SenStadt/Johannes Fischer
149th Conference of Building Ministers, 10–11 September 2026, Berlin
Germany's 16 state building ministers spent two days in Berlin earlier this month agreeing that construction costs must fall. The headline result of their 149th Bauministerkonferenz was a federal-state platform called Kostenreduziertes Bauen, intended to collect successful cost-cutting approaches and prevent each Land from repeatedly reinventing the same wheel.
That is sensible, but it does not change any laws. The conference's significance for investors lies instead in two other matters: a federal bill that could make Gebäudetyp E legally usable, and planned reductions in refurbishment funding that the ministers did not discuss.
Cheaper construction still requires legal protection
Gebäudetyp E allows developers to depart from technical standards that are neither legally required nor necessary for safety. The purpose is to remove specifications that improve comfort but also increase construction costs.
The concept already has routes through state building regulations. The obstacle is federal civil law. Developers, architects and contractors fear that departing from generally recognised technical standards could subsequently be treated as a defect, even where the parties agreed upon a simpler specification.
North Rhine-Westphalia construction minister Ina Scharrenbach said that, following talks with federal justice minister Stefanie Hubig, she expects a draft bill anchoring Gebäudetyp E in the German Civil Code by the end of this year.
That is the most concrete prospect to emerge from the meeting, although it remains an expectation rather than a commitment. GdW president Axel Gedaschko said the new platform could provide "significant impetus", but only if federal legislation gives cheaper construction legal certainty. The bill, he argued, must no longer remain stuck in consultation.
The distinction is important. Germany already knows how to omit unnecessary standards. What developers need is confidence that doing so will not exchange lower construction costs for higher litigation risk.
The retrofit question was left outside
The conference spoke firmly about protecting Wohngeld. The Länder opposed planned federal reductions to housing benefit, warning that more than 380,000 households could lose eligibility and become reliant upon other social support.
Yet the ministers said nothing about another proposed cut with direct implications for residential portfolios: reduced support under the federal subsidy for energy-efficient buildings or BEG.
GdW called that silence a "serious omission". According to the association, the eligible cost base for multifamily refurbishment could be cut by more than half, making energy upgrades harder to finance precisely in the buildings accommodating much of Germany's urban population.
That is GdW's assessment, not a conclusion adopted by the conference. But it identifies a more immediate concern for owners of older multifamily housing than the creation of another information platform. Insulation, heating replacement and other energy improvements remain necessary; reducing the subsidy changes how much of the cost must be absorbed by owners, tenants or lenders.
The conference therefore produced an odd division of labour. The Länder agreed to defend support for households paying rent but did not take a position on support for improving the buildings in which those households live.
This was not the Bauministerkonferenz's first intervention in a live property-market argument this year. At a special session in June, the same conference formally warned that further steps toward socialising Berlin's private housing stock would damage investor confidence nationwide — a position that will shadow coalition talks after Sunday’s election, whichever government emerges.
REFIRE: The new platform may help explain how Germany can build more cheaply. Whether it changes anything depends upon a federal law the conference did not pass and refurbishment funding it did not discuss.
The test is straightforward. If the anticipated Gebäudetyp E bill appears before year-end, developers may finally obtain the legal protection needed to use simpler standards routinely. If BEG support for multifamily buildings is substantially reduced, meanwhile, lower construction costs on future projects will offer little consolation to owners confronting higher capital requirements across existing portfolios.
The new platform should help ideas travel faster between the Länder. But whether they can be built at scale still depends upon federal legislation and the federal budget.