“We also had to raise rents last year, by three to five percent,” explains Thomas Bauer, CEO of Bau AG, which rents out around 5,100 apartments in Kaiserslautern.
In addition to the general cost increases in many areas, specific developments in the city have also led to a sharp rise in rents on the housing market in Kaiserslautern. For example, the presence of start-ups and research institutes around the Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau is ensuring that more and more people are moving to the city.
The people who will be working at Amazon or, from 2025, in the planned ACC battery cell factory on the former Opel site, will also need more living space, explains Michael Wiebelt. As Managing Director of Wenk-Immobilien, a company that brokers and manages numerous apartments in Kaiserslautern, he confirms that the demand for apartments is very high.
According to Wiebelt and Bauer, another price driver is the presence of the US airbase in the region. More and more Americans are living not only on the military site and in the surrounding area, but also increasingly in Kaiserslautern city center. As the US military is prepared to pay extremely high rents for housing for soldiers, this also has an impact on the local housing market.
In addition, many private individuals and investors are currently putting their construction projects on hold due to the rise in interest rates. According to Wiebelt, this is further exacerbating the situation on the Kaiserslautern housing market. As a result, no new apartments are being built and young families have to remain on the rental market.
According to Thomas Bauer from Bau AG, there is a shortage of apartments in Kaiserslautern in two price segments: both in the higher and lower price ranges. On the one hand, new jobs are pushing wealthy people onto the market, while on the other hand, the affordable housing segment is increasingly being taken up by refugees, single parents and pensioners who are looking for small, affordable apartments.
Although rents in Kaiserslautern are at a different level to those in the major conurbations, this is also the case for salaries in the Western Palatinate. As incomes have not risen to the same extent as rents, many Kaiserslautern residents “sometimes simply do not have enough money to compensate for the rise in rents”, explains the city. The result: they can no longer pay their rents.
When asked whether the number of evictions has increased, the city answers that this “cannot be denied”. There is also a “correlation between rising rents and applications for housing benefit”, which increased in Kaiserslautern in 2023 – from 1,800 to 3,100 applications.
Michael Wiebelt from Wenk-Immobilien reports that when it comes to renting out small apartments, most of the inquiries come from people who receive citizen’s allowance or other social benefits. He often has to turn down these prospective tenants because the homeowners prefer other tenants.
What is being done? Kaiserslautern’s head of social affairs, Anja Pfeiffer (CDU), has set up a round table. The aim: “To help people in particular who are affected by eviction, SCHUFA entries, protracted homelessness or illness and have not yet been able to find a permanent home.”
For the major housing providers in Kaiserslautern, the solution is obvious: more social and affordable housing is needed in the city.
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