Topic Real Estate and Housing

Tax Incentives for Thermal Retrofits in Germany: Experiences from Practicioners

The building sector is a key focus area of the Energy Concept of the German Federal Government, among other reasons because it has the potential to avoid a large share of CO2 emissions while also saving costs. Thus far, however, only a small percentage of residential building owners have undertaken comprehensive thermal retrofits, and the target retrofit rate of 2% remains a distant goal. In order ...

Location, Location, Location: Extracting Location Value from House Prices

The price for a single-family house depends both on the characteristics of the building and on its location. We propose a novel semiparametric method to extract location values from house prices. After splitting house prices into building and land components, location values are estimated with adaptive weight smoothing. The adaptive estimator requires neither strong smoothness assumptions nor local ...

Internet Offer Prices for Flats and Their Determinants: A Cross Section of Large European Cities

In this paper, we construct a data set of Internet offer prices for flats in 48 large European cities from 24 countries. The data are collected in January - April 2012 from 33 websites, where the advertisements of flats for sale are placed. Using these data we investigate the determinants of the flat prices. Four factors are found to be relevant for the flats' price level: income per capita, population ...

Forecasting the Prices and Rents for Flats in Large German Cities

In this paper, we make multi-step forecasts of the monthly growth rates of the prices and rents for flats in 26 largest German cities. Given the small time dimension, the forecasts are done in a panel-data format. In addition, we use panel models that account for spatial dependence between the growth rates of housing prices and rents. Using a quasi out-of-sample forecasting exercise, we find that both ...

Internet-Based Hedonic Indices of Rents and Prices for Flats: Example of Berlin

In this paper, we suggest to estimate the home rents and prices in German regions/cities using the data from Internet ads offering the housing for rent and sale. Given the richness of information contained in the ads, we are able to construct the quality-adjusted rent and price indices using the hedonic approach. The results can be applied both for investigating the dynamics of rents/prices and for ...

Germany's Construction Industry: Strong Growth Followed by Stagnation

2011 was one of the construction industry's strongest years of growth since German reunification. For the year as a whole, a nominal increase in construction volume of almost eight percent is expected. The price increase is forecast at over 2.5 percent. Real construction volume in 2011 will be over five percent higher than in 2010. However, according to current information, we can expect the construction ...

We Need Clarity on Financing Conditions: Five Questions to Hendrik Hagedorn

Using Tax Incentives to Support Thermal Retrofits in Germany

The German government has committed to reducing the primary energy demand of buildings by 80% by 2050 and to attaining a thermal retrofit rate of 2%. Achieving both goals will require deep thermal retrofits across the existing building stock. To meet this challenge, the government is exploring what role tax support options could play in encouraging thermal retrofits and ensuring that they deliver the ...

Map of Policies Supporting Thermal Efficiency in Germany's Residential Building Sector

The Eurozone is still stuck in a downward spiral: high public and private debts weigh on potential growth; gloomy prospects for growth prevent the further reduction of these debts. A European plan to support growth should be a complement, and not a substitute, to the ongoing efforts to reduce public deficits. It should both encourage structural reforms and incentivize investments. In the short term, ...

Information Tools for Energy Demand Reduction in Existing Residential Buildings

Conducting a building thermal efficiency retrofit (or further thermal retrofit) is a long and relatively complex decision-making process involving building owners, managers, residents/tenants, and construction industry professionals. A variety of information instruments exists to support participants at each stage of this process. This paper highlights the existing literature on information instruments ...