The founding investors of the Internet department store Zalando and the start-up incubator Rocket Internet are increasingly investing in real estate, preferably in Berlin. After joint research by SPIEGEL and the ZDF magazine "Frontal 21" own the brothers Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer over a complicated network of companies alone in the center of the capital real estate worth at least 150 million euros. In addition, according to land register files, land, houses and commercial space in almost every Berlin district.
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Besides Wilhelminian tenements in Prenzlauer Berg as well as commercial spaces in Reinickendorf and Neukölln, spectacular buildings are also among them. The portfolio includes, for example, the Admiralspalast, a glamorous amusement park from the beginning of the 20th century, the former headquarters of the Bayer Group on the Kurfürstendamm and the Ullsteinhaus.
"The Samwer brothers are using their business model to change the face of Berlin," said the Bremen economist Rudolf Hickel the SPIEGEL and "Frontal 21". "The innovative forces, the creatives that are lost, or even the simple tenant, the craft business from next door."
The fact that money from the New Economy is invested in the values of the old economy such as real estate is, according to Hickel, not just a development in Germany. "We also observe this in the US," said the economics professor. The money generated by digital companies is becoming less common in their own development, "because they no longer care because it is less profitable." In contrast to the internet business, the real estate industry is less "flighty and vulnerable to crisis".
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Marc, Alexander and Oliver Samwer (from left, archive picture)
The Regensburg economist and real estate expert Tobias Just sees this development critically. "When IT companies are no longer investing in their core business, but in real estate, then it is a warning sign to both businesses and the real estate market," said Just the SPIEGEL and "Frontal 21". The consequence is an "accelerating price dynamics".
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