General

Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), together with citizens in 338 cities and municipalities, has submitted applications for mandatory filters for new wood-burning stoves and for mandatory retrofitting of old wood-burning stoves. Especially in cities such as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Bonn and Freiburg, DUH criticizes excessive particulate pollution from wood-burning stoves. Currently, due to the Ukraine war, more and more people...

Landlords may not simply pass on the costs of smoke detectors to their tenants in the service charge statement. This is because the costs are not apportionable. This was decided by the Federal Court of Justice (VIII ZR 379/20). In the case in question, a landlady installed smoke alarms and commissioned a company to carry out the maintenance. She informed her tenant of the costs likely to be incurred and...

Owners would like more comprehensibility and transparency with regard to their annual statements of condominium associations. This is the result of an online survey conducted by the association "Wohnen im Eigentum" (WiE). According to WiE, the annual statements are structured and structured in an understandable and comprehensible way for only half of the respondents and for only 42 percent overall well...

According to Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB), project developers in particular are currently facing major challenges. The reasons for this are price increases, delivery bottlenecks, construction delays and higher financing costs. "We are noticing a clear reluctance on the part of developers, and already almost a third of project developments are being postponed," says Peter Axmann, Head of Real Estate Clients at...

Interested parties can visit the trade fair "DACH+HOLZ International" in Cologne (Messeplatz 1) until Friday, July 8. On site 300 exhibitors from 23 countries present themselves. On Wednesday, July 6, the "zukunftschwestern" will address the question "Women in the skilled trades - Why not?" The program with various lectures and discussion rounds starts at 10 am. A...

Landlords of retail properties are only hesitantly investing in energy measures. This is the conclusion reached by the authors of the study "Energy efficiency measures for tenants in the retail sector", published by adelphi and the retail sector's climate protection campaign. The reason for this is a so-called tenant-landlord dilemma. This describes the fact that the tenants responsible for implementing the measures on...

In Stuttgart, residents of an environmental and truck no-through zone must continue to accept the passage of trucks. This has now been decided by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH; VI ZR 110/21). The residents had sued for injunctive relief because a freight forwarding company "violated the no-trespass zone several times a day" and they assumed that the passage of trucks posed a health hazard. Already before the...

What owners can consider when buying a multifunctional drinking water dispenser, describes the portal "ratgeberzentrale.de". First, they should decide which functions they need. In addition to multifunctional drinking water dispensers, which can supply or provide the water uncooled, cooled and carbonated, some multifunctional drinking water dispensers have other...

In Germany, it was cheaper to buy than to rent residential property in 2021. This is according to the Accentro Housing Cost Report 2022. Compared with 2020, the cost advantage of using an owner-occupied apartment over a comparable rented apartment increased by around three percent, according to Accentro. According to the report, in almost all (399/401) of the German counties and independent cities surveyed, owners had to...

According to the "ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research", the shortage of materials on construction sites has reached its highest level since 1991. In May, 56.6 percent of companies in the building construction sector complained of material shortages, while 44.8 percent of companies in the civil engineering sector reported shortages. The shortage of materials is due in particular to the war in Ukraine. Companies are currently particularly short of...