As of: January 29, 2024, 12:29 p.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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Cranes and scaffolding are on the construction site of an apartment building.
© Bernd Wüstneck/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/Symbolbild
The demand for houses and apartments in Germany is increasing again.
A lot has also changed in terms of prices.
However, there are clear regional differences.
An overview.
Munich – High costs and rising interest rates have caused a turnaround in the booming real estate market in Germany, demand collapsed and prices fell.
Now there seems to be a slight recovery: the demand for houses and apartments in Germany is increasing again, and something is also happening with prices.
This is shown by a current analysis by the real estate agent McMakler, according to which a 4.5 percent increase in demand was recorded in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the previous quarter.
Real estate evaluation: demand is increasing, prices for apartments are rising
In Munich, demand is the second highest among the seven A cities, with an increase of 15 percent compared to the previous quarter - after Frankfurt am Main, which has the highest demand at 28 percent.
Interest in residential real estate has increased in six of the seven metropolitan regions, according to the real estate agent.
Only Hamburg recorded a decline in real estate demand of around 10 percent.
A lot has also happened in terms of prices: According to McMakler, apartments recorded a price increase of 1.2 percent, while purchase prices for houses are still falling by 0.2 percent.
There are clear regional differences: in eastern Germany, housing prices rose the most in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia.
In the seven A cities, however, according to the evaluation, prices for both apartments and houses are continuing to decline.
Only in Berlin and Munich did purchase prices rise moderately, by 0.4 and 0.2 percent respectively.
Felix Jahn, founder and managing director of McMakler, explains the development: “Interest rates are still significantly higher than at the end of 2022. We expect a market characterized by strong restraint until the second half of 2024.
At the same time, the slight nominal price increase in the fourth quarter is a positive signal for a gradual stabilization of the market and a slight increase in demand for real estate.” One driver for this is the fall in mortgage lending rates since November.
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ZIA boss: “We need a lot more apartments in the foreseeable future”
The real estate industry also expects continued high demand for new apartments in Germany.
“We need a lot more housing for the foreseeable future.
There is no way around it,” said the managing director of the Central Real Estate Committee (ZIA), Aygül Özkan, to the
Augsburger Allgemeine
on Monday.
To stimulate construction, she called on states to reduce property transfer taxes and simplify their building regulations.
In addition, low-interest loans from the state are necessary.
ZIA is the leading association of the real estate industry.
Members include 30 associations and around 37,000 companies in the industry.
“We really have to step on the gas now.
Housing is a basic need – as important as water and bread,” emphasized Özkan.
What is missing are apartments in the middle segment – “for the proverbial nurse or police officer who might fall behind when it comes to housing benefit”.
This can be stimulated with low-interest loans from the state development bank KfW.
“We are very pleased that the government is providing two billion euros for two years.” It shows “that the problem has been recognized and the priorities are being set correctly,” said the former CDU Minister for Social Affairs, Women, Family, Health and Integration in Lower Saxony.
When asked why the parties had not been able to create affordable housing for years, Özkan told the newspaper: “Because many people had different expectations of demographic development.” Most of them assumed that we would have a shrinking population have population.
“The realization that we are getting immigration, i.e. refugees plus the desired labor migration for our economy, has been ignored.”
With material from AFP