The German real estate sector jointly makes the municipalities responsible for the strongly increasing rents in large cities. The cities and municipalities do not use much to make rapid and cheap construction possible, but criticize the Central Real Estate Committee (ZIA). Building has become steadily more expensive in recent years, said ZIA president Andreas Mattner. "The political requirements have increased, the land prices are also at a record level and the costs for building materials and equipment are rising steadily."

There are many tools such as digital planning, draft assignments for land or serial transnational construction. "These offers are used by too few municipalities," Mattner said. "There is a lot of potential here."

An example is the stock of several Landesbauordnungenthat caused delays and costs. As soon as approved building types in all federal states should be applicable, in order to be able to build quickly in series, the ZIA demands: "To promote serial construction, this requires a binding determination of certain technical requirements in a federal building code". Especially in residential construction, "urgently needed planning and construction capacities would become available".

Moreover, the association argues for it The concept of Proposals, When awarding land, local authorities leave the maximum possible price and decide on the quality of the proposal submitted by project developers. Decisive factors can be ecological and energy-efficient criteria or ideas for mixed social housing.

In the building and house supervision Moreover, a lot of staff have been cut in recent years, ZIA president Mattner criticized. Many municipalities are overloaded with the challenges in the real estate boom.

Construction costs in Germany have been rising for some time. According to the consultancy firm EY Parthenon, the prices for new construction and renovation in 2017 increased by more than three percent – considerably more than inflation. An end can not be foreseen, because the prices for materials such as cement are rising and staff is becoming more expensive. A lack of professionals, especially among professionals, keeps the construction boom down, the KfW development bank recently wrote. There are now 653,000 approved apartments that have not yet been built.

In order to remedy the shortage of housing in Germany, the government and the real estate sector are of the opinion that 350,000 to 400,000 new homes per year are needed. In 2017, however, only slightly less than 285,000 were completed.