- Municipal societies expand housing stock
Six municipal housing companies in Berlin increased their portfolio by 4,846 units to 361,636 apartments in the past year. 4,348 apartments were newly built and 512 were purchased. This is shown in a recently published balance sheet report by the Senate.
The target of 6,500 new municipal apartments per year, formulated by the black-red coalition, was thus missed. This is not surprising, as the overall target of 20,000 new apartments per year has also not been reached so far. In 2023, there were around 16,000, and in the previous year, around 17,300. This also includes new builds by private investors.
The statistics presented now do not include the municipal company Berlinovo, which has a special status and owns a further 30,000 apartments. In total, the city of Berlin has around 400,000 municipal apartments, which corresponds to approximately 23 percent of the total stock of rental apartments in Berlin. The declared goal of the Senate is to increase this number to around 500,000 apartments in the long term, in order to gain more influence on the market and secure affordable rents.
According to the report now adopted, the six municipal housing companies mentioned started 125 construction projects with 14,009 new apartments between the beginning of 2021 and the end of last year. In the current year, construction has started or is planned to start on 28 projects with a further 5,100 apartments.
For the period from 2022 to 2026, the companies expect an increase of 25,516 new apartments. This is 5,439 more than in the previous legislative period, it was said.
The balance sheet report reveals that the increase in municipal apartments by six companies in Berlin, as noted by 4,348 new constructions and 512 purchases, totals 4,846 units, bringing the total to 361,636 apartments. The statistics demonstrate that this growth falls short of the black-red coalition's target of 6,500 new municipal apartments per year.
