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In the Munich bacon belt, prices rose by more than 20 percent last year
Photo: Westend61 / Getty Images
The corona pandemic did not dampen the price increase for apartments and houses, but fueled it further: in 2020 houses in Germany rose by ten percent, apartments by eleven percent and rents by three percent.
This emerges from data evaluations by the RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research on the basis of offers on the ImmobilienScout24 Internet platform.
"Despite the corona pandemic, the increase in all three categories was even greater than in previous years," says Sandra Schaffner, head of the research data center at RWI.
For years, the price increases have been driven primarily by the metropolitan regions.
The corona pandemic has not changed anything here either: The development of the seven largest cities also shows a positive trend in house prices almost across the board for 2020.
Berlin had the smallest increases, Frankfurt am Main the largest.
But according to RWI, real estate in the surrounding communities is now also getting really expensive.
The average asking prices for houses in Düsseldorf, for example, rose by 7.7 percent in 2020.
In all the districts surrounding the state capital, the upward trend was significantly steeper: in the Rhine district of Neuss by around 13.7 percent, in Mettmann by 12.5 percent.
The dream of a house in the country has apparently become even more urgent due to Corona.
The situation is similar in the Berlin region.
There, for the first time, house prices in the surrounding communities have risen faster than in the city center.
Houses in the city rose by seven percent in 2020, while prices in Märkisch-Oderland rose by 30.8 percent, in Barnim by 35.6 percent and in Oberhavel by as much as 43 percent.
"In Berlin there seems to be evidence of an escape from the city," write the RWI researchers in the study.
Increased home office and less usable cultural offers could have made living in the city less attractive during the pandemic.
Again and again, economists and housing researchers had recently discussed whether the corona pandemic would give city dwellers a new zest for rural life.
After all, employees who commute to the office less often take longer distances.
But the RWI experts doubt that the price increases in the Berlin area are solely due to such corona-related effects.
It is more likely that overheated house prices are driving people out of the city because many can no longer afford to buy there.
A trend that has been observed for many years: Since 2008, the purchase prices of houses in Berlin have risen by 140 percent and those of condominiums by 207 percent.
In addition, the more rapidly rising prices in the Berlin area can only be observed for houses.
In the case of apartment purchases, on the other hand, prices within Berlin are rising faster than in the surrounding area.
"This could also be due to the rent cap in Berlin, as this may result in more and more apartments being sold instead of rented out," says Schaffner.
State rent ceilings have been in effect in the capital for a year.
In other metropolitan regions, there is little evidence of an escape from the city.
In many places, prices have risen sharply both in the cities and in the surrounding area.
Overall, Munich is still at the top of all cities and districts in terms of property prices and rents.
Apartment rents in Munich are more than twice as high as the German average and the prices for comparable houses are more than four times as high.
The surrounding area has always been expensive in Munich - in districts like Erding or Starnberg, however, prices rose by more than 20 percent last year.
In eastern Germany, on the other hand, prices are consistently below the German average in all categories except Brandenburg and individual cities in other federal states.
Basically, both for rents and purchase prices, the prices per square meter are higher in metropolitan areas than in rural areas.
In Hamburg house prices went up in double digits both in the city and in all the surrounding areas.
The climb was strongest in Pinneberg.
Houses in and around Cologne also became considerably more expensive.
However, the metropolis itself recorded the strongest increase.
In the Frankfurt am Main region, the already expensive Main-Taunus district has grown again.
There, houses at 5456 euros per square meter meanwhile cost almost as much as in the city.
In the Stuttgart region, house prices have risen sharply in addition to the urban area, especially in the Böblingen district.
