Monday, 14 September 2026
Berlin is approaching its 20 September state election with increasingly different ideas about how the German capital should be governed, particularly when it comes to housing, regulation and the role of public authorities in the economy. New analysis from DIW Berlin points to a gradual change in the political positioning of the city’s parties. Several have developed policies that place greater emphasis on government intervention and socially oriented measures, while the Alternative für Deutschland has moved further away from much of the remaining political spectrum.
The development matters for Berlin’s property market because housing has emerged as the dominant concern among voters. A recent BerlinTrend survey found that 32 percent of respondents identified housing and rents as the city’s most important political problem, substantially ahead of other issues. The shortage of affordable homes provides common ground between the parties, but there is considerably less agreement about how to solve it. Current election programmes range from greater reliance on construction and private investment to significantly stronger municipal involvement in the residential market.
The CDU is concentrating heavily on increasing supply, encouraging home ownership and creating conditions for more residential development. It also opposes bringing major privately owned housing portfolios under public control. The FDP similarly favours reducing regulatory obstacles and rejects the transfer of large housing companies into public ownership. The SPD, Greens and Die Linke approach the affordability problem from a different direction, although there are substantial differences between them. Their programmes generally give public authorities a larger role in housing provision and place greater emphasis on protecting tenants and expanding affordable housing.
Die Linke has placed housing at the centre of its campaign and supports implementing the result of Berlin’s 2021 referendum concerning very large residential landlords. The Greens also favour greater intervention in the housing market and have made residential policy one of the principal elements of their election programme. The AfD occupies another distinct position. Its housing proposals include increasing construction, selling some publicly owned apartments to tenants and introducing a points-based system for allocating vacant homes belonging to Berlin’s municipal housing companies. Length of residence in the city, employment in certain professions and social circumstances would be among the proposed considerations.
These differences illustrate why the DIW analysis has implications beyond conventional party politics. Berlin is debating two fundamentally different responses to its housing shortage: increasing the ability of private and institutional capital to deliver additional supply, or expanding the influence of the public sector over rents, development and ownership. For developers and investors, the outcome could therefore affect the regulatory environment for residential property during the next parliamentary term. Planning rules, development opportunities, municipal housing construction, rent policies and the unresolved debate surrounding large residential portfolios will all depend partly on the government that emerges after the vote.
Political uncertainty is heightened by the fragmented electorate. Seventeen parties are contesting the election, and recent polling indicates that forming a government is likely to require another coalition. The current CDU-SPD administration would not command a majority on the figures recorded in the early-September BerlinTrend.
The election is consequently becoming an important test of Berlin’s future economic direction. The parties may agree that the capital needs substantially more housing, but they remain divided over who should build it, how strongly rents and landlords should be regulated and how much residential property should ultimately remain in private hands. For Berlin’s real estate industry, those questions could prove considerably more important than the ideological labels attached to the parties. Whichever coalition takes office will face the same underlying challenge: increasing housing supply in a city where affordability has become the electorate’s leading concern while maintaining sufficient investment to deliver the homes Berlin needs.
