Much may have stood still in the first year of the pandemic, but not the construction sites.

At least ongoing projects were continued and completed - but the clients are reluctant to act when it comes to new projects.

Last year, 4,349 apartments were completed - that is twenty percent more than in 2019 and the second highest value in the last forty years.

But the number of building permits for new projects fell sharply: In 2020, the building inspectorate approved the construction of 4,228 apartments - 1,600 fewer than in the previous year, and the worst figure in eight years.

Rainer Schulze

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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    The corona effect becomes even clearer when looking at the approved construction costs: At 873 million euros, it is the lowest value in more than two decades.

    For comparison: In good years, even 1.5 billion euros in construction costs are applied for in Frankfurt.

    This is also due to the fact that otherwise investment-friendly sectors such as the airport and the construction of office properties do not contribute to the construction activity in the usual framework during the crisis.

    Housing construction remains the strongest category at 330 million euros.

    Looking back on good years is no consolation for the slump

    "In total, almost 29,000 new apartments have been approved in the last five years," said planning department head Mike Josef (SPD), who presented the balance sheet to the building supervision together with their manager Simone Zapke.

    But looking back on good years cannot make up for the slump.

    Josef spoke of an exceptionally difficult year: "Corona has hit." In a nationwide comparison, Frankfurt got off lightly.

    So-called conversions account for a large proportion of the building permits for apartments: the conversion and demolition of office buildings in favor of apartments made it possible to approve 1,147 units - around twenty percent more than the ten-year average.

    The expansion or the addition of roofs resulted in 314 apartments, almost as many as in 2019.

    325 illegally converted apartments were also regained for the housing market. Most of them were rented out as so-called residential apartments - as in the hotel industry, only on a daily or weekly basis. The development is also reflected in the fines: at more than two million euros, they were at a high in 2020. The construction of micro-apartments remains at a low level: 187 such small apartments were approved in 2020, which is similar to the previous year - in 2018, however, there were still more than 900.

    Because many owners were expecting a so-called conversion ban to be issued, they applied for a certificate of completion from the building inspectorate last year.

    Their number has doubled by leaps and bounds to 4933 cases.

    However, less than a quarter was actually realized under land registry law.

    Advances in digitization

    As Zapke explained, in many cases there is a requirement for approval, for example if the apartment is sold to the tenant.

    Owners may also use this as a loophole to convert rental apartments into condominiums: In 2020, the conversion of 378 apartments was approved in the milieu protection areas.

    Anyone who submitted a building application in 2020 had to be patient for an average of 62 days. This means that the processing time, which was 69 days in 2019, has almost fallen back to the 2013 level. There has been progress in digitization: it should be possible to submit a building application online next year.