AfD on housing

The AfD wants to make building and housing cheaper by abolishing the property tax, the real estate transfer tax for owner-occupiers and the broadcasting fee. The Building Energy Act, the carbon charge and the renewable energy surcharge would also go. The aim is for more people to afford their own home.

The AfD wants to make housing cheaper. Several taxes would be dropped. One example is the property tax. The broadcasting fee would also go. The AfD wants to scrap the heating law. Buyers from outside the EU would pay more tax.

People who buy a home to live in would no longer pay real estate transfer tax. For buyers whose main residence is outside the EU, that tax would rise to 20 percent, with the platform pointing to Austria. The AfD sees current building and tenancy rules as excessive and as an obstacle to affordable construction. Building law should remain a national matter, and the party rejects EU rules that raise building costs. Existing buildings would always be governed by the building law in force when they were built.

The AfD wants to turn more renters into owners. Barriers to converting rental units into owner-occupied ones would be removed, and tenants could buy homes from public housing companies at a discount. The party says ownership protects against poverty in old age and rising rents.

The AfD wants more people to own their home. Renters would get help when they buy. They could buy homes from public companies at a lower price. Local people would come first for land and housing.

As one form of help, the platform mentions a substitute for missing equity. A framework would let tenants of public housing companies buy their apartments on favorable terms. Housing cooperatives would get preference when public land is allocated. For building plots and housing, locals would get priority under the so-called Einheimischen-Modell (locals-first model).

The AfD considers social housing construction a failure and wants to support low-income renters more through Wohngeld (housing benefit) instead. It rejects the rent brake and rent caps as overregulation and a barrier to investment.

The AfD wants to build less social housing. People with little money would get more housing benefit instead. Housing benefit is money from the state for rent. The AfD is against the rent brake. That is a rule that limits rent increases.

According to the platform, social housing reaches only a few of those entitled, leads to units being occupied by the wrong households and is costly for taxpayers. More housing benefit is meant to keep neighborhoods socially mixed. If the benefit is not enough, an additional municipal housing benefit would be paid. On tenancy law, the party says it wants a balanced approach.

The AfD wants to allocate as few apartments as possible to asylum seekers and recognized asylum holders in areas with housing shortages, in order to ease the shortage especially for young families. Certain troubled neighborhoods would receive no further asylum seekers at all.

Some areas have too few apartments. Asylum seekers should get almost no apartments there. This is meant to help young families. No more asylum seekers should move to certain troubled neighborhoods. The AfD rejects special building rules for shelters.

No further allocations would be made to neighborhoods where more than 25 percent of residents are non-EU migrants or where crime is elevated; the platform considers integration to have failed there. This applies especially to large shelters. The AfD rejects special provisions in building law for refugee housing, such as those in Section 246 of the Federal Building Code.