By adding storeys to existing buildings, around 240,000 additional apartments can be created in the Rhine-Main area.

According to the owners' association Haus & Grund, this is the result of a study by the engineer Karsten Tichelmann from TU Darmstadt.

As part of a “Germany study”, Tichelmann regularly examines how new living space can be created without taking land away from nature.

He also takes into account parking garages, office and administration buildings as well as single-storey retail stores.

Rainer Schulze

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Christian Streim, Chairman of Haus & Grund Hessen, finds the figures sobering and encouraging at the same time: "The development shows how inactive the state government has been so far, but also shows a practicable way out of the housing misery." Streim calls on the state and municipalities to to promote such construction measures and to approve them quickly and easily, for example by dispensing with the parking space replacement for loft extensions and additions.

85 percent of the residential buildings are in private hands.

"This means that the group of private homeowners represents great additional potential for the housing market that can be easily leveraged."

"An increase does not require building land"

The increase also makes ecological sense: Tichelmann considers it incompatible with the climate protection goals to develop new building land. According to the author of the study, around 4,200 new apartments have been built in the Rhine-Main area since 2018 by adding storeys to existing buildings for which no new building land had to be sealed. In view of the potential of up to 240,000 apartments, this is a small number, especially since the population of the Rhine-Main area is forecast to increase by up to 300,000 by 2030. “An increase does not require building land or development, because the infrastructure is already in place. It also lowers the energy consumption of the building below, ”says Streim.

Not only individual houses come into question. In Frankfurt, several housing estates have already been increased in recent years and also renovated when the opportunity arises. As Frank Junker, the managing director of the municipal ABG, emphasizes again and again, this does not make sense in every case, as some settlements have already been redeveloped in previous years without making use of the increase. An increase is only worthwhile if the roofs have not recently been re-covered and insulated. Junker estimates that around 2500 apartments could be gained in the entire urban area by adding new floors and adding to ABG settlements.