Federal Government/Jesco Denzel
Lars Klingbeil, SPD leader and federal Finance Minister
The concept paper runs to three pages. That is not much for a proposal that would require rewriting Germany's constitution. But Lars Klingbeil, SPD leader and Federal Finance Minister, has never been shy about scale. His plan for a "Federal Housing Corporation for Affordable Housing", a state-owned, developer-lender hybrid empowered to build affordable homes across Germany, landed in Berlin last week with the force of a political statement rather than a fully formed policy. The question the housing industry is now asking is whether it will ever be anything more than that.
The proposal's ambition is not in doubt. Klingbeil's paper envisages an entity that would develop housing projects, tender construction to private firms and provide state-backed loans at rates private developers cannot access. The target is pure construction costs below €3,000 per square metre, achieved through an industrial ramp-up of serial, prefabricated building with purchase guarantees. Federal Building Minister Verena Hubertz, who is jointly developing the concept with Klingbeil, called it a potential "game-changer". The premise underpinning the whole idea is stated plainly in the paper itself: "The private housing construction market alone cannot deliver the necessary new builds at affordable prices."
On the evidence, that premise is difficult to dispute. Germany's housing deficit stands at 1.4 million units according to the Pestel Institute, a record high. Completions are forecast to fall to around 215,000 this year, barely half the government's official target of 400,000. Net cold rents have risen almost 11% nationally over the past five years, and considerably more in major cities. The market is not delivering. The political pressure to respond is real and legitimate.
A political solution meets legal and operational limits
The constitutional obstacle, however, is immediate and substantial. Since the 2006 federalism reform, housing construction has been exclusively a matter for the Länder. Establishing a federal housing company requires an amendment to the Basic Law, which in turn requires two-thirds majorities in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. The governing coalition does not have those majorities. It would need to bring in the Greens and possibly the Left, parties whose support cannot be assumed and would come with conditions attached. The CDU, the coalition's senior partner, is already unconvinced. Jan-Marco Luczak, the party's housing spokesperson, was direct: "I am sceptical about a state-owned housing association. Building a new structure takes time and money." Even if created, a federal entity would operate within the same constraints as every other market participant.
That point goes to the heart of the expert critique. Michael Voigtländer, property economist at the IW Cologne, dismissed the proposal as "not very effective". State developers, he argued, face identical constraints to private ones, including high construction costs, a shortage of skilled workers and extensive regulation. "To believe that one could do it better oneself is a misconception," Voigtländer told RND. "The state is simply not the better entrepreneur."
GdW President Axel Gedaschko, whose association represents around 800 municipal and public housing companies, takes a similar view but draws a more practical conclusion. The issue, he argues, is not who builds, but whether projects can be financed under current conditions. Rather than creating a new federal structure, the government should use its balance sheet to support the municipal companies that already have land, expertise and delivery capacity. "Direct and contractually guaranteed financial support" could make stalled projects viable without the need for constitutional change or institutional build-out.
The constraint is not ownership but the system itself
The cost structure reinforces that argument. According to the Pestel Institute, of every euro invested in German housing construction, around 51 cents flows to the state in taxes, levies and social security contributions. That does not invalidate the case for public intervention. But it does mean that a federal developer would be operating within, rather than outside, the same cost framework that currently constrains private activity.
There is also an existing federal precedent that is difficult to ignore. The Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (BImA) manages around 37,000 flats, primarily for federal employees. In 2025, it completed 276 new homes — a figure that speaks for itself. The Greens' Hanna Steinmüller, broadly supportive of greater federal involvement, noted that Klingbeil "would only need to ask within his own department to find out that it already exists." Both the Greens and the Left favour expanding or restructuring this vehicle, a route that would avoid constitutional change, rather than creating a new institution from scratch.
The constraint is therefore not only legal but temporal. Even if a Basic Law amendment were secured, setting up and funding a new federal housing company would take years. The gap between Klingbeil's €3,000 per square metre target and current market costs — pure construction costs in major cities already exceed €4,630 per square metre according to the ARGE Institute — underlines how much would need to change before such a model could deliver at scale. Serial construction can reduce costs, but it does not remove regulatory, labour or planning constraints.
The proposal reflects a genuine attempt to respond to a market that is no longer delivering affordable housing at scale. But it also highlights a growing divergence between political ambition and operational reality. Where policymakers see a delivery gap, the industry sees a financing and cost problem.
In that context, the choice is less between state and market than between approaches. A new federal developer promises visibility and scale, but faces legal, structural and timing hurdles that make near-term impact unlikely. Using the federal balance sheet to support existing municipal providers is less visible, but materially more immediate and, within the current legislative period, one of the few options that could plausibly translate into additional housing supply.