In view of the war in Ukraine and the corona pandemic, industry associations are warning of a slump in housing construction in Germany in the coming year.

A lack of materials and a rapid increase in costs made the costs of new construction projects unpredictable - both for the contracting housing companies and for many construction companies and craftsmen.

This is the unanimous opinion of the housing and construction industries.

"There will be slumps, and very significant ones at that," says Hans Maier, director of the Association of the Bavarian Housing Industry VDW.

"86 percent of the housing cooperatives and socially oriented housing companies in northern Germany currently assess the prospects for new construction as bad or very bad," says a spokesman for the North German sister association VNW in Hamburg.

In a survey recently published by the Main Association of the German Construction Industry, 90 percent of companies complained about price increases and 80 percent about delivery bottlenecks.

According to this, building material suppliers for many materials currently only quote daily prices or no prices at all.

Clients and construction companies usually agree on fixed prices in their contracts before construction begins.

If material costs rise as fast as they are now, construction companies run the risk of ending up making losses despite working at full capacity.