When housing subsidies become an asset class

Last month, REFIRE published a guest column by REM Capital's CEO Jan Bewarder, setting out how generous Germany's 2026 subsidy environment had become for real estate investors and describing a rare window in which previously unviable projects could once again make financial sense. That assessment is holding up well. If anything, it understated the case: institutional and private capital has moved into subsidised housing faster and in greater volume than expected.

The less comfortable consequence is now becoming visible. Funding programmes originally designed to expand affordable housing are increasingly becoming investment strategies in their own right, drawing private capital into competition with the social and cooperative housing providers they were originally intended to support.