Is Your Flat Inside a Milieuschutz Area?
Berlin has 82 social preservation areas, and inside one of them the borough decides what an owner may build. Find your area on the map or by name, then pick the work that is planned for the building and read what the city-wide approval criteria allow. Merging two flats, adding a second bathroom, installing underfloor heating and turning a home into a holiday let are all refused outright.
Area boundaries come from the Geoportal Berlin dataset Erhaltungsverordnungsgebiete, layer erhaltgeb_em, read on 23 September 2026. The rules come from the VV Genehmigungskriterien soziale Erhaltungsgebiete of 7 April 2026, in force since 18 April 2026, published by the Senatsverwaltung fuer Stadtentwicklung, Bauen und Wohnen. This is a reading aid, not legal advice, and the criteria expressly do not replace the borough decision in the individual case.
Scaffolding goes up, a letter arrives about a second bathroom, and the question is suddenly whether any of it is even allowed. Inside Berlin 82 soziale Erhaltungsgebiete the answer is written down in unusual detail. Demolition, structural change and change of use all need a separate permit from the borough, and since 18 April 2026 a single city-wide set of criteria decides what the borough may approve. This tool draws every one of the 82 areas from the official register so you can find yours first, then walks through fourteen kinds of work and gives the verdict the criteria actually set, with the clause behind it.
How to find your area
The 82 areas are named after a square, a street or an estate, not after the Kiez name people use, so searching by Bezirk is often faster than guessing. Boundaries follow blocks. Being two streets outside one really does put a flat outside the rules, which is why it is worth checking the address before anything is happening to it rather than while holding a letter about it.
What the verdicts mean
Refused means the criteria say the measure is not approvable, and those clauses are written without a threshold: demolition, merging or splitting flats, changing a home to another use, and high-value fittings. Approved means the owner has a right to the permit, which covers a first bathroom in standard build and a first small balcony. Conditional means the criteria set a test, such as the number of floors for a lift or the age of the boiler for a heating swap.
Where the rules come from
Preservation areas are made under section 172 paragraph 1 sentence 1 number 2 of the Baugesetzbuch, and the permit itself under section 173. Each borough passes its own areas by ordinance, which is why the count keeps moving: Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg added Kreuzberg-Nord on 15 January 2026 and Hornstrasse on 21 February 2026. The approval criteria are Berlin-wide and replaced the 2024 version on 18 April 2026.
What it cannot tell you
It cannot confirm a specific address, because the register is drawn as area polygons rather than address points, and it cannot decide a case. The criteria bind the boroughs but expressly leave the individual assessment and the discretion with them, and an owner who proves that keeping the building is not economically viable has a separate route to a permit. For a live answer on one building, the Stadtentwicklungsamt of that Bezirk is the authority.