Geywitz announces program
The federal government wants to promote home ownership for families
01/14/2023 02:56 am
The Baukindergeld has been used up. Middle-income families should still be able to fulfill their dream of owning their own apartment or house in the future. Building Minister Geywitz has announced a 350 million euro subsidy for this.
The federal government plans to restart home ownership promotion for families in the summer. “The corresponding KfW program with low-interest loans should be available from June 1st,” said the Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Construction, Klara Geywitz, in an interview with the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” according to a preliminary report.
“350 million euros per year are available for this,” said Geywitz. The money will be passed on through low-interest loans. Families with an income of up to 60,000 euros per year should be eligible for funding, plus a further 10,000 euros for each child.
The building minister expects further declines in residential construction overall. “For single-family homes, we see a significant slump in applications,” said Geywitz, referring to a special effect due to the expired child benefit subsidy. “There is even a slight increase in apartment buildings. But the bottom line is that I assume that we will have fewer applications this year than last year.” The reason for this is capacity problems in the construction industry, but also material bottlenecks.
Funding does not lead to more completions
Despite the weak housing construction, Geywitz rejected further demands for additional subsidies. “I can’t see any direct connection between grants and completions,” says Geywitz. “If there were, we would have had to have incredibly high numbers of new buildings in 2022. Because in the years before that, billions of euros were paid out in the new building sector via the Federal Funding for Efficient Buildings (BEG), with an upward trend. But that has not been reflected in increasing completions at all. “
If the state gives a lot of subsidies to a market “with limited capacities”, this does not necessarily lead to higher quantities. “And some actors have not used state subsidies for cheap rents, but may have increased their own project margins with it,” says Geywitz.
She referred to the 14.5 billion euros that the federal government is making available for social housing construction by 2026, “which is currently often overlooked”. These funds would probably “flow out to 100 percent”. The federal government is also working on a new non-profit housing scheme: “We want to present a concept for this in March.”