There is a risk of price reductions: houses with a poor energy balance lose value

There are price cuts
Houses with a poor energy balance lose value

People who want to buy a property are increasingly attaching importance to energy efficiency. If it turns out badly, it is considered unattractive. Buildings with poor balance sheets are correspondingly less valuable. Concerns about the new heating law also play a role.

According to a study, expensive energy and uncertainty about the planned heating law are leading to growing price reductions for houses with a poor energy balance. The gap in the market value between very energy-efficient residential properties and buildings with a poor energy balance continues to widen, according to a new analysis by real estate specialist Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), for which around 5,000 offer data from apartment buildings were evaluated. Owners are threatened with price reductions of almost 30 percent at the top. The “Handelsblatt” had previously reported on it.

According to JLL, in the first quarter the asking prices for apartment buildings in the worst energy classes G and H were around 28 percent below those in the best energy classes A and A+. A year earlier, the difference was a good fifth (21.6 percent), the published analysis shows. Compared to the previous quarter, the price reduction for properties with the worst energy efficiency has once again increased noticeably by around 3.6 percentage points from 24.5 percent at the time. According to JLL, the discount has also increased by around 2.6 percentage points on average across the individual energy efficiency classes.

The heating law drives real estate buyers

“With the sharp increase in energy prices in 2022, the topic of energy efficiency in buildings has once again become significantly more relevant for investors,” said JLL expert Roman Heidrich. On the one hand, lower rental income and less tradability on the market can be expected for properties with poorer energy consumption. And on the other hand, with the planned law on heating replacement, a heated discussion has broken out about the future viability of existing properties that are particularly poor in terms of energy consumption. This uncertainty is reflected in the demand for such properties and thus in the price.

Other brokers had recently observed that not only the increased interest rates concern real estate buyers, but also increased energy requirements with the heating law. Older existing buildings with low energy efficiency are having an increasingly difficult time – especially since the real estate market is already under pressure and prices are crumbling.

According to Helge Scheunemann, Head of Research JLL Germany, there is a lot to suggest that price differentiation by energy class is a permanent trend. On the one hand, the building sector is particularly relevant for the climate goals. “On the other hand, we expect construction costs to remain at a high level in the medium term.” The sharp increase in construction costs has led to higher costs for energy-related renovations. According to Scheunemann, this is reflected in the market price.

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