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Keep rising: real estate prices
Photo: T.Seeliger / imago images
People in Germany have to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets for houses, apartments and land.
From 2010 to 2020, used condominiums have become 85 percent more expensive, single and two-family houses 75 percent, building plots around 65 percent, according to the market report of the official appraisal committees.
The corona crisis did not change the trend, "an end to the price spiral is not in sight".
According to the report, for which around one million notarized purchase contracts are evaluated every year, more money flowed into German real estate in 2020 than ever before: 310 billion euros, two thirds of which was for the purchase of residential property.
With a plus of one percent, the total did not grow as strongly as in previous years.
In the opinion of the experts, decisive factors remain low interest rates, insufficient building land and apartments, capacity bottlenecks in the construction industry and rising construction costs.
Last year, buyers paid an average of EUR 1940 per square meter for used condominiums.
For one- and two-family houses it was 2140 euros, for residential property 165 euros.
The regional differences are growing.
In places where it used to be expensive, prices rose particularly.
"The prices for residential property have risen so sharply, especially in the metropolises, that the markets here now appear to be overheated," they say.
Accordingly, prices have also increased significantly on the North and Baltic Seas and in the Alpine foothills.
Offices are not as popular as in previous years
In Munich and the surrounding area, houses cost an average of around 11,000 euros per square meter of living space.
In the Kyffhäuserkreis in Thuringia, on the other hand, 500 euros are sufficient, just as in the Mansfeld-Südharz district in Saxony-Anhalt.
A similar picture emerges when looking at building plots: Around 1.3 million euros are due for 600 square meters in Munich - in parts of Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it is less than 11,000 euros.
"The expansion of the housing supply remains the decisive factor for a trend reversal in the housing market," said the housing market expert at the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research, Matthias Waltersbacher. "In addition to building new apartments, it is important to get more out of the existing building - for example through renovations and extensions or redensification." In large cities, commercial real estate such as vacant offices could also be converted into living space.
Because offices are not as popular as in previous years.
In 2020, 11 percent fewer office properties were sold than in the previous year.
The total purchase price even fell by 15 percent to 20.8 billion euros.
The numbers for retail properties also fell.
For arable land, on the other hand, prices have risen further, from an average of EUR 2.10 per square meter in 2011 to EUR 3.30 last year.
hba / dpa