House number: Fixing

House numbers are assigned by the competent authority on the basis of building applications, notifications of construction measures or at the request of the owners. Street names and house numbers are used for orientation in the city or municipality area and fulfil an ordering function for all personal or location-related data.

In order to be able to integrate new buildings into an existing house number sequence, it may be necessary to change existing house numbers.

The control of whether a house number has been affixed by the owner of the property/house is the responsibility of the competent authority as the general regulatory authority. The local house number signage will also be checked in case of complaints. The property owner will then be asked to provide a visible house number.

Two equivalent systems are practiced for the arrangement of house numbers:

• The so-called Paris system with a kind of zipper system (the numbering starts at the end of the street facing the city center on the left side with 1 and on the right side with 2 and then runs separately into even and odd to the other end of the street, although it often happens due to the different size of the individual plots, that numbers that are numerically adjacent to each other are not opposite each other in reality).
• The so-called Berlin system with circumferential house numbering (the number sequence begins with 1 on one side of the street, continues without interruption to the end of the street and then back on the other side of the street).

In Lower Saxony, house numbers are usually assigned according to the Paris system.