If you want to know how funding and area policy affects you, you only have to drive to the surrounding area. New settlements have been springing up around Berlin for years. Some villages are no longer recognizable at all. The original development is at best still in the middle of a sea of colorful single-family houses. In some places it is no longer to be found.
It is still being built, despite the horrendous land prices. Is that bad? How you take it. Urban sprawl has reached alarming proportions. But that’s not all. You can also see what happens when the pursuit of profit meets previously unsatisfied desires.
It’s not the private house builders who should be slowed down here. First and foremost, they realize their little private happiness in the countryside. And they are allowed to do that. The problem is bigger.
Normally, a municipality has an area for the construction of single-family houses. Because it’s easy, she then assigns the area to a large building contractor, preferably a prefabricated house company, who provides the necessary infrastructure, such as electricity, gas, water and roads, sells the land, submits the necessary planning applications and makes sure that they do is built. Of course only houses that this company offers.
The property prices are already staggering in many places due to this practice, the house prices are added to that. Banks that sell loans also make money, with two salaries for families often leaving no room for manoeuvre. Then nothing must go wrong, otherwise two or three loans will be sold to different buyers for the same house within a short period of time. If there are also types of houses that are funded that have long been standard in terms of air conditioning, but are by no means particularly innovative, you can ask a question.
Of course it is bad for those affected by the KfW funding freeze if they now lack money. Construction and subsidy policies in the single-family house sector should, however, be fundamentally reviewed.