The refurbishment and further development of buildings plays a key role on the road to climate-neutral cities. However, the renovation rate is currently far too low to make the necessary contribution to achieving the climate targets. Buildings with homeowners’ associations (WEGs) stand out in particular as an existing segment with an extremely low refurbishment rate. With 11% of all main residences in Austria, they represent a sector of considerable relevance.

So what are the reasons for the low refurbishment rates of condominiums? Why do they fall by the wayside? And how can this change? The causes are manifold: insufficient subsidies in recent decades, a lack of reserves in a significant proportion of the portfolio, complex legal and technical framework conditions, uncertain responsibilities, conflicts due to a lack of communication and the associated difficulty in achieving majorities in votes, as well as the heterogeneity of condominiums, for example due to the letting of condominiums (user-investor dilemma), are major causes.

The experience of the project partners shows: The challenges on the “PATH to the future” primarily concern four dimensions: communicative, regulatory, organizational and financial. Achieving progress here requires a transdisciplinary approach that involves the key players in a co-creative manner: Owners, residents (owner-occupiers and tenants), property managers and technical offices.

The “WEG zur Zukunft” research project is exploring new ways of creating sustainable WEGs that are able to address these aspects. Together with the affected stakeholders – primarily owners and property managers – the foundations for solutions that can help on the path to implementation are being developed in a co-creative process. At least one prototypical implementation process with a decision path is used to show how COAs can move from the refurbishment concept to actual implementation. This guideline for property managers and owners is accompanied by a conceptually designed basic training program to qualify key persons among the owners.

At the same time, the collection of data in the still largely unexplored field of action of WEGs will highlight the quantity and urgency and possible regulatory starting points. The activities and formats of the “WEG zur Zukunft” project will be publicized through accompanying media work and contribute to raising awareness of the project’s objectives. In this way, the project aims to develop a basis for empowering different stakeholders to take refurbishment processes in residential property from planning and decision-making to implementation.

The transferability of the developed approach to different properties and communities of owners is intended to contribute to increasing the renovation rate in condominiums and to climate neutrality. Following the positive conclusion of the exploratory project, the basic principles developed are to be implemented and applied in a cooperative RD project in order to test and validate the “support framework” developed using representative case studies.