Your iSFP for Berlin – step by step to your funding

The individual renovation roadmap is a document to BAFA standard, not a consultation with notes. You receive the energy assessment of your building, the recommended measures as packages in a technically sensible sequence, and for each step a forecast of costs and savings. Added to that is a note on which funding applies to which package. You go into the funding application with this document, not with a declaration of intent.

The structure is standardised nationwide and therefore readable by laypeople too: one page on the current state with the energy efficiency class, then a double page per measure package with component, estimated costs, energy saved and the class to be expected after implementation. The calculation is based on component build-ups, windows, roof, basement ceiling and the heating system, supplemented by your heating bills from the last three years as a plausibility check.

Not included are structural engineering, contaminant surveys and the detailed design of individual trades. The roadmap states cost ranges; it does not replace a contractor's quote. With us the binding quote for heating, ventilation or insulation only comes after the survey of that particular measure.

The on-site appointment usually takes two to four hours for a single-family house. In Berlin Gründerzeit buildings the old plans are frequently missing, which is why we work with on-site measurement: wall thicknesses, windows, roof structure and basement ceiling are recorded rather than calculated from assumptions. In prefabricated buildings the situation is reversed: standard-type documentation exists, but the facade and ventilation have often already been reworked once, which has to be taken into account in the assessment.

On the plant side the flow temperature is decisive. We check whether the existing radiators can carry a heat pump or whether individual heating surfaces have to be enlarged; hydraulic balancing is generally a precondition for funding. The standard heat load calculation is not part of the roadmap's mandatory scope, but we include it as soon as a heating replacement appears in the first measure package, because otherwise the sizing of the unit remains open.

Then there are Berlin's own conditions: in conservation areas and for listed buildings, additional requirements may apply to the facade; for outdoor units we clarify the installation location and noise in the courtyard; and in a homeowners' association the resolution takes time. These points appear in the roadmap with a date, not as a footnote.

The roadmap is always drawn up for the entire building, not for an individual apartment. For a single-family house that is straightforward: one owner, one decision, one application. For a two-family house with a let annexe, the additional point is that funding bonuses on the heating side are aimed at owner-occupiers; which part of the measures this affects, we clarify before the application.

In a homeowners' association the commission runs through the property management, and the real bottleneck is not the technology but the resolution. That is precisely what the roadmap is the right tool for: it breaks the renovation down into individually votable packages with costs and savings per step, instead of putting a single overall package to the assembly that can only be voted on as a whole. Allow several months between commission and resolution.

For listed buildings and those in conservation areas, measures on the facade often remain restricted. The roadmap then shifts the focus to what is permissible and effective: roof, top-floor ceiling, basement ceiling, windows in a heritage-appropriate design, and the building services. What is not possible under building law does not appear as a recommendation in the first place.

Two cases differ clearly. If you are planning several measures over several years, for example heating, windows and roof, the iSFP supplies the sequence and the funding bonus. If you only want to replace the heating in the short term, a targeted on-site consultation with a heat load calculation is enough in many cases. We will tell you which route is right for your building in the initial conversation, before you award the larger contract.

In Berlin an iSFP typically costs between 1,000 and 1,800 euros and is subsidised by BAFA by up to 50 percent; the grant is capped, and the level of the cap depends on the building type. Against that stand 5 percentage points of additional BEG funding on every single measure you implement from the roadmap, and that repeatedly over the years. What that adds up to for your building depends on the eligible costs of the respective measure and on the responsible programme; we work that through with you before the application.

The sequence remains decisive: the funding application has to be submitted before work begins, otherwise the entitlement is generally forfeited. That applies to the grant towards the roadmap itself just as much as to every measure you later implement from it.