Germany - Building Completions

For Germany, building permits and completed construction work represent the core of building activity statistics, providing an essential basis for short-term assessments of the building market’s current economic situation. At the NUTS 1, 2 and 3 subnational levels. Annual from 1995.

The survey focuses collection of data on the building owner’s assignment to an economic sector, type of building, kind of building activity, the size of the building and estimated cost of building. The outcome of this statistical survey is indispensable information to be used by legislative bodies, the Federation’s and federal states’ governments, by builders’ and craftsmen’s associations and chambers and it is also required as a basis for numerous decisions to be taken with respect to the entire economic policy and, in particular, the building policy.

Building activity surveys of building construction (building activity statistics) are regularly carried out at federal level in order to determine the volume, structure and development of building activities and to update the stock of residential buildings and dwellings.

The objects of building activity statistics are building permits, construction work completed in structural engineering, unfinished building projects at end of year, demolitions (retirements) of buildings and updated figures on the stock of residential buildings and dwellings. The direct object of registration is the building, characterised as either residential or non-residential and further subdivided by more concrete types of building. For example, residential buildings are to be recorded as one-, two- or multi-family houses or as hostels (residential homes). Non-residential buildings include, for instance, office and administrative buildings, agricultural farm buildings, buildings of factories and workshops, hotels and restaurants. Civil engineering (e.g. building of roads, tunnels, bridges) is not an object of registration in building activity statistics. The results of building activity statistics are of great importance, in particular, as early indicators of short-term economic developments.