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Residential building and shopping center in Cottbus: an alternative to Berlin?
Photo: AXEL SCHMIDT/ REUTERS
Berlin remains an Eldorado for landlords.
If you have an apartment to rent there, you can even use a handwritten note on the notice board in the local supermarket to find enough candidates.
A little more effort - for example an advertisement in one of the large real estate portals, quickly leads to a flood of applicants.
The statisticians from ImmoScout24 determined an average of 174 reactions for the past year - per advertisement and week.
In Frankfurt am Main there were just 15 – but even that means little relaxation for those looking for an apartment, because there is a high risk that several of the 14 competitors will be seriously interested and have better references.
However, the high demand for rental apartments not only creates frustration when competing with others, it also leads to disproportionate price increases.
Across Germany, the asking prices for existing apartments in 2021 were 4.1 percent higher than a year earlier, as the statisticians from Immoscout24 found.
For new buildings, the difference was as much as seven percent.
The real estate service provider JLL calculated somewhat lower rates of increase, and even a slight decline in some cities, but overall the trend is clear: rents in German metropolises are becoming more expensive. The official experts also confirm the trend. "The party goes on," is how Reiner Rössler, who currently represents the group of state committees, summarizes the situation.
The reasons are obvious.
Especially in the big cities, there are still thousands of apartments that could compensate for the influx of the last decade.
"We don't have a corona kink downwards," says the Vice Chair of the Hamburg Expert Committee, Sonja Andresen, describing the situation.
The prices in the simple locations approached those of the middle ones.
Many people are therefore looking for apartments and houses on the outskirts and in the surrounding area.
With the change to the home office, people are apparently increasingly willing to accept longer commutes with commutes of up to one and a half hours, said Andresen.
The figures from the ImmoScout24 statisticians confirm the impression.
Not all city dwellers are drawn to the outskirts, explains ImmoScout Managing Director Thomas Schroeter: "In the commuter belts, however, demand exceeds supply just as much as it does in the centres."
The experts for 2021 in Berlin have identified a particularly blatant development.
There, the rent cap had initially slowed down the price increase noticeably.
However, after the Federal Constitutional Court declared the regulation illegal, the market quickly caught up with the development.
"The increase of around four percent is strongly influenced by a nearly ten percent increase in rents in existing properties," explained JLL expert Roman Heidrich.
The ImmoScout24 experts see an alternative option for heavily burdened tenants in medium-sized towns in the greater vicinity of the metropolises.
While in Berlin, for example, an average of around 28 percent of net income has to be spent on rent, in Cottbus - around 75 minutes by train - only 16 percent.
For Hamburgers (24 percent) Schwerin would be an option (17 percent), Cologne residents should consider moving to Ratingen.
It could only be cheaper in Munich
Of course, such recommendations are not recipes for everyone.
Those who are firmly rooted in their surroundings, or are grateful for the children’s circle of friends in the daycare center or sports club, or those who even have to look after their elderly parents, will not even think about moving from Berlin-Friedrichshain to Cottbus.
And for the people of Cologne, moving to Ratingen, which is more like Düsseldorf, would be like setting off into a new world.
The experts do not expect the price increase to come to an end anytime soon.
ImmoScout expects the biggest boost for Berlin with inflation of eight percent for existing and seven percent for new rental apartments within the next 12 months.
In Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main, too, the burden on tenants is likely to increase.
In Munich alone, the spiral could come to a standstill.
With material from Reuters
