More than 1.5 million additional dwellings could be created where apartments are scarce and expensive, especially in large cities, metropolitan areas and university towns. This is the result of a study which was recently presented by the Technische Universität Darmstadt and Pestel-Institut Hannover in Berlin. The research focuses on housing reserves of apartment buildings that were built between 1950 and 1990. It found that simply by raising the roofs on of some of the 580,000 post-war houses could result in 1.12 million new units, explains Karsten Ulrich Tichelmann, professor of structural development at TU Darmstadt.
The research shows that this solution would cost as much as new construction, approximately €2,000 per square meter. However, the problem of erecting new structures lies in the fact that the cost of the property can’t be depreciated. That would result in higher land prices and higher construction costs for private investors.
