House building in transition: 2024 property market report published
Just a few years ago, anyone wanting to build a house faced a number of challenges: Plots were sold out immediately - if they were available at all - construction companies were fully booked for years and prices continued to soar due to high demand. Now, people wanting to build have completely different hurdles to overcome. High interest costs and continuing high prices brought the boom in the housing market to a slow halt two years ago. An insight into the current market situation is provided by the property market report of the state of Hesse, which is presented by the Office for Land Management together with the district of Waldeck-Frankenberg. In addition, the district provides an insight into what motivates those applying for a building project.
Around 940 building permits for detached and semi-detached houses in 2021 compared to 780 building permits in 2022. "Based on these figures, you can already see what has happened in the house building market in recent years. Last year, the figures fell even further," explains Karl-Friedrich Frese, Head of the Building Department and First District Councillor. Conversion measures that do not require planning permission are not included in these figures. "In the industrial sector, things are looking a little more relaxed at the moment," Frese continues.
Examination of the location and the admissibility under building planning law and clarification of which authorisations need to be obtained beforehand: These and many other points play a major role in today's building authorisation process. In recent years, companies and prospective builders have realised that building projects have become much more complex until planning permission is granted. "For this reason, people wanting to build often hand over their projects completely to architects," says Frese. "Larger industrial projects, such as the logistics park in Diemelstadt, are also closely monitored by our employees from the Construction department to ensure that they can be realised quickly and legally."
In order to make it easier for prospective builders and companies to submit applications, the Building Department is working on digitising the approval process. To this end, a digital building platform designed for all administrative districts and independent cities is being made available by the Hesse State Building Inspectorate. In future, citizens will be able to use this platform to apply for building permits online. "We are currently in the process of integrating the necessary interface for data exchange between the platform and the district's own administration programme," explains Frese.
In addition, the construction department is involved in the creation of the participation platform, which allows public bodies to participate in the approval process online. As a first step towards digital offerings, the possibility has already been opened up to upload the necessary certificates and evidence to a separate platform of the lower building supervisory authority for further digital processing in the certification process (submission of the proof of stability and other test certificates) as part of the construction process.
The 2024 property market report provides further interesting insights into the current market situation and can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the state of Hesse at https://gds.hessen.de/ under the path "Download - Property values - Regional property market reports - `IMB regional 2024 - `2024 IMB AFB KORBACH".