A new guideline now regulates how the city of Bonn deals with its properties, puts them on the market or grants heritable building rights. At its most recent meeting, the Council approved the so-called "Guidelines for the valuation, sale and acquisition of undeveloped and developed municipal land and the granting of heritable building rights". These were developed by the property management department in the Office for Economic Development. They thus also come into force. At the same time, the resolution repealed the partially outdated guidelines from 1983 and 1993. Economic Development Manager Victoria Appelbe emphasizes: "With these guidelines, the city of Bonn is continuing on the path towards a more sustainable, value-preserving urban land policy."

The new guidelines stipulate that all land transactions must be carried out in such a way that municipal land remains in the ownership of the city or through wholly-owned subsidiaries. Preference is to be given to land under heritable building rights. The focus is also on promoting urban development for the common good. VEBOWAG also has a right of first refusal for all land earmarked for subsidized housing construction.

In addition to specifications on the basic obligation to invite tenders and on the determination of market value and value protection, the guideline also stipulates that the ground rent, which is currently reduced to one percent, must be taken into account. Normally, this is four percent of the standard land value when granting leaseholds. The directive also lists the possible reduced market value for certain purposes, such as projects that are in the public interest. The same applies to the instrument of the so-called "special market price" for publicly subsidized housing. This refers to a discount that is intended to compensate for the economic disadvantage of publicly subsidized housing construction.

The way in which the city of Bonn awards its plots of land has also been reorganized: greater weight is given to concept awards. The aim is to give greater weight to qualitative criteria, such as urban planning, architecture, environmental or traffic-related criteria, when awarding plots. Further regulations on which applicants are given preferential consideration as well as specifications on repurchase rights for the City of Bonn after the expiry of leaseholds supplement the guidelines.

The new guidelines can be viewed  here (opens in a new tab).