In the capital, the real estate business is running smoothly.
Despite all the attempts by the Berlin Senate, real estate prices are pointing in one direction: upwards.
Like many citizens of the largest city in Germany, Reiner Rössler, the chairman of the local expert committee that evaluates the notarial purchase contracts, also noticed this.
"The party goes on," said Rössler on Tuesday evening in a round with colleagues from other major cities.
Jan Hauser
Editor in Business.
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However, the rent cap has already unsettled the market, with which the red-red-green state government wanted to freeze existing rents. Last April, however, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the law unconstitutional and overturned it. For Rössler, the market then returned to normal in 2021. And normality has always meant on the real estate market in recent years: Prices are rising and rising.
In German metropolises, this upward trend for houses and apartments will probably not end any time soon.
At least that's what the representatives of the official expert committees also report from Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Leipzig - even if price and other differences can be found between the regions.
In 2020, according to their data, from around one million notarial purchase contracts with 310 billion euros, more money flowed into real estate nationwide than ever before.
12 percent increase
In a video conference of the Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management, they exchanged views on Tuesday and talked about the real estate market in 2021. Although the transactions in the past year have not yet been finally evaluated and therefore hardly any figures have appeared, the experts spoke clearly of how much the business is growing. According to the Federal Statistical Office, in the third quarter of 2021 apartments and houses were on average 12 percent more expensive than in the same period last year.
Although the population in Stuttgart has declined, this has hardly affected the demand for apartments. According to Steffen Bolenz, the supply in the state capital is well behind the demand from the local expert's report. In recent years, significantly fewer apartments have been built than households have been added. He speaks of an almost linear price increase.
The inflation is so high that some industry experts advise against buying in the center.
The Frankfurt committee chief Michael Debus would no longer buy a condominium in Frankfurt, as he said.
Debus reports on a real estate fund that now wants to achieve rent for 180 apartments in a high-rise building.
But the appraiser doubts that this is available for everyone and not just for a few apartments.
"One or the other will speculate," he said.
Better move to the countryside
Apartments in the city on the Main are becoming smaller and not larger, while the price per square meter is rising. Instead of 100 square meters, only 90 square meters would be occupied. Debus fears that this will pull the middle income group out of Frankfurt. In order to buy a property, he looks around the big city: the prices there are half as high and yet you can be in the city in 20 minutes. Therefore he would not buy in Frankfurt, but in the surrounding area. Dieter Hagemann in Cologne also doubts buying an apartment in the cathedral city.
In Hamburg, condominiums are popular with many more transactions. Since there are not enough, good prices are paid for it, said Sonja Andresen, Vice Chair of the Hamburg Committee. "We don't have a downward corona kink." It is already clear that the monetary turnover is higher than in the previous year. In Munich, too, Albrecht Fittkau spoke of how stable the market is.
In comparison to the upswing in the housing market, other areas of real estate are looking worse. In Frankfurt, Debus sees that the market for offices is divided into two: one high-rise building has contracts and is 100 percent occupied, while others are empty. Retail is also threatened - even on the Zeil, Frankfurt's main shopping street. According to Debus, business on the upper floors will be difficult and may be replaced by apartments or museums. “We want to maintain value, but we won't be able to do that with retail alone,” he says.
The Frankfurt tip to move out of the center has also arrived in other regions. In Hamburg, a lot is happening in the surrounding area, especially along the local transport routes, as Andresen says. With the change to the home office, people are willing to accept longer commutes. According to the experts, the fact that city life is restricted in the corona pandemic also contributes to the flight to the greener surrounding area. "There is nothing worse than the lockdown in an apartment without a balcony," says Rössler from Berlin. People are leaving there too. "Everything that can be reached within an hour by car, the prices rise disproportionately there too." He says that not too long ago it was said in Berlin that the Swabians are destroying the prices. Now the people of Brandenburg say:The Berliners are ruining our prices.