2023

For the time being, the community of heirs of Hedwig Adlon will not receive compensation for her hotel expropriation in November 1949, according to a decision by the Berlin Administrative Court (VG 29 K 131/20). Hedwig Adlon had been expropriated at the time as a result of the "Law on the Confiscation of Assets of War Criminals and Nazi Activists". According to the Berlin Administrative Court, she was charged with, among other things,...

The German Furniture Quality Association (DGM) advises customers to try out chairs and upholstered furniture before buying. Prospective buyers should take 30 minutes or more to test the new piece of furniture. According to DGM, they should not only check the individual seating comfort, but also take a closer look at the other features of the piece of furniture. Thereby...

The "Social Housing" alliance is calling on the federal government and the states to launch a joint "social housing offensive. The state must provide a special fund of 50 billion euros for social housing by 2025 in order to achieve the goal of 400,000 social housing units by the end of the legislative period. In 2022, only 20,000 social housing units had been built. In addition, the alliance demands...

Interested parties can apply for the Aerogel Architecture Award 2023 until Sunday, April 30, 2023 (11:59 p.m.). The category "Realized Solutions" is looking for internationally realized projects by architects and civil engineers in which aerogel is used in a special way. Students can submit their project ideas in the "Student Designs" category....

How can innovation activities of online communities be better assessed? This question has now been investigated by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) and the Technical University of Berlin. In their research project "Peer Innovation", the institutions have developed a so-called open-source toolbox that examines the innovation activities of peer communities...

A buyer purchases an undeveloped plot of land from a municipality. She contractually undertakes to bear the development costs. If this is the case, she only has to pay real estate transfer tax on the purchase price of the undeveloped property, but not on the purchase price stated including the development costs. This has now been announced by the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH) (ruling dated 28....

The portal schoener-wohnen.de has broken down what so-called "death cleaning" is all about. The trend is not only to help clear out the apartment or house, but also one's own life. The method goes back to Margareta Magnusson, which wrote with "The gentle kind of swedish death cleaning" also a suitable book to the topic. The aim of this...

The Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) has examined living conditions in cities, districts and regions against the backdrop of the Corona pandemic and published a corresponding publication. The "Atlas of Urban and Regional Development" is also devoted to the area of "housing." Among other things, the authors have studied the development of rental and...

The price of new apartments rose by around 17 percent from November 2021 to November 2022. This was reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). Increased prices for various services and materials probably also had a significant influence on this. According to Destatis, prices for roofing and sealing work, among other things, rose by 20.3 percent in the aforementioned period, for...

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzvb) advises customers affected by termination without notice by their energy suppliers to claim damages. According to the vzbv, customers have suffered damage because they were placed in basic energy supply through no fault of their own. Customers often pay higher prices for the basic energy supply than for tariffs they have chosen themselves. Affected customers...