About Immobilien & Finanzierung

Immobilien & Finanzierung

Immobilien & Finanzierung is the German monthly specialist journal for real-estate markets, real-estate policy, and real-estate financiers, published in Frankfurt am Main. For over 60 years, the journal, formerly "Der langfristige Kredit," has served the banks, the mortgage lenders, and the real-estate industry with the market data, the company results, and the legislative developments that the property finance demands. Following the 2025 insolvency of the Verlagsgruppe Fritz Knapp, the journal continues since June 2026 under Lehmanns Media, a Thalia Group company, as one of the five traditional banking-sector titles.

Overview

Immobilien & Finanzierung appears monthly as the real-estate finance journal: the medium for the mortgage banks, the Pfandbrief banks, the savings banks' real-estate departments, and the real-estate industry's finance professionals. The editorial program combines the market reporting with the expert analysis: the current market trends' data and facts, the latest company results, the hottest legislation, and in each issue the detailed specialist essays by the real-estate experts, national and international. The journal appears by subscription, reaching the finance professionals who decide the property lending.

The readership's professional world is the German property finance: the long-term credit, the mortgage lending, the Pfandbrief market, and the real-estate investment. The journal's 60-year history gives it the institutional memory that the finance professionals value: the cycles that the newcomers haven't experienced, the crises that tested the system, and the regulations that shaped the lending. The monthly issues build the archive: the market data, the company results, and the expert essays accumulate into the reference that the professionals consult. In the real-estate finance where the long-term perspective determines the decisions, the journal's long-term memory is the asset.

History

The journal's history begins as "Der langfristige Kredit," the Munich real-estate specialist publisher Helmut Richardi's title for the long-term credit. In 1978, the Fritz Knapp Verlag bought the Münchner Immobilien-Fachverlag Helmut Richardi to expand its portfolio with the real-estate finance title, integrating it into the Frankfurt banking-publishing group. The renaming to Immobilien & Finanzierung reflected the broadened scope: from the long-term credit to the real-estate markets, policy, and finance.

The Verlagsgruppe Knapp/Richardi's 70-year history framed the journal's development: the independent, market-oriented private company serving the finance and credit industry with the specialist journals, the specialist books, and the conferences. The group's titles, from the Zeitschrift für das gesamte Kreditwesen to the FLF, formed the banking press's core.

In July 2025, the Verlag Fritz Knapp GmbH filed for insolvency; the Frankfurt court appointed Dr. Jan Markus Plathner of Brinkmann & Partner as the administrator. The business had largely ceased, the employees had been terminated, but the administrator and the staff resumed the publishing operation within weeks and continued it successfully for months, implementing the restructuring and conducting the investor process. The strategy paid off: effective June 1, 2026, the essential assets were sold to Lehmanns Media GmbH, a Thalia Group company, which continues the five traditional journals, including Immobilien & Finanzierung, with the brand, publishing, and event rights for the banking sector. Ninety percent of the jobs were secured.

Coverage and Content

The market coverage delivers the real-estate finance's essential information: the data and facts of the current market trends, from the residential to the commercial, from the metropolitan to the regional; the latest company results of the mortgage banks, the developers, and the investors; and the hottest legislation, from the building policy to the banking regulation to the tax law. The specialist essays provide the depth: the experts' detailed analyses of the real-estate topics, national and international, in each issue.

The finance coverage addresses the long-term credit's instruments: the Pfandbriefe and the Pfandbrief banks, the mortgage lending's conditions, and the real-estate investment's vehicles. The policy coverage tracks the housing and urban-development policy: the positions, the debates, and the decisions that shape the markets. The fortnightly promise, "every fourteen days you know more with I&F than the newspaper," reflects the journal's ambition: the deeper, the faster, and the more expert than the daily press.

The Insolvency Turnaround

The 2025-2026 insolvency and rescue of the Verlagsgruppe Fritz Knapp is the recent history that defines Immobilien & Finanzierung's present: the July 2025 filing, when the business had largely ceased and the employees had been terminated, could have ended the 60-year journal. Instead, the administrator Dr. Jan Markus Plathner and the staff resumed the publishing operation within weeks, continued it successfully for months, and conducted the structured investor process that found the strategic buyer.

The June 2026 sale to Lehmanns Media, a Thalia Group company, secured the journal's future: the five traditional banking-sector journals continue with their brand, publishing, and event rights, and 90 percent of the jobs were saved. The administrator's assessment, that the consistent continuation pays off even when the business was initially discontinued, describes the turnaround's lesson. For the readers, the continuity matters: the journal that informed the real-estate finance for over 60 years continues to inform it, under the new owner's stewardship, with the editorial mission intact.

The Real-Estate Finance

Immobilien & Finanzierung serves the German real-estate finance's distinctive system: the Pfandbrief banks with their covered bonds, the savings banks and cooperative banks with their regional lending, and the mortgage banks with their long-term credit. The system's stability, through the crises that shook other countries' property finance, rests on the conservative lending, the Pfandbrief's legal framework, and the long-term relationships.

The journal's 60-year perspective covers the system's evolution: the post-war housing finance, the reunification's eastern building, the 2000s' boom, the financial crisis's test, and the recent interest-rate turnaround that transformed the markets. The current challenges, from the housing shortage to the energy-efficient renovation to the commercial real-estate's repricing, dominate the journal's pages: the finance professionals need the data, the analysis, and the expert voices to navigate the transformation.

Organization and Ownership

Immobilien & Finanzierung was published by the Verlag Helmut Richardi GmbH in Frankfurt am Main, part of the Verlagsgruppe Fritz Knapp. Since the June 2026 asset sale, the journal continues under Lehmanns Media GmbH, a company of the Thalia Group, which acquired the five traditional banking-sector journals with their brand, publishing, and event rights. The editorial details beyond the publisher are not publicly confirmed.

The business model is the specialist-subscription model: the journal appears in the subscription, distributed to the finance professionals and present at the trade fairs, with the advertising from the real-estate industry's companies and the banking sector's service providers.

Digital Presence

The immobilien-und-finanzierung.de website carries the journal digitally: the current content, the subscription information, and the archive. The kreditwesen.de portal connects the journal to the publishing group's banking press. The digital formats extend the monthly print: the finance professionals access the market data and the expert analyses online, staying current between the issues.

For the German real-estate finance, Immobilien & Finanzierung remains the specialist journal: the monthly medium with the market data, the company results, the legislation, and the expert essays, serving the property financiers for over 60 years. Through the insolvency and the Thalia Group's Lehmanns Media acquisition, the journal continues: the traditional title for the long-term credit, the real-estate markets, and the finance professionals who fund Germany's buildings, from the apartments to the offices to the logistics halls, with the knowledge that the property finance demands.