Expropriation of housing - on the road to dystopia?

Recently I have become aware of the issue of "expropriation of housing" and energy renovation, which affects all of us and by all I mean property owners and also those who rent and rent housing, because tenants will not be spared.

According to the EU, a new legal directive is to create a climate-neutral Europe or to convert the existing one to climate-friendly solutions. How one calls it now, is to everyone his matter of interpretation.

The goal here, related to the topic of residential buildings, is that buildings MUST be renovated for energy efficiency!

Until now, homeowners have been stuck with the costs incurred by gas or electricity consumption for heating. Renovation measures were one's own investments that one could make.
But with the new EU directive, like in a Chinese 5-year plan, it is specified which goals have to be achieved when and when which laws come into force.

These are the measures:

  1. Obligation to refurbish buildings that are highly energy inefficient by 2030
  2. Obligation to build emission-free houses from 2030 (for public buildings from 2027)
  3. Introduction of a new energy certificate as of 2025
  4. Introduction of the renovation passport for gradual renovation until 2025
  5. Phasing out fossil fuels by 2040

 

Among inefficient buildings, according to haufe.dewhich have a building energy efficiency class below D, i.e. classes E, F, G. These 3 building classes have high energy consumption and are subject to mandatory refurbishment, as stipulated by the EU.

The paper states that by 2030 at the latest, no building should belong to the worst efficiency class, G. The aim is to reduce the energy consumption of old buildings. This would affect more than 15 percent of old buildings across Europe that consume a particularly large amount of energy. According to the German Housing Association (GdW), this would mean three million buildings in Germany alone that would have to be renovated by 2027 or 2030.
Source: haufe.de (03/10/2023)

How to calculate it?

You can use the following formula to calculate for yourself which building energy efficiency class you fall into:

Energy consumption (kWh) / area (m²) / time (a for annual/year) = kWh/m²a

Here is an example to illustrate:

Assume that a building consumes a total of 10,000 kWh of energy per year and has an area of 500 m². To calculate the energy consumption per square meter per year, one would apply the formula as follows:

10,000 kWh / 500 m² / 1 a = 20 kWh/m²a

This means that the building's energy consumption averages 20 kWh per square meter per year. The lower the value, the more energy efficient the building is and the lower the energy consumption per square meter and year.

Citizens who heat with gas (not liquid gas, there must be calculated further), must multiply the gas consumption per year by 10. Since 1 m³ gas coarse 10 kWh result.

So if you have 1200 m³ of gas consumption per year, you have a consumption of 12000 kWh per year. You can also calculate further with it to see how high the costs calculate when heating with electricity or heat pump.

Just for info / Heat pump energy demand  (Without guarantee for correctness)

Energy expended (kWh) = Heat produced (kWh) / COP

For example, if we assume that the heat pump has a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3.0, the calculation would look like this:

Energy expended (kWh) = 12,000 kWh / 3.0

Spent energy (kWh) = 4,000 kWh of electrical power consumption per year

 

Which building energy classes fall out?

Building energy efficiency class kWh / m² (ANNUAL) HAUSTYPE
A+ 0-30 New buildings with highest energy standard e.g. passive house, KfW 40
A 30-50 New buildings, low-energy houses, KfW 55
B 50-75 Normal new buildings
C 75-100 Minimum requirement new building
D 100-130 well renovated old buildings
E 130-160 renovated old buildings
F 160-200 renovated old buildings
G 200-250 partially renovated old buildings
G over 250 unrenovated buildings

 

As of 2023, class E-G will fall under the EU remediation obligation, later changes will be added to this post if necessary.

 

Why is it now eminent domain?

In principle, it is currently not expropriation in the conventional sense, but what happens if you can not redevelop? There are no craftsmen? Or one does not get a credit for the reorganization measures? Or perhaps the house was built before 1950, with such houses the investment costs in the reorganization are so high that one must ask oneself whether one can afford it economically at all, Check24 offers a guide to the estimate. What does one do then? Selling will probably not work well from that point on, who wants to buy a house that has no value anymore because the investment costs are too high, or where living is no longer possible due to the zero emission guidelines, because you need gas or electricity for heating, but the costs are so high that it no longer pays off.

But no one will buy the house, so what do you do? One is thus financially expropriated by the state by law, because the building value is set artificially due to lack of redevelopment, virtually to zero. Many people have owner-occupied houses as retirement provisions and have invested in them. What happens with it? What happens if one has a house below the class D and still a credit must pay off or one is already old and no more credit gets, or one does not have the income around a credit in the height to get? The state will thus devalue the house by law, selling in the future will no longer be possible if you can not afford to renovate and subsidies are not unlimited and are also tied to conditions, in addition, there is the severe degree in the lack of craftsmen, who should implement the measures in Germany and throughout Europe?

 

What are the Greens actually? Communists? Socialists? Fascists?

Dystopia, that is my personal term for what we are heading for, at least in Germany, because the whole thing is not going on consciously or advertised in a big way, but quietly, by letters and paper, nobody will talk about expropriation on the news on TV. They will talk about energy renovation measures, but not about those who can not afford it or what happens then?

Now a classification, and if you want to classify the Greens according to ideology, after all, the Federal Minister of Economy and Climate Robert Habeck is from the Greens, you come up with a strange hybrid, the following information comes from ChatGPT. The positions that the Greens cover are to the respective ideology, Marked green.

 

Communists, socialists, and fascists are political ideologies with different approaches and goals. Here are some basic differences:

Communists:

Socialists:

Fascists:

 

I am honest, after this research I ask myself what the Greens actually are, I have not perceived such a mixture, but probably also justified in the fact that you rarely see such a summary of sources and positions of members of the party. This does not mean that the party base is also like that, but they are just points that should be questioned.

What the redevelopment requirement will look like then is still open, according to anwalt.org, refusal to remediate is considered a misdemeanor, which can result in a "fine" of up to 50,000€. can be imposed.

I think currently bursts with it also the Real estate bubbleWho wants to buy a house now if it has to be renovated at great expense? Alone thereby the building value will probably sink strongly, straight with older houses, probably remains however the property value or rises this even with the time. And that in turn could be interesting for real estate agents or investors, because if the building value is no longer there or decreases, but the land value remains, one will invest here and buy up cheaply what is still there. Since I myself am a small investor, such a thing is of course lucrative, but I see this critically, because it is at the expense of the population, which are virtually forced by the state withdrawal of value to sell, because they themselves can not afford to redevelop.

And who knows how long the current government will continue to function, because according to a recent forecast, it looks like for the Bundestag election 2025, again the CDU and SPD form a grand coalitionHow the Greens manage to climb to 17% in the polls, I can only imagine in the youth, which, for lack of enlightenment, runs after a wolf in sheep's clothing.

 

 

 

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Posted by Petr Kirpeit

All articles are my personal opinion and are written in German. In order to offer English-speaking readers access to the article, they are automatically translated via DeepL. Facts and sources will be added where possible. Unless there is clear evidence, the respective article is considered to be my personal opinion at the time of publication. This opinion may change over time. Friends, partners, companies and others do not have to share this position.

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