Asymmetrien in der Wohnungspolitik reduzieren

There are four major challenges for housing policy in the near and midterm future: First, rents in many German conurbations have been rising significantly faster than incomes over the last five years. Though it can rightly be argued, that the suggested policies of the new German federal government are less detrimental than often perceived by real estate professionals, it must be feared that policy makers have underestimated indirect negative effects for both housing and labour markets. Still, what is more important, is that the current discussion on housing policies is focused on the short term putative misallocations, and to a significant lesser extent on the other three structural challenges of the German housing markets, i. e. increasing vacancies in outward-migration areas, severe lack of „low-barrier“- housing for seniors and a need to reduce energy emissions in the property stock. This asymmetry is unintelligible, as markets can comparatively easily deal with the first short-term challenge, provided supply-elasticities are increased. However, the other three challenges are to a large extent due to externalities, and this implies that markets cannot easily correct imbalances. It would therefore be important to rebalance the current policy-mix and debate.