#Interview
“Hundreds of small towns and villages are facing massive vacancy and aging problems,” says Daniel Ehlers, founder of Heimstatt. The startup therefore connects communities with young families who want to move to the countryside.
Behind Homestead from Potsdam, founded in 2025 by Daniel Ehlers and Leo Gremmer, is a “networking platform between municipalities and families for lively neighborhoods in rural areas”. Specifically, the team connects communities with young families who want to move to the countryside.
In an interview with deutsche-startups.de, founder Daniel Ehlers presents the idea behind Heimstatt in detail.
How would you explain homestead to your grandmother?
Hundreds of small German towns and villages are facing massive vacancy and aging problems. Not just individual apartments, but entire streets and districts that no longer have any residents. Why, when there are complaints about a significant lack of living space in Germany? Because young families move to where other young families already are and appropriate care is guaranteed. Where this is not the case, no one moves, existing structures fall into disrepair and building new ones is unprofitable. In order to solve this problem, a minimum number of young families would have to be settled at the same time so that the population, places and structures again have a clear future perspective. This coordination – from discussions with the affected municipalities to the advertising and promotion of empty neighborhoods, coordination of the minimum number of families and their settlement on site – is the corporate purpose of Heimstatt GmbH.
How exactly does your business model work?
Heimstatt primarily generates income in two ways. Firstly, we are paid monthly by the affected municipalities for advertising, target group-specific advertising and coordination of their resettlement projects. These expenses can often be covered by state, federal and EU funding programs. Secondly, Heimstatt receives a success fee payable over ten years for each family settled on site – due from the time of re-registration. Thanks to the tax revenue generated in this way, increased purchasing power, government subsidies and falling vacancy costs, municipalities gain significant financial flexibility. So we get paid when noticeable monetary benefits for the municipalities are already foreseeable through our service.
How did the idea for Heimstatt come about?
For several years now there has been a very successful NDR documentary series “With courage, mortar and without millions” about young families who buy dilapidated manor houses in East Germany for the smallest amounts and often without reserves and renovate them on their own. I found the idea exciting and at the same time incredibly inefficient. On the one hand, it’s great that you can buy living space with little equity or borrowing, restore historical buildings and enjoy the advantages of country life. On the other hand, the project was limited to very few outstanding buildings, did little to address the systemic problems surrounding it, and was unsuitable as a mass solution to the vacancy and demographic problems.
How or where did you meet your co-founder?
Leo and I were both scholarship holders of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and knew each other from joint events. These often focused on political challenges of the future and possible approaches to meeting them. We represented very similar values and agreed that many problems could not be solved primarily by the state, but by all of us – i.e. private and self-determined actors. From this basic consensus, the mental path to Heimstatt was not far.
What were the biggest challenges you have had to overcome so far?
To enter into serious negotiations with the first municipalities. Our approach thrives on mutual trust and economies of scale, which usually only arise after a long period of establishment on the market. Establishing this, supporting complex decision-making processes and convincing skeptical stakeholders was an enormous challenge, especially in the early months, and remains a high hurdle for new projects to this day.
Which project will soon be at the top of your agenda?
We are pleased to be able to announce the first major projects in a timely manner and put them into implementation. Several housing projects with a three-digit number of residential units and excellent connections to the nearest major cities are currently in final negotiations. This would be a proof of concept on a completely new scale and would enormously strengthen our negotiating position with other municipalities.
Where will Heimstatt be in a year?
We would like to maintain our momentum from the last few months and maximize the number of participating municipalities. Our goal is to be able to present at least one successful reference project in every eastern German federal state within a year and to be able to make a noticeable contribution to the housing shortage for families and vacancies in rural areas. The solution has long been available; you just have to implement them systematically!
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