There's a piece today in Focus (German news magazine) which talks about the national trend of unaffordable regions of Germany for housing.
A foundation (the Hans Bockler Foundation) went out and analyzed the numbers nationally for affordable housing. It's not a positive trend.
Two million folks or families....cannot find suitable/affordable homes in Germany. By their count, just in Berlin....there's 310k homes missing. Hamburg? 150k.
The key to this study is the amount of income that you can reasonably expect to pay (set at 30-percent) for housing. And there's just not housing in that amount existing.
All of this triggers politicians, land speculation players, real estate 'kings', the intellectuals, journalists, and social agenda folks to sit and discuss the vast landscape that exists with housing in Germany today.
The starting point here is the federal median income of an average German....1,484 Euro a month. So you take the 30-percent rule for housing, and discover that you should only be spending 445 Euro (more or less) on your rent or mortgage.
In the shadow of Frankfurt, there just isn't a market existing for a 2-bedroom situation, that runs in the 445 Euro range. Maybe if you drove 30 to 40 minutes outside of city....you might find a few more rural towns (especially those unconnected to Frankfurt by the S-Bahn railway)....which would meet your goal. Those towns with a S-Bahn station and rapid transit into Frankfurt? They know their value, and it's hard to find anything in the range.
About a decade ago, I started to notice more and more complaints by middle-class Germans over the lack of escalating salaries. This was hyped up more and more after the transition from the D-Mark to the Euro. Journalists looked at the trend developing. Guys were starting to go through a ten-year period where they might only be two pay-raises....unless they got aggressive and sought new companies or new positions. Germans aren't exactly known for that type of employment history.....they like staying in a nice 'safe' environment, without taking risks. Companies said fine....but we don't need to reward you for being 'safe' and without risk.
So while wages slowed or stagnated....housing prices continue on a trend-line and a decade ago....started to produce unique problems. If you had land or property within major cities.....you were speculating on projects with a high outcome in the end. So some of these sat for years, until the right project came along, and these high-end housing structures came into play. Frankfurt is a great example of that type of strategy, but you see it in dozens of major German cities (example: Stuttgart).
Germans now live in an atmosphere where jobs are mostly found in highly urbanized areas. Sadly, the construction trend doesn't really fit for these folks in search of affordable housing. A political solution? Well....this gets brought up by various politicians and the talks reaches the solution of government sponsored-housing, and there...it stops. No one really wants to get into the business of building and running housing....especially affordable housing. Added to this....those sitting on speculative land areas....have no desire to get into a project like this.
Rating affordable housing onto the top ten German priorities? Oh, I'd agree that it's in the top discussion items...all year round. But there is no true solution to this complaint.
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