BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Germany's largest real estate group Vonovia says it is refraining from building tens of thousands of new apartments for the time being because of high interest rates and construction costs. "We have plans for a total of 60,000 apartments in the drawer," CEO Rolf Buch told the Funke Mediengruppe newspapers (Wednesday). "We're getting everything ready up to the point of building law. And hope that building will soon be worthwhile and profitable again. Then we want to build again immediately."

In Buch's view, Germany currently lacks more than one million apartments. "My estimate is: we need 700,000 apartments a year, also because of increasing immigration." So the problem, he said, is not one million apartments, but several million apartments that are missing in a very short time./sl/DP/zb