The Official Real Estate Appraisal in Germany

Abstract

The Real Estate Appraisal in Germany is regulated by the articles 192-199 of the German Construction Law. Technical guidelines, including the appraisal methods, are defined in bylaws. For the purpose of official real estate appraisal, Expert Appraisal Committees were founded in counties and large cities. The Committees are comprised of real estate experts doing a honorary service, coming from such professions as land surveying engineers, architects, civil engineers, Tax Office employees, experts from the banking sector, agronomists and real estate agents. The chairman of the Committee is also the director of the Cadastral Office and/or the Surveying Office. Every Committee has its own office within the Cadastral Office or the Surveying Office. The main task of the Committees is to establish and guarantee the transparency of the real estate market, by means of the publication of approximate plot value maps on the Internet as well as the publication of the reports on the real estate market. Apart from that, the Expert Appraisal Committees provide reports on the market value of real estate objects, available upon request. Reports on the market value of real estate objects are also made by publicly appointed and sworn experts. Based on the steady rise in the requests for superregional information about the real estate market in the recent years, the working group comprised of the representatives from the Expert Appraisal Committees from the whole country published its first report on the real estate market in Germany in 2008, and the second one in 2011.