ABG Frankfurt Holding

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ABG Frankfurt-Holding

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1890
Seat Frankfurt am Main
management Frank Junker (chairman), Ralf Hübner
Number of employees 778
sales 511.5 million euros
Branch Housing industry
Website www.abg.de
Status: 2018

Houses in Zickzackhausen (Frankfurt-Niederrad) from the portfolio of ABG Frankfurt Holding

The ABG Frankfurt Holding is the largest housing company in Frankfurt and is owned by the city of Frankfurt. Together with its subsidiaries, ABG Frankfurt-Holding maintains over 50,000 apartments in Frankfurt.

history

Stock company for small apartments ABG

Between 1870 and 1890 Frankfurt's population doubled from 90,000 to 180,000. Many of them lived in cramped or unsanitary conditions. In 1890, the philanthropist Charles Hallgarten, with the support of the social politician Karl Flesch, founded the joint stock construction company for small apartments (ABG) to promote social housing in Frankfurt. 605 Frankfurt citizens participated in the company's share capital. The first apartments were built on Burgstrasse and Eichwaldstrasse in the Nordend on building land that the banker Georg Speyer had acquired from the city on favorable terms and made available to ABG. The name of the settlement construction company was chosen because the housing rent should not be more than a quarter of the average monthly wage of a worker. This meant that only two-room apartments could be built.

This was followed by other residential complexes in Gutleutviertel and Gallusviertel , which were always designed in the same way as apartment blocks with spacious inner courtyards. By 1903 157 houses with 973 apartments were built. Rising land prices then led to a reduction in construction activity.

The First World War and the subsequent inflation meant that the city had to take over ABG in 1922. During the Weimar Republic, Ernst Kahn headed the stock building company for small apartments. Since then, most of the new Frankfurt estates designed under Ernst May have been part of the ABG's portfolio .

In 1940 the ABG owned around 11,000 apartments, of which around 3500 were completely destroyed in the 1982 air raids on Frankfurt during the Second World War . In addition to repairing damaged buildings, the company began to rebuild, initially on rubble plots, and from the mid-1950s also in new development areas in suburbs. From 1960 the first settlements outside of Frankfurt emerged, for example in Dörnigheim and Kelkheim . When the Northwest City was built in the early 1960s, ABG built 1310 of the total of 6,931 apartments in the estate. In the mid-1960s, the ABG owned around 17,500 apartments, 70% of which were publicly funded. After that, the construction of new apartments decreased drastically and the ABG concentrated largely on the modernization of the existing building. In 1990 the ABG had more than twenty thousand apartments.

Frankfurter Aufbau-Aktiengesellschaft

Frankfurter Aufbau-Aktiengesellschaft (FAAG) was founded in 1901 as Frankenallee-AG as a municipal housing company for the construction of apartments in the Gallusviertel, including in the Hellerhofsiedlung . After Frankfurt became the seat of the Economic Council of the Bizone in 1947 , the magistrate renamed the company and commissioned it with the repair and construction of apartments and administrative buildings for the employees of the Economic Council. Three new housing estates had been built by 1949. After the decision on the capital issue of the Federal Republic of Germany in favor of Bonn , FAAG concentrated on the reconstruction and construction of apartments and public buildings, including schools, hospitals, parking garages, dotation churches , administrative buildings and several bridges across the Main.

ABG Frankfurt Holding GmbH

The Frankfurt Holding GmbH was founded in 1991 as the parent company of the municipal housing companies and five years later with the largest ever on the number of homes their daughters to ABG Frankfurt Holding GmbH merged. When the group was founded, Frankfurter Aufbau AG , Hellerhof- , Wohnheim- and Mibau GmbH were the remaining subsidiaries. Saalbau GmbH has also been part of the housing construction group since 2007 . For the 125th anniversary in 2015, the company published an extensive chronicle.

ABG is also 100 percent owner of Parkhaus-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH, which operates several parking garages in Frankfurt with over 33,000 parking spaces. It manages over 52,000 apartments and more than 900 commercial and other real estate properties. The annual investments amount to over 200 million euros. Around 780 employees work in the companies of ABG Frankfurt Holding.

In 2014, ABG sold its headquarters for EUR 5.6 million, and 13 months later the buyer sold the building for EUR 9.75 million. ABG boss Frank Junker justified the purchase price with the "estimate".

scope

According to the housing association, almost a quarter of Frankfurt's population lives in an ABG apartment. In addition, dormitories, youth houses, garages and commercial buildings belong to the construction company. ABG is also involved in the Frankfurt multi-storey car park operating company and in residential projects in the Mertonviertel . The company is a housing association that strives for the energetically advanced equipment of its properties. The passive house design is used in many of the existing renovated residential complexes, but also in new buildings . The company is now the world's largest provider of passive housing. In Frankfurt's Gutleutviertel , ABG built the world's first active townhouse with a total of 74 apartments. The ABG's reference projects also included the redensification of the Platensiedlung , in which 19 three-story rows of houses from a former US military estate from the 1950s were raised by two floors, creating 680 new apartments, and the construction of 650 apartments as part of the redesign of the Niederrad office district to the Lyon quarter .

ABG Frankfurt Holding has a 33% stake in the car sharing provider book-n-drive.

criticism

In 2004, the filmmaker Martin Keßler criticized the ABG and group subsidiaries (e.g. Frankfurter Aufbau AG) for letting and demolishing a former workers 'housing estate in Bockenheim in 2002 and 2003. Tenants had sued on the initiative of the chairman of the City-West tenants' alliance, but were unsuccessful in court. Activists then accused the ABG of attempting to intimidate critics.

In June 2014, the ABG voluntarily limited possible rent increases for their apartments to a maximum of 10 percent within three years. For critics, this commitment did not go far enough. Lord Mayor Peter Feldmann , for example, called for a three-year waiver of rent increases. The city council rejected a corresponding request by the SPD on June 26, 2014. The coalition parties CDU and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, together with the ABG management, took the view that if the rent index was not revised the next time the rent index was revised, the relatively low ABG rents would no longer be taken into account, so that the local comparative rent in Frankfurt is rising. In addition, there are not only needy, but many well-off tenants at ABG, including city councilors. Profits from the ABG would benefit the city budget in order to maintain existing apartments and to be able to build new ones. With an average of 300 people moving to Frankfurt per week, the problem of rent increases and the displacement of tenants can only be solved by investing in new apartments.

In April 2015, an alliance of ABG critics started a campaign entitled One City for All! Who owns the ABG? . About 60 activists accused the ABG of a profit-oriented orientation and promotion of gentrification through the construction of luxury apartments and too high rent levels.

In addition to a fundamental change in the city's housing policy, for example the transfer of at least 50 percent of the housing stock to the public purse , the initiators of the campaign demanded an "unlimited and unconditional rent freeze in all ABG apartments", the complete renunciation of evictions and foreclosures and the transfer the ABG into a “special fund similar to a foundation” with the aim of “democratization and self-administration”. In future, business decisions should “require the approval of the city parliament, tenants' council and the residents concerned”.

The ABG pointed out that capital was needed to secure, modernize and maintain the stock of around 50,000 apartments. Contrary to what the alliance assumes, the ABG generates profits mainly from the rental of commercial properties. The average rent in the ABG properties is currently 7.50 euros cold.

In January 2016, ABG managing director Frank Junker again criticized the SPD's demand in the local election campaign . He relied on a legal opinion by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer , which supported the legal opinion of the ABG. A politically agreed suspension of rent increases would no longer include the ABG apartments in the qualified rent index. The board members of the German Tenancy Court Conference and professors for tenancy law Ulf Börstinghaus and Markus Artz , on the other hand, supported the SPD position. As long as the rents are not limited by legal regulations, but only by the decision of the city as the sole shareholder of the ABG, the rents of the non-price ABG apartments would inevitably have to be included in the rent index in order not to endanger its validity.

literature

  • Wilfried Ehrlich: Building for a new life. Hundred years of joint stock company . Dornbusch-Verlag, Frankfurt, undated, approx. 1990.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Annual Report 2018 (PDF 2.3 MB) ABG Frankfurt, accessed on April 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Burgstrasse then and now , report on the 2010/11 renovation of the oldest ABG apartments
  3. ↑ Rachel Heuberger , Helga Krohn (Ed.): An American in Frankfurt. The patron and social reformer Charles Hallgarten (1838–1908) , Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-465-03589-5 , p. 35
  4. ^ Heuberger, Krohn (ed.): An American in Frankfurt. , P. 38
  5. ↑ http://www.abg-fh.com/unternehmen/wir-ueber-uns/historie/ Website ABG
  6. ^ A b Stock corporation for small apartments. Archived from the original on January 3, 2014 ; Retrieved April 25, 2014 .
  7. ^ Frankfurter Aufbau-Aktiengesellschaft. Archived from the original on September 6, 2013 ; Retrieved April 25, 2014 .
  8. ↑ 125 years of ABG FRANKFURT HOLDING GmbH | Timeline. (PDF; 6.9 MB) In: www.abg.de. ABG FRANKFURT HOLDING Housing and investment company, accessed on August 24, 2019 .
  9. ^ Institute for Volatile Real Estate Prices. May 18, 2017, accessed May 2, 2019 .
  10. ↑ ABG FRANKFURT HOLDING GmbH | Company | Living for everyone. Retrieved May 2, 2019 .
  11. ↑ ABG FRANKFURT HOLDING | Living for everyone. Retrieved May 2, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Press release ABG
  13. ^ Frankfurter Häuserkampf (ARTE, WDR 2003, 60 min) . Retrieved October 7, 2012.
  14. ↑ When the pictures learned to run away from the filmmaker. Denunciation instead of documentation: Martin Keßler moves into the "Frankfurter Häuserkampf". , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 14, 2004, page 42
  15. ↑ Unheilige Allianz, Verdi (March 2006) ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  16. ↑ Verbatim minutes of the 32nd meeting of the city council on June 26, 2014
  17. ^ ABG Frankfurt: "The Achilles' heel of the city" , Frankfurter Rundschau of June 27, 2014
  18. ↑ Website of the campaign “One city for everyone! Who owns the ABG? ” Retrieved on May 2, 2019 (German).
  19. ↑ a b Alliance starts campaign against housing association. In: Frankfurter Neue Presse. April 11, 2015, accessed April 24, 2015 .
  20. ↑ Martin Steinhagen: Stop the rent increase required. In: fronline.de. April 10, 2015, accessed April 24, 2015 .
  21. ↑ The catalog of demands of the One City for All campaign! Who owns the ABG? Retrieved on May 2, 2019 (German).
  22. ↑ ABG press release on the Freshfields report
  23. ↑ Press release of the SPD Frankfurt on the Freshfields report ( Memento from February 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Press release of the SPD Frankfurt on the Freshfields report
  24. ^ Statement by Professor Börstinghaus and Professor Artz on the Freshfields report
  25. ↑ Christoph Manus: Rent freeze in Frankfurt - lawyers contradict the ABG. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. January 14, 2016, archived from the original on February 27, 2016 ; accessed on May 2, 2019 .