The shock was great, but now there is a little happy ending for homeowners.

KfW will now support everyone who submitted an application for energy-efficient refurbishment of their property just a few days ago.

The Minister of Finance is providing another five billion euros for this.

That has been in question for a while.

Future renovations should also be encouraged.

The focus should then be on older buildings.

Dyrk Scherff

Editor in the “Money & More” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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It is still unclear how many euros there will be and what the conditions are.

Anyone who does not meet them can already benefit from tax discounts or grants from the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) for individual renovation measures that were not affected by the surprising KfW funding freeze a few days ago.

The question for many homeowners, however, is: Is an energy renovation worthwhile for an old house?

Because it can quickly devour tens of thousands of euros.

And if so, what do you renovate first: the heating, the windows, the facade, the roof?

There are many ways to waste a lot of money on too little savings in energy consumption.

Renovations are worthwhile for houses from the 1950s and 1960s

The first step is an analysis of the current energy consumption. That's what energy consultants or consumer advice centers do. They divide the consumption into energy efficiency classes, from the very good A+ for new buildings to the very poor G and H. These two worst classes start from a consumption of more than 200 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. They emitted about as much CO2 as all other classes combined. This includes 40 percent of single and two-family houses, but only 16 percent of multi-family houses. "Energetic refurbishment is almost always worthwhile for properties in classes G and H," says Corinna Kodim, energy expert from the Haus & Grund homeowners' association.

Such classes are mainly found in properties from the 1950s to the 1970s, which are still largely unrenovated.

In western Germany, 44 percent of the buildings are from these years of construction, in eastern Germany only 25 percent.

Here the houses are even older, 43 percent were built before 1948.

However, some of them are even energetically more efficient because they have thicker walls.

In addition, monument protection sometimes restricts the possibilities for renovation here, for example in the case of Wilhelminian style houses.

The first Thermal Insulation Ordinance, which set legal energy requirements for houses for the first time, came into force in 1977.

Many more followed.

Nevertheless, energy saving measures can still be worthwhile here.

“In classes E and F, you should consider a renovation.

If necessary, it can be implemented with subsidies or small increases in housing costs.

In the building classes above, renovation measures are mostly uneconomical,” says Corinna Kodim.

Above means buildings from the 1990s.

"They are properly insulated and have good windows and mostly a condensing boiler for heating."

The costs are then difficult to cover due to the possible energy savings and a higher value of the property, even despite public funding. For rented properties it is also important whether the renovation measures can be refinanced with a higher rent. This is easier to do in sought-after cities than in rural areas, where there are sometimes vacancies. But even if that doesn't pay off, renovations sometimes have to be carried out, because otherwise apartments with a poor standard can no longer be rented at all.

However, if the analysis of the energy consumption has shown that energy-related refurbishment could be worthwhile, then the second step follows: How much money can I spend on it?

After all, there is usually not enough money for all possible measures, because bringing a house completely up to a very high standard devours more than 100,000 euros.

Loan-financed renovation should only be carried out if the loans for buying or building a house have already been paid off, otherwise the monthly credit burden will be too high.

And if a new financing can either be repaid until retirement or the monthly rate can also be paid in retirement with a lower income.