WIESBADEN (dpa-AFX) - Fewer and fewer new homes are being approved in Germany. In June there were 17,600, 19 percent fewer than a year ago, according to the Federal Statistical Office. This means that only 106,700 new homes were approved in the first half of the year. This was 21.1 percent less than in the first six months of 2023.

The political annual target of 400,000 new homes is therefore receding ever further into the distance. The sharpest decline was in single-family homes, of which almost a third (30.9%) fewer units were approved in the first half of the year at 18,600. The reasons for this are high construction costs and expensive financing./ceb/DP/mis