A residential building in Berlin (symbol photo) Photo: Christian Lohse
From Hildburg Bruns
For many Berliners, a home at Degewo, Howoge, WBM & Co. is as coveted as winning the lottery. There are 356,790 city apartments in Berlin. Of these, 8 percent were built in the past decade.
There are currently 4,207 apartments under construction on 33 sites, and the six state-owned companies want to complete 2,100 in the current year.
But what’s next in view of the 100,000 missing apartments?
► Construction starts: For 29,135 city apartments in the period 2022-26. After 8084 apartments in the current year, there are only 3903 in 2024 and only 4638 in 2025.
► Builders: One third builds the Howoge (9731). Gewobag is also strong with 8,264 new-build apartments. City and country creates only 1505, the WBM 2480, the Degewo 3663, Gesobau 3493.
► Social housing: In 2022, municipal companies allocated 2,822 of 5,969 finished apartments for social rent.
► Completions: 27,798 apartments should be ready for occupancy by the upcoming elections in 2026 – in the last legislative period (2017-21) there were 20,077.
► Boom districts: In the next ten years, Lichtenberg (+10,843), Pankow (8881), Marzahn-Hellersdorf (7182) and Treptow-Köpenick (7115) will grow in particular. And all of Berlin by 51,330 apartments.
One thing is clear: In order to create the targeted 20,000 new apartments per year, private companies and cooperatives will have to dig a lot.