The Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB) is promoting barrier-reduction measures with its "Age-Appropriate Conversion" program. To this end, it is providing private building owners and tenants with 75 million euros via KfW. In addition to older people and people with limited mobility, families with children can also take advantage of the funding.

Together with citizens in 338 cities and municipalities, Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) has submitted applications for a filter obligation for new wood-burning stoves and an obligation to retrofit old wood-burning stoves. Particularly in cities such as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Bonn and Freiburg, DUH criticizes the excessive fine dust pollution caused by wood firing. Due to the war in Ukraine, more and more people are currently...

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

Owners want more clarity and transparency with regard to their annual statements of accounts from homeowners' associations. This is the result of an online survey conducted by the association "Wohnen im Eigentum" (WiE). According to WiE, only half of those surveyed found the annual statements to be structured and laid out in an understandable and comprehensible way and only 42% found them to be...

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

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

Landlords of retail properties are reluctant to invest in energy-saving 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 climate protection offensive of the retail sector. The reason for this is a so-called tenant-landlord dilemma. This describes the fact that the tenants responsible for implementing the...

In Stuttgart, residents living in an environmental and truck transit ban 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 an injunction because a haulage company "violated the ban on through traffic several times a day" and they assumed that the passage of trucks posed a health hazard. Even before the...

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

In Germany, it was cheaper to buy a home than to rent in 2021. This is according to the Accentro Housing Cost Report 2022. Compared to 2020, the cost advantage of owning a condominium over a comparable rental apartment has increased by around three percent, according to Accentro. In almost all (399/401) of the German districts and independent cities surveyed, owners had to...