Overview

• Responses from the Federal Building Ministry to a Left party inquiry confirm roughly a 50% increase in prices for new or newly let apartments in North Rhine‑Westphalia over the past ten years.
• Last year’s highest asking rents per square meter were recorded in Köln (€14.15), Münster (€13.81), Düsseldorf (€12.99) and Bonn (€12.22).
• Housing completions in NRW dropped to 41,025 last year after roughly 50,000 in preceding years, according to the ministry’s data reported by Rheinische Post.
• The Deutscher Mieterbund NRW reports the social housing stock has fallen from 1.3 million units in 1990 to 422,000 today.
• Die Linke MP Lea Reisner urges an immediate rent freeze, publicly built affordable housing and stricter action against rent gouging, warning many households spend a third to half of their income on rent.