Panel houses have long been a symbol of the gloomy architecture of the GDR, but now they have become a bestseller.
In 1970, the WBS 70 (Wohnungsbauserie 70) panel house series was developed in the GDR. They began to be built in 1973. By 1990, about 1.3 million new apartments were commissioned in East Germany. On the outskirts of the cities, entire panel microdistricts appear, such as Marzan in Berlin or Lobeda in Jena.
After German reunification, many panel houses were demolished, rebuilt or modernized. Recently, some of them have been recognized as architectural monuments.
In the Fritz Heckert area, in the southern part of Chemnitz, there are queues to rent such apartments. In some buildings there is not a single free space left. The main reason is the low rent price, around 300-500 EUR per month. Specialists define similar prices as “ fabulous“ for today's Germany, where there is a housing shortage. In addition, many houses on the outskirts offer a beautiful view of the forest.
A survey by the German magazine Bild among readers asked whether they could imagine living in a panel house. Of nearly 50,000 respondents, 61% answered positively and 39% answered negatively.
A rally for affordable housing was held in the Belgian capital Brussels in April. At the end of September, there were protests in Portugal against the high prices of the housing market. The problem of the inaccessibility of the local population to housing stock is growing in a number of large European cities. Initially, the reason was the buying up of apartments in central city areas for the purpose of renting them out on a short-term basis, but over the years it was displaced by the problem of the faster rate of house price appreciation than the rate of wage growth.
You can see detailed statistics on average property prices in Bulgaria by cities and neighborhoods HERE