition has made 1.5 million new apartments in the current term of office. In order to meet the great demand for real estate and to combat the housing shortage in the cities, according to estimates by politicians and the construction industry, 350,000 to 400,000 apartments have to be completed every year.
The federal chairman of the industrial union building-agrar-environment, (IG BAU) Robert Feiger described the housing construction offensive of the federal government as failed. "The new federal government will have to start in the autumn where this federal government abandoned its housing policy: By 2025, 1.5 million new apartments must be built in Germany - above all social housing and affordable apartments." Nationwide, 12.7 million households are one Apartment in the lower or middle price segment. Feiger called for a “social housing” master plan.
Multi-family houses accounted for 153,377 completed apartments in the past year, an increase of 7.2 percent compared to the previous year.
The number of newly built single-family houses rose by 4.1 percent to 87,275 buildings.
Two-family houses grew by 6.0 percent to 20,472 completions.
The fact that no more buildings were built last year was primarily due to the high number of 779,432 approved but unfinished apartments, for example because craftsmen and construction companies are overburdened in the real estate boom.
This “construction overhang” has been growing for years.