Living | Housing shortage here, vacancy there

At that time it cost 60 euros per square meter: demolition of an apartment block in Eisenhüttenstadt in 2004 Photo: dpa/Patrick Pleul The Left, the Greens and the SPD want to socialize 160,000 apartments in Berlin if they can agree on a coalition and pay the current owners up to 16 billion euros in compensation. On Monday, Julian Regenthal-Patzak from the Brandenburg FDP came up with the idea that his state should do everything in its power to ensure that the companies concerned - Vonovia, Heimstaden, Covivio, Adler-Group - then immediately invest the sums they receive in the surrounding area.

"Berlin wants to spend billions without creating a single new apartment," said Regenthal-Patzak. “We want this money to actually be used to build in Brandenburg in order to increase the housing supply and reduce rental price pressure.”

The Association of Berlin-Brandenburg Housing Companies (BBU) will be asked on Tuesday whether socialization in Berlin could have a positive impact on Brandenburg in this way. “Well, positive is relative,” says board member Maren Kern, avoiding a clear answer. In addition to housing cooperatives and municipal housing companies, the association also represents private companies and agitates against socialization. The pressure on the Berlin area will increase, Kern now explains.

In the 30 kilometer zone around Berlin there is just as much housing shortage as in the capital itself. If there is less than three percent vacancy, the situation is at least tense and here the BBU member companies have 1.8 percent. In Potsdam it is 1.9 percent, in Königs Wusterhausen and Ludwigsfelde 1.2 percent each, in Velten 1.0 percent, in Teltow 0.6 and in Bernau only 0.5 percent. With such values, one has to speak of a housing shortage. Strausberg is above three percent with 3.5 percent. But that is 1.0 percentage points less than a year ago. This explains why the Strausberg mayoral candidate Knut Steinkopf (left), who narrowly failed, identified a looming problem here. Once again, only Rüdersdorf is out of the ordinary with a vacancy rate of 4.6 percent.

Far away from Berlin, things look completely different. After the vacancy rate in the Brandenburg periphery fell from 11.0 to 9.5 percent since 2021, it rose slightly again by 0.1 percentage points in 2025. “It’s not a trend yet, but it hasn’t gotten any better,” says Maren Kern.

While on the one hand too little vacancy drives up demand and thus rents, on the other hand it is not the case that vacancy at any level is always good for tenants. Vacant living space causes costs and puts a strain on housing companies. You have to get the money from somewhere. That's why demolition can make sense when there is a lot of vacancy, as tragic as the associated loss of previously created values ​​is.

Between 1998 and 2025, municipal housing companies and housing cooperatives in Brandenburg in particular demolished 67,868 apartments. Nevertheless, there is still vacancy, particularly in Eisenhüttenstadt, where the rate is 15.3 percent despite the demolition of entire blocks of flats. How can that be? The city, dominated by a steelworks, had more than 50,000 inhabitants in 1990, but now has just 24,000. This probably hasn't reached the end of the road yet.

While a population increase of 17.1 percent is forecast for the Dahme-Spreewald district, which benefits from the capital's BER airport in Schönefeld, by 2045, a decline of five to ten percent is expected for the Oder-Spree district, in which Eisenhüttenstadt is located. The location of the Tesla car factory in Grünheide does not help Oder-Spree in the same way that BER airport helps the Dahme-Spreewald district. The employees of the car factory do not move to Grünheide, but thousands of colleagues commute there from Berlin every day. But things look much worse for the Elbe-Elster and Spree-Neiße districts. They are expected to have to cope with a population loss of almost 25 percent by 2040.

In this context, Maren Kern speaks of a negative spiral of shrinking locations. First, residents migrate. Then fewer shops are needed and schools, daycare centers and hospitals are not used to capacity. “Then the maternity ward will simply be canceled,” Kern regrets. That is difficult. Because if the location becomes less attractive, even more people move away and hardly anyone moves there - and then more and more apartments become empty. It is no coincidence that almost 70 percent of the affected housing companies want the existing education and health infrastructure to be retained.

Kern regrets that there is no hope of a trend reversal in sight. In this respect, the BBU is demanding that funding for the demolition of empty living space be increased from 110 to 130 euros per square meter. Because all construction work has become significantly more expensive since 2021. The price premium for new construction is 39.3 percent and for maintenance and repairs it is 44.7 percent.

“We ultimately cannot and do not want to rent at these costs.”

Interest rates on loans have also exploded, explains Kern. On Tuesday she calculated what that means using the example of an apartment of 65 square meters, which costs around 305,000 euros to build. Assuming that a loan of 244,000 euros was taken out, 611 euros would have had to be paid off per month when the loan was taken out in 2022, but now more than 1,300 euros. In view of this, a cost-covering rent would be 24 euros per square meter, i.e. 1560 euros net for 65 square meters. But Maren Kern is aware that this would be unaffordable for a large part of the population. “Ultimately, we cannot and do not want to rent at these costs,” she asserts.

In 2025, an average of 6.01 euros per square meter was charged for the 317,000 BBU apartments in Brandenburg - 3.5 percent more than the year before. The housing companies together only invested 688 million euros in new construction, modernization and repairs - 48 million less than the year before. In new construction alone, the decline was almost 29 percent. In order for affordable housing to be built and existing neighborhoods to be modernized, the BBU is demanding additional funding from the federal and state governments. These funds should flow reliably for at least ten years and applying for them should be less bureaucratic.

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