Only 135,000 apartment building permits were approved in Germany during H1 2023, a decline of 27.2% from the same period in 2022. The drop was even more pronounced in June, with 28.5% fewer permits issued for apartments, for a total of 21,800.
The Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) attributed the decline to rising construction costs and increasingly difficult financing conditions. The data includes both permits for dwellings in new buildings and new dwellings in existing buildings.
When considering only new residential buildings, without extensions to existing stock, the decline was even steeper, at 30.8%, to 111,500 apartments.
Permits for single-family homes fell by 35.4% to 27,000, while the number of permits for two-family homes plunged by 53.4% to 7,700 residential units. In the case of apartment buildings, the number of approved apartments fell by 27% to 72,400.
The introduction of the KfW subsidy for climate-friendly new buildings in March has not yet had an effect on the approvals.
The latest data adds to the already bleak figures on the state of Germany's real estate and construction sector, with several property developers reporting insolvency and residential property prices dropping.
