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Construction of condominiums in Berlin (archive image)
Photo: Lothar Ferstl / picture alliance / dpa
While the corona crisis has not affected the real estate market in Germany, experts are now expecting catch-up effects and further increases in prices.
According to a forecast by the Hamburg Gewos Institute for Urban, Regional and Residential Research, total real estate sales will increase by 6.3 percent to 311.1 billion euros in the current year.
In the previous record year of 2020, sales were just under 293 billion euros.
The main drivers are residential real estate, the volume of which is expected to grow by 7.5 percent from the previous year to 237.7 billion euros. This emerges from the current Gewos forecast, from which the German press agency quotes. At the same time, the number of transactions will only increase slightly by 1.4 percent. The average price per purchase case continues to rise.
Gewos expert Sebastian Wunsch confirms this with figures from 2020: »The price dynamic in the area of owner-occupied residential property has increased again in the wake of the corona pandemic. With 10.8 percent for private homes and 7.2 percent for condominiums, we saw the strongest price increases in 2020 since we began our records in the 1980s. "The last time we registered a higher number of purchase cases was in 1999."
Market activity is increasingly shifting from the bought-out markets in the big cities to the suburbs and rural areas.
The trend towards the surrounding area appears to be increasing in the light of the pandemic experiences, Wunsch said.
One and two-family houses are particularly in demand, for which Gewos registered an all-time high of 259,300 sales cases last year.
dab / dpa
