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Offices in Frankfurt am Main: Companies have to keep their distance
Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / dpa
In many companies, working from home is likely to continue, at least in part, even after the corona pandemic.
But despite the trend towards working from home, rents for office properties in Germany continue to rise.
According to the Office Real Estate Monitor 2022 of the German Economic Institute (IW) and the project developer Preig, office rents increased by an average of around 5 percent last year and thus slightly more than in 2020.
The study examined the price development in 71 large cities and their surrounding communities.
More employees, more distance
The main reason for the stable development is probably that between June 2020 and June 2021 the number of office workers subject to social security contributions increased by 250,000, according to the study.
The IW experts write that the increase in mobile working has had only minor effects on the office real estate market so far.
“Also because companies have to keep more distance when designing workplaces and because many companies are waiting until after the corona pandemic to move.”
Energy prices could affect office rents
Overall, according to the study, office rents rose in 80 percent of the cities surveyed.
The highest growth was in Bremerhaven in 2021 with an increase of 14.6 percent.
Rents also rose above average in Potsdam, Münster and Leipzig.
In contrast, there were significant declines in Regensburg and Ludwigshafen.
According to the study, the areas surrounding the seven most important real estate locations – Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart – have seen disproportionately high increases in rents.
This could indicate that companies are increasingly looking at cheaper offers away from the city centers.
For the current year, the experts anticipate a stable development of the office market.
However, the sharp increase in energy prices could lead to a split in the market, with the result that rents for buildings with high energy efficiency will rise while they will fall or stagnate for buildings that have not been renovated.
mmq/dpa
