Supermarket chains such as Rewe, Lidl and Aldi are taking advantage of the sharp rises in the German real estate sector to build modern apartment blocks for rent, with shops on the ground floor, on urban plots where until now there were single-storey establishments.
A study by the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Pestel Institute estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 homes could be built on top of the 330 single-storey supermarkets in Berlin, i.e. between 10 and 15% of the current need for rental housing.
With this philosophy in mind, Aldi Nord is developing two projects, comprising one hundred homes each, in Berlin. “We have 15 other initiatives in different stages of planning and implementation,” a company spokesman said recently in Berlin, noting that they are planning to put 2,000 flats on the market.
