No slackening despite the pandemic: The two Wiesbaden municipal housing companies GWW and GeWeGe handed over 270 ready-to-move apartments in the city to the new tenants and owners last year.

Social housing construction accounted for 40 percent of this.

The two companies, which have been under one management since 2008, are already meeting a requirement that the left alliance of the Greens, SPD, Left Party and Volt only decided in May for the future: Accordingly, the requirement of "at least 40 percent" applies to housing associations with a majority stake in the city “Subsidized housing.

Oliver Bock

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis and for Wiesbaden.

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In addition, 263 of the total of almost 13 150 apartments were completely modernized.

According to managing director Thomas Keller, GWW wants to maintain the above-average renovation rate of two percent of the housing stock over the next few years.

According to Keller, almost 4,900 apartments have been renovated since 2000, which is also a noticeable contribution to climate protection.

However, societies still have a long way to go before they become climate neutral.

Climate protection should not, however, become a “luxury good”.

However, it would not be possible to achieve the climate protection targets without financial support from the federal government.

In the foreseeable future, Wiesbaden will continue with new buildings in addition to building renovations.

“We have once again increased our investments significantly,” says Keller, referring to a record sum of 227 million euros.

With this money, no fewer than 776 apartments are to be completed by spring 2023.

242 of them are already under construction.

More than 40 percent of these apartments are being built for households with low and middle incomes.

Condominiums are becoming less important for GWW

The chairman of the GWW supervisory board and social affairs officer, Christoph Manjura (SPD), is particularly pleased. He points out that in a city in which there are more and more single households, the GWW also creates space for communal housing projects such as Kastel-Housing. There is a share of apartments that are rented out particularly cheaply. Overall, when presenting the balance sheet, Manjura mentioned a level of cold rents for new buildings between EUR 6.80 and EUR 8.50. As reported, there has been a rent cap in Wiesbaden since 2020 that limits the annual rent increases for most apartments (basic rent higher than 6.50 euros per square meter) to 1.66 percent (five percent in three years).

Condominiums only account for seven percent of the projected new building volume.

Manjura and Keller assume that the lucrative property development business, i.e. the construction and sale of condominiums, will continue to lose importance for GWW in the near future.

On the other hand, the stock of rental apartments will grow in the foreseeable future.

This will also have financial consequences for the housing companies: "If less is sold, the annual surplus and our core capital ratio will decrease," said Keller.

Both companies are in good financial shape

However, GWW and GeWeGe are still in good shape.

Together they show a balance sheet volume of 910 million euros and an annual surplus of 9.1 million euros in the 2020 financial year.

That is above plan, but at GWW significantly below the value of the previous year.

With equity ratios of 19.6 percent (GWW) and 17.5 percent (GeWeGe), however, Keller sees the companies at a stable level.

From the annual surplus, 1.5 million euros will be distributed to the municipal holding company WVV, which will cushion the deficits of other municipal companies such as Eswe Verkehr.

According to the aforementioned resolution of the city council, the GWW is to be allowed to use this sum of 1.5 million euros for housing construction and refurbishment itself.

The final decision on this will only be made with the deliberations for the double budget 2022/23.

The housing associations are concerned about the foreseeable shortage of building land, which will make new construction projects more difficult in the future. That is why Keller never tires of urging Wiesbaden politicians to do their homework at every suitable opportunity. The “pipeline is still well filled”, but in view of the long planning and approval periods for building land, there are signs of a shortage of larger development areas. So that the bottleneck on the housing market does not worsen further, countermeasures must be taken. The designation of building land is "the order of the day".