Real estate prices in Germany rise and rise.

This is not a new finding, it has been going on for more than ten years.

But it's a big city view.

The prices there have climbed particularly sharply and in some cases have more than doubled since 2010.

For a long time, things looked very different in the flat country.

People moved away, prices fell.

But here, too, something revolutionary is happening.

Dyrk Scherff

Editor in the "Money & More" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Just a few years ago, real estate prices fell in around 70 rural districts and cities.

Now there are only six, as current figures from the analysis company Empirica show.

There are five districts in Thuringia, plus Weiden in the Upper Palatinate.

And the decline was only strong in three areas, in the district of Greiz by 29 percent, in Eisenach by 25 and in the Saale-Orla district by 24 percent compared to the third quarter of 2018. In all other regions, no matter how rural they may be , property prices rose.

This goes hand in hand with an increase in the population.

Renaissance of the flat land

The rural exodus has stopped in many areas. “It was to be expected that the suburbs of the metropolises would grow,” says Harald Simons from Empirica, referring to the high prices in the metropolises themselves. “But what is surprising and new is that there are also many other rural regions with a journey time of 1 to 1.5 hours in the metropolis. ”He mentions the districts of Dithmarschen, the Vogelsbergkreis, the Vulkaneifel, Schwäbisch Hall, the Lower Franconian Haßberge or Dillingen on the Danube as examples. Here the prices rose sometimes more strongly than in the coveted bacon belts of the big cities and especially than in the metropolises themselves, sometimes by more than 50 percent

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The districts of Wunsiedel, Uckermark, Elbe-Elster, Uelzen and the city of Kempten, where prices have almost doubled since 2018, recorded the greatest increases. In Frankfurt and Stuttgart, on the other hand, they rose by just under 30 percent, but the cities are still among the most expensive in Germany in absolute terms. According to the Swiss bank UBS, Frankfurt is even the city with the highest risk of bubbles in the world. Even medium-sized towns such as Pirmasens, Neumünster or Salzgitter, which had been regretted for a long time, were 17 to 43 percent more expensive.

The reasons for the renaissance of the flat country are complex.

On the one hand, the arguments for the rise in property prices across Germany also apply here.

The low interest rates make it easier to finance the home purchase.

In addition, there are new subsidies such as Baukindergeld, which primarily promotes property acquisition in rural areas because it is only paid to families with not too high incomes.

They can only afford a property in rural areas, and only there does the child allowance make a noticeable contribution to the purchase price because of the lower prices.