In early May, the parliamentary groups of the German Bundestag were in agreement: Tenants and landlord should evenly split the costs of the carbon levy in houses heated with fuel oil or natural gas. That consensus is ancient history now.

Christian Democrat Block Carried the Day: Tenants to Pay for Carbon Levy

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According to figures released by the Brussels-based authority, fatalities from exposure to asbestos amount to 88,000 annually in Europe. 

EU Commission Resolves to Lower Asbestos Exposure Limits by 2022 

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Germany’s most desirable kind of rental flat measures 66 square metres, divides into two-and-a-half bedrooms, and costs 446 euros to rent, net of heating.

Germany’s Most Desirable Rental Flats – an Analysis by the ImmobilienScout24 Real Estate Portal

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The WohnZukunftsTag is an annual conference organised in Berlin to discuss the challenges of Germany’s housing industry.

New “Climate Plus” Strategy of Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies (GdW) Combines Climate Change Mitigation with Social Peace 

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It was that time of year again: In June, the latest ACCENTRO Housing Cost Report was published. Now in its sixth edition, it was once again compiled by the German Economic Institute (IW) on behalf of ACCENTRO. 

Owning versus Renting: Which is More Rewarding and When?

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The own pension scheme is an important element of the personal finance plan. 

Real estate as retirement plan

After a year filled with talks and debates, it just became official: Berlin’s rent cap violates the German constitution. It was struck down by the Constitutional Court (BVerfG) in Karlsruhe, Germany’s top court.

Berlin's Rent Cap is Unconstitutional 

The upward trend of rents proceeded at breakneck speed in recent years. In some of Germany’s metropolises, rent rates have more than doubled. 

Rental Growth Slowing a Bit

No one would deny that Germany suffers from pent-up demand for new-build housing construction, but at least as far as planning consents go, it is heading in the right direction, as the latest stats confirm...

Number of Planning Consents Hits Second-highest Level since Turn of the Millennium

The European Union intends to be carbon-neutral by 2050, the interim target for 2030 being the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent. Germany made serious progress on its way toward carbon-neutrality last year:

Buildings Sector Misses Climate Protection Targets over Coronavirus Crisis

Germany’s residential property market is booming, despite the coronavirus crisis, and this hardly qualifies as news anymore. Yet the building activity keeps trailing demand...

Steady Decline in Flats in Detached and Semi-Detached Homes

Capping Berlin’s residential rents was supposed to prevent unchecked rental growth. But an analysis by the ImmobilienScout24 real estate portal just found that the total number of rental housing listings in Berlin declined by 41.5 percent year on year. 

Berlin’s Rent Cap Causes Housing Supply to Shrink

New-build housing construction stands a good chance to top the mark of 300,000 newly-built flats this year despite the coronavirus crisis – if it did, it would be the first time in more than twenty years.

Germany’s Housing Supply Increases Despite Coronavirus Crisis

It hardly qualifies as news anymore that Germany’s housing market has been unimpressed by the coronavirus crisis so far. Property prices have nowhere to go but up, and buying a condominium is a paying proposition.

New Initiative Wants to Increase Housing Construction and Homeownership Rate

Germany’ buildings sector plays a key role in the effort to achieve the country’s climate targets: It accounts for nearly 40 percent of the German energy consumption.

Rising Demand for Energy Refurbishments

Germany’s real estate market proved decidedly robust during the coronavirus crisis year of 2020. Selling prices for condominiums surged noticeably in 75 out of 81 major German cities last year...

Condominium Prices Set New Records Despite COVID-19

German housing rents continued to increase unchecked even during the coronavirus crisis. The latest survey by the Immowelt real estate portal shows that new-tenancy rents kept climbing in most major German cities in 2020. 

Residential Rent Growth Despite COVID-19

The coronavirus crisis had virtually no adverse consequences on Germany’s residential property market in 2020. Nor is 2021 likely to see any change in the status of real estate as a coveted commodity...

No Slowing Down for Residential Investors in 2021

Although building finance rates are at an all-time low, the homeownership rate in Germany is in decline.

Germany’s Declining Homeownership Rate

Two surveys conducted by the Bulwiengesa research institute in late 2020 revealed that prices for new-build condominiums in the inner city of Berlin have soared drastically.

Rapid Price Growth for New-Build Condominiums in Berlin

The coronavirus crisis has changed the world in many ways. International migration flows, for example, have slowed down significantly in 2020, and this in turn is likely to have drastically slowed the demographic growth in Germany this year.

Which Cities will Keep Growing after the Crisis?

During the third quarter of 2020, prices for residential real estate went up at a rate of 7.8 percent over prior-year period.

Fastest Price Growth for Residential Real Estate in Four Years

Suburbia is Trending. As supply is drying up fast in Germany’s metropolises, many apartment seekers roam farther afield, flat-hunting on the periphery of the major cities, as do investors.

The Highest Returns are Paid in the Suburbs

The number of planning consents issued for condominiums in Germany has plummeted lately. 

Number of Condominium Planning Consents Takes Nosedive

Between September 2019 and September 2020, the number of rental flats available in Berlin has decreased by 41.5 percent. This is the upshot of an analysis run by the ImmobilienScout24 real estate portal.

Berlin’s Rent Cap Puts a Dent in Housing Supply

No other real estate location in Europe offers investors long-term opportunities as robust as those in the German capital.

Berlin Takes Top Spot among European Real Estate Locations

Investors face difficult decisions at the moment. COVID-19 has caused economic cutbacks in a number of sectors around the world, forcing investors to adjust their strategies. Even the real estate market has not been spared these jitters.

German Real Estate Keeps Trending Internationally, too

In spring of this year, mere weeks into the coronavirus pandemic, many in Germany still believed that condominium prices would deteriorate, whereas few people still think so now.

Majority Assumes that Condominium Prices Won’t Soften

The transaction volume on Germany’s residential investment market increased significantly during the first three quarters of 2020 compared to the prior-year period.

Professional Investors Opt Increasingly for Residential Real Estate

The contentious condominium conversion ban for rental flats which the Federal Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, had proposed some time ago will apparently not be written into law after all.

Conversion of Rental Flats into Condominiums Remains an Option

The stated goal of Germany’s grand coalition government in early 2018 was to ensure the construction of 1.5 million new flats nationwide by 2021. It has been evident for some time now that this goal will not be achieved. 

Shortfall of 300,000 Flats

Many observers agree that the German housing market has remained remarkably unaffected by the coronavirus crisis so far.

Expert Opinion: Housing Market Entirely Unimpressed

The housing markets of several major cities in North Rhine-Westphalia and in the eastern German Länder stood out last year with a particularly robust performance.

Regions in North Rhine-Westphalia and East Germany Follow Upward Trend

The values of condominiums and homes have kept on rising in 2019, too. The year seamlessly continued the trend of previous years, as the ACCENTRO Homeownership Report 2020 just confirmed.

Homeownership Report: Growth in Prices and Sales Figures

The consequences of keen demand for housing in Berlin are increasingly felt in the districts surrounding the city. This is the upshot of a recent analysis conducted by the Immowelt real estate portal.

Housing Shortage Drives up Rents in Berlin’s Gravy Belt

Owning your home is generally considered a sensible contribution to your personal pension scheme, and a particularly effective protection against old-age poverty. 


Survey: Homeowners Less Exposed to Old-Age Poverty

The average dwelling floor area available to every German in 2019 was 47 square metres. The per-capita floor space consumption has been going up steadily over the past years.

Residential Floor Space Consumption on the Rise

Real estate is considered a particularly safe type of investment. This is probably one of the main reasons why the experience of the corona virus crisis has made it even more popular among private investors than it was anyway. 

Real Estate Gaining in Popularity in Wake of Crisis

The German housing market has become Europe’s most coveted investment destination for residential real estate investors.

German Housing Market the Most Desirable Investment Target in Europe

For more than a decade after the end of the nationwide homeownership subsidy in 2006, no central public subsidies worthy of the name were available in Germany – until the child tax credit for first-time home buyers was introduced in September 2018.

Nearly a Quarter-Million Applications for Child Tax Credit

Compared to other countries, private German households show a higher-than-average savings ratio.

German Savings Ratio Is High, Homeownership Rate Remains Very Low

The IW Economic Institute conducted a survey to find out which regions in Germany achieved above-average growth over the past decade. 

Up-and-Coming Regions Concentrated in East Germany

There was every reason to expect demand for private construction finance to take a nosedive at the height of the corona virus crisis. What actually happened, however, is the exact opposite...

Rising Demand for Real Estate Loans

As recently as March, some forecasts projected a serious set-back for the German housing market due to the corona virus crisis—with the Empirica institute, for one, talking about a dip of up to 25 percent...

German Housing Market Continues to Show Impressive Crisis Resilience

One of Berlin’s climate protection targets is to make the German capital carbon-neutral by 2050 – and refurbishing the residential building stock will be a key factor in achieving this goal.

Survey: Rent Cap Slows Climate Protection

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Individual freehold ownership, condominium declaration, common ownership, maintenance reserve, HOA manager, individual freehold property manager, etc. – during a condominium acquisition you will sooner or later come across some or all of these terms.

Acquisition-process

Immobilienkauf für Freiberufler - Bestimmt kein Ding der Unmöglichkeit

Buying a flat involves all sorts of decisions and duties. Sound and reliable information is of the essence, which is why our Real Estate Encyclopaedia brings you all sorts of details on homeownership, from A like “Acquisition” to Z like “Zoning.”

Real Estate Glossary

Political and public debates keep circling back to the subject of major housing companies and their behaviour, and this even though these companies own merely a small fraction of the rental flats in Germany.

Private Owners the Leading Group of Landlords in Germany

The cost advantage of inhabiting a condominium rather than a comparable rental flat equalled 48.5 percent in 2019 – this is the upshot of this year’s ACCENTRO Housing Cost Report.

Owner-Occupiers Live Far Cheaper than Tenants

For many years, condominium prices in Berlin have been going up swiftly and steadily – which is unsurprising in the sense that pent-up demand in Germany’s first city is massive and more pronounced than elsewhere.

More Rental Flats under Construction in Berlin than Condominiums

Naturally, it is yet too early to assess the overall ramifications of the coronavirus crisis for the German economy in general and the real estate market in particular...

Despite Coronavirus Crisis: Condominium Prices Remain Stable

Necessity is the mother of invention: These days, the corona pandemic and the associated lockdown restrictions have prompted the digitisation of many situations and interactions that used to be done in person, on site.

Digitisation Push in Condominium Sales?

Due to the low-interest policy pursued by central banks at the moment, interest rates have been in more or less steady decline over the past years.

Insiders Expect Level of Mortgage Lending Rates to Remain Stable

The housing shortage in Berlin remains high. The German capital now lacks around 145,000 flats, said Jürgen Allerkamp, CEO of the IBB Investment Bank Berlin, as he presented the latest IBB Housing Market Report.

Planning Approval Figures on the Rise in Germany, but Declining in Berlin

For weeks now, the coronavirus pandemic has been the number one topic not just around kitchen tables, in the media and in politics, but also in the real estate industry, of course.

Experts: Residential Remains Attractive Asset Class

As in prior years, the selling prices for condominiums in Germany continued to soar in 2019, growing at an average rate of 9.3 percent (inflation-adjusted). 

Rapid Rise in Condo Prices Continued in 2019

Germany’s body politic has long been confronted with the demand to quit stalling and take effective steps to boost private homeownership.

Political Measures Could Bring Germany’s Homeownership Rate up to 58 Percent

Although Germany’s population is expected to decline by around one percent before 2040, the number of private households could keep going up until then. This is the outcome of a recent forecast compiled by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

Number of Private Households Likely to Keep Rising

The revenue from the real estate transfer tax for the German Länder increased by 12.1 percent in 2019, making it the tenth consecutive year of growth.

Another Record in Real Estate Transfer Tax Receipts

Germany’s second-tier cities have become extremely popular among real estate investors – and not just among domestic ones.

European Investors Have their Sights on Germany’s Secondary Cities

On 30 January, Berlin’s House of Representatives passed the law enacting the rent cap with the votes of the governing parties, these being the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens. 

In Stockholm, Rent Cap Created Booming Black Market

The German Government set itself the goal to promote homeownership, a decision it had been urged to make for a long time, given the fact that Germany’s homeownership rate is a low 45 percent.

Child Tax Credit for Home Buyers, while Popular, Fizzles in the Big Cities

The child tax credit for first-time home buyers introduced in 2018 appears to have met with a lively response so far – a total of 171,510 applications for homeowner subsidies were submitted to the KfW development bank between early 2018 and November 2019.

Child Tax Credit for Home Buyers Barely Used in Major Cities

Due to the monetary policy of the central banks, interest rates for construction finance dropped to a new all-time low in 2019.

Will Condominium Buyers Soon Benefit from Negative Interest Rates?

When Tesla announced in late November that it would build its so-called gigafactory in the greater Berlin area and simultaneously set up a design and development centre in Berlin proper,...

Prospering Metro Region Berlin-Brandenburg

Although everyone assumed for the longest time that the European Central Bank (ECB) would start raising their lending rates no later than 2020...

Will Interest Rates Maintain their Low Level for Decades Yet?

Between 2012 and 2018, Germany’s population increased by a total of 2.5 million residents. At the same time, a disproportionate number of younger people moved to the country’s major cities, as the Federal Statistical Office recently disclosed.

Pressure on German Housing Markets Keeps Rising

The question how secure the government pension scheme is has preoccupied the German public for quite some time. As early as 1986, ahead of the general elections, the Federal Minister of Labour...

Serious Worries about Old-Age Poverty

For more than 15 years, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) has compared the major German cities and published its findings in a number of differentiated rankings. This year, Berlin took the top spot as most dynamic city for the first time.

City Ranking: Berlin is Germany’s Most Dynamic City

Whether or not a real estate bubble is looming or indeed about to burst on Germany’s housing market has been subject to public debate for years.

Still No Signs of a Real Estate Bubble

Since 2011, Germany’s homeownership rate has flatlined somewhere between 45 and 46 percent, which means that nowhere else in Europe, apart from Switzerland, do so many households rent their homes.

Reasons Why Germans Find it so Hard to Build Wealth

While the enormous demand for housing in Berlin persists and while this will be another year of demographic growth for the city, housing construction in the German capital is rapidly running out of steam.

Fewer and Fewer Planning Permissions in Berlin

Between 2014 and 2018, the homeownership rate in Germany rose by one percentage point from 45.5 to 46.5 percent of the private households. 

German Homeownership Rate Perks up

The number of households in Germany is growing, which is explained, on the one hand, by demographic growth, but also by the continuous decline in the number of persons per household, on the other hand. 

Steady Increase in Single-Person Households and Micro-Apartments

In addition to the housing issue, climate protection is one of the key subjects that are at the very centre of the public debate in Germany.

Climate Policy Reversal in the Housing Sector Requires Billions Annually

The most attractive German cities for investments in existing residential buildings are Lüneburg, Fürth and Pforzheim.

Still Plenty of Potential in Class B Cities

The housing issue is currently one of the most hotly debated topics in Germany’s politics and media.

Germans have Misguided Notions about the Housing Market

German metropolises don’t quite play in the same league as the “Big Seven,” these being London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and Seoul.

Berlin and Munich among the World’s Finest Investment Destinations

While the number of condominium sales in the major German cities declined overall in 2018, average selling prices increased noticeably, as the ACCENTRO Homeownership Report 2019 shows.

East German Housing Markets Keep Catching up

Germany’s property tax legislation must be re-enacted by the end of 2019 at the latest, or so the Federal Administrative Tribunal ruled.

Social Democrats Lay Axe to Recoverability of Property Tax

Germany has traditionally been a country of tenants – the majority of households here rent their homes, whereas the homeownership rate has flatlined at 45 percent for many years. 

Majority of Tenants Desire Homeownership

When the Federal Government announced the child tax credit for first-time home buyers last years and eventually introduced it in September 2018...

Child Tax Credit for Home Buyers more Effective than Assumed

Among Germany’s seven biggest cities, Hamburg stands out as the metropolis with the fastest housing development, relatively speaking.

Hamburg Leading the Way in Housing Construction

A reform of Germany’s real estate transfer tax has been demanded for the longest time in order to encourage more people to seek homeownership. At 45 percent, Germany’s homeownership rate counts among the lowest anywhere in Europe.

How a Reform of the Real Estate Transfer Tax Would Provide Relief to Home Buyers

Interest on mortgage loans has been at an all-time low for years, and yet Germany’s homeownership rate appears to be frozen in place at 45 percent.

Younger Households Go for Homeownership Less and Less Often

The number of flats built in Germany is currently far too low to keep up with demand, and most conspicuously so in the country’s metropolises. This is the gist of an analysis recently conducted by the IW German Economic Institute in Cologne.

Housing Construction in Major German Cities far too Slow

Housing Comparatively Affordable in GermanyThe affordability of housing is a topic that has dominated societal and political debates in Germany for a number of years now.

Housing Comparatively Affordable in Germany

While the public debate revolves primarily around the blatant supply shortage in the rental housing sector, a recent survey found that the supply of condominiums and detached or semi-detached homes in Germany falls well short of demand as well. 

Germany Lacks 300,000 Family Homes

Nearly a year and a half after it was formed, the incumbent German Government presented its first housing benefit and rent report – and thereby documented how ineffective the housing policy of recent years has been. 

No Relief for the Housing Market

So far, there had basically been a political consensus that red tape and amendments to the landlord-tenant law would be applied to existing properties only while sparing new-build ones as much as possible.

German Ministry of Justice Seeks to Regulate New-Build Rents as Well

The steep price growth over the past years has drastically increased the wealth of many property owners.

Low Homeownership Rate Causes Great Differences in Wealth

Excessive red tape in Berlin’s housing construction sector prompts property developers to focus increasingly on office development instead.

Building Offices Preferable to Housing Construction in Berlin

The demand for housing in Germany will keep increasing for decades to come – in spite of the prospective long-term decline in population. This is the upshot of a survey conducted by Bernd Raffelhüschen and Roman Witkowski at the University of Freiburg.

Housing Demand to Keep Rising for Decades

As recently as last year, it was generally assumed that interest on mortgage loans had long bottomed out and would inevitably rise in the short-, medium- or long-term. Now, at the start of summer 2019, an entirely different situation presents itself.

Building Finance Rates Have Never been Lower

Katarina Barley (Social Democrats), the former Minister of Justice who just resigned her brief for a seat in the European Parliament, submitted a draft bill for far-reaching amendments to the landlord-tenant legislation to the federal cabinet...

German Ministry of Justice Plans to Further Tighten Landlord-Tenant Law

There is a real chance that the shortage in development land could stall the construction of new-build housing in Germany in the medium term.

Rising Land Prices Jeopardise Housing Development Targets

The net assets of private German households have been making hefty gains, as a recent survey by the Bundesbank noted. 

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Christian Democrat Block Carried the Day: Tenants to Pay for Carbon Levy

Christian Democrat Block Carried the Day: Tenants to Pay for Carbon Levy

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