Tradition and modernity

Deutsche Wohnen’s roots go all the way back to the 1920s: 1924 saw the establishment of GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft), a property company with one of the richest traditions in Germany. With its groundbreaking buildings and developments, GEHAG has written a key chapter in the social and architectural history of the 20th century. A significant proportion of the company’s Berlin portfolio of over 100,000 residential units is listed.

Deutsche Wohnen AG was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt am Main and pooled the bank’s residential property portfolio. The company initially mainly had residential holdings in the Rhine/Main region and Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1999, Deutsche Wohnen AG was listed on the stock exchange.

2007 saw the merger of GEHAG and Deutsche Wohnen AG.

Deutsche Wohnen backed expansion in another area, too: after some years, the company created another new construction in 2015 – the Potsdam district of Babelsberg saw densification in the form of the construction of 91 rental apartments and twelve terraced houses as a sensible addition to an existing 1928 railway estate.

In 2016, the company Vonovia SE launched a takeover bid to the shareholders of Deutsche Wohnen AG. This hostile bid failed. It fell well below the minimum acceptance threshold of 50% of share capital.

Deutsche Wohnen also strengthened internal growth in 2016 through modernisation, densification and new construction with a EUR 1.5 billion programme of investment. At the same time, the Nursing and Assisted Living divisions were strengthened by targeted acquisitions and new construction.

In 2017 Deutsche Wohnen moved its registered office from Frankfurt am Main to Berlin, where the main branch was already located. In the same year, Deutsche Wohnen AG became a European company. Since then, it has operated under the name of Deutsche Wohnen SE.

In the years that followed, the focus has been on making Deutsche Wohnen fit for the future. The takeover in 2018 of GETEC media GmbH (now SYNVIA media GmbH), a company specialising in ultra-modern telecommunications services and developing smart building system solutions, is a key step in Deutsche Wohnen’s digitalisation strategy. Meanwhile, processes are being optimised and tasks centralised in order to improve service for tenants.

In July 2019, Deutsche Wohnen published a tenant promise. It pledged to rent one in four apartments to tenants entitled to social housing and make changes to rent in line with the rent index and modernisation according to tenants’ individual life and financial circumstances and to limit these if necessary.

In early 2020, the company celebrated the completion of a new construction in Leipzig and significantly strengthened its expertise in this area once again with the acquisition of the ISARIA München Projektentwicklungs GmbH. Deutsche Wohnen aims to invest over EUR 5 billion in new construction and sustainable neighbourhood development in the coming years.

Twenty-one years after it was listed on the stock market, in June 2020, Deutsche Wohnen joined Germany’s leading index, the DAX.