A German council has started confiscating privately-owned apartments to help ease an acute housing shortage made worse by migrants.

Six flats in the city of Hamburg, which has seen thousands of refugees and migrants arrive over the last two years, were handed over to a city-appointed trustee at the weekend, local media reports.

The houses, located in the central Hamm district, will now be renovated and rented out to tenants of the city's choosing against the will of the owner, who will be billed for the work which is estimated to cost a five-figure sum.

Six apartments Hamburg (pictured) have been seized by authorities and will now be renovated and rented out against the will of the owner to help ease the city's housing crisis

The apartments have been vacant since 2012 according to local paper Hamburger Abendblatt, which was translated by right-wing think-tank Gatestone Institute.

Hamburg was already struggling to provide housing for its 1.7million residents before migrants and refugees began arriving en masse in 2015.

City officials started confiscating commercial properties and converting them into housing the same year, as up to 400 migrants were arriving per day.

But the weekend's seizure marks the first time the powers have been applied to privately-owned residential buildings, Gatestone analysts say.

It is not known who the apartments will be rented to once they have been refurbished.

The city has already resorted to constructing temporary shelters out of shipping containers to provide emergency housing.

There are estimated to be around 700,000 rented apartments in Hamburg with between 1,000 and 5,000 extra apartments thought to be vacant.

Hamburg was already struggling to house its 1.7million residents before an influx of thousands of migrants which has made the problem acute (pictured, migrants arrive in Munich)

The local Socialist and Green party council recently established a hotline for people to call if they believe property has been left vacant for longer than four months, after which it can be taken over by a city trustee.

Similar legislation was put forward in Berlin in 2015, which is also suffering a housing crisis exacerbated by large numbers of migrant arrivals, but was shot down for being unconstitutional.

It is unclear why lawyers have not challenged the Hamburg laws, Gatestone reports.

Germany has accepted around 1.8million migrants and refugees over the past two years, according to figures published by the Die Welt newspaper.

This includes 300,000 who have been granted asylum in the country, and another 1.5million who are still being processed.

If accurate, this would mean Germany accepted the second-most refugees of any country in the world between 2015 and 2016, after Turkey which borders Syria.