Conversion of free office space: Home office could ease the housing market

Friday, February 05, 2021

Conversion of free office space
Working from home could ease the housing market

Due to the corona pandemic, many employees are working from home. According to an analysis, mobile working could definitely have positive effects on the housing market and ease the situation.

According to experts, the growing importance of the home office in the corona pandemic offers opportunities to relax the housing markets. Office space that becomes free could be rededicated and used as living space, writes the Hanoverian Pestel Institute in an analysis that an alliance of Caritas Disability Aid and Psychiatry, the German Tenants' Association and the Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt (IG Bau) industrial union wants to present in Berlin today . In addition, more people are likely to move to the countryside.

According to the alliance, there is more than 350 million square meters of office space in Germany. With every percent of the area that would be rededicated, around 50,000 new apartments of 70 square meters each could be created, the associations calculate. But there must be a social quota for affordable housing.

"Even after the end of the corona pandemic, many people and companies will switch to the home office for at least part of their working hours," said the board of the Pestel Institute, Matthias Günther. "The trend towards migration from the cities to the surrounding area, which we have seen again for a few years, will therefore intensify." Regions beyond the suburbs would now also become more attractive – provided they had good infrastructure to offer.

"Mayors who have ensured fast internet in their communities are the winners of this development," said Günther. He expects the development to become clear in the second half of the year, said Günther. "This will ensure that the price pressure on rents and the cost of residential property in the cities will subside and that living in the surrounding area will be somewhat more expensive."

Bad report for Seehofer

The federal government made up of the CDU, CSU and SPD has already set itself the goal of 1.5 million new apartments in the coalition agreement and confirmed this at a "housing summit" in autumn 2018. The government plans to present its own assessment of this "housing offensive" by the federal, state and local governments on February 23.

The federal chairman of IG Bau, Robert Feiger, called the federal government's so-called housing offensive a fraudulent label. "Because there is still too little construction going on, but above all the demand is being neglected. Rents and purchase prices are not affordable for most households," he complained. "Since Horst Seehofer became Federal Minister of Construction, there has been less social housing. The decline is enormous: 43,000 social housing have disappeared from the market nationwide in the past five years – year after year." Mathematically, a social housing is lost every twelve minutes in Germany.

Minister Seehofer, however, gave the government a good report. "Housing is the social question of our time and we ensure that housing remains affordable. That is only possible with enough new living space," he told the dpa. "Within four years, 1.5 million new apartments will be under construction or completed. Funding is also available for 100,000 new social housing." The agreements of the "housing offensive" have been implemented.