[ad_1]
Strong corrections are shaping the Berlin property market in the first six months of this year. Both the number and prices of properties sold fell. Currency turnover in the office building trade in the capital collapsed by 70 percent compared to the previous year. The number of residential and commercial buildings sold fell by more than a third.
Against the trend, there is still a strong demand for homes and land for the construction of single and two-family homes. The property valuation committee published these figures.
The committee located in the Berlin Senate evaluates legally binding real estate purchase agreements. There has been no such decline in Berlin since the market data was recorded, appraisal chief Reiner Rössler told Tagesspiegel. However, he does not see signs of a drop in the real estate market with strong price corrections.
The head of the Berlin Advisory Committee, Reiner Rössler, told Tagesspiegel: “When I saw the numbers, I almost fell off my chair.” The decrease of almost a fifth of the number of land and buildings sold in half a year has not yet occurred in Berlin.
And yet Rössler sees no signs of a housing market decline with major price corrections. Rather, it is correct that the price dynamics in the Berlin property market is slowing down.
Especially since the entire market is not affected by the surprising drop in sales cases and the drop in statistical average prices. The best home and land appraiser sees prices rise less sharply and stagnate in parts of the market.
Residential and commercial buildings are the big losers
The trade in single-family and two-family homes, for example, was spared the fall: in the first half of the year almost 1,300 homes of this type were sold, three percent less than the previous year.
But: because the area sold was four percent smaller and the money spent on the sale increased even more (plus nine percent), the expert committee even calculates an average purchase price of seven percent for such properties.
[Wenn Sie alle aktuellen Entwicklungen zur Coronavirus-Pandemie live auf Ihr Handy haben wollen, empfehlen wir Ihnen unsere App, die Sie hier für Apple- und Android-Geräte herunterladen können.]
The clear losers in the first half of the year are residential and commercial buildings, the typical Berlin housing barracks, as it is also called. Here, the expert committee corrected the average purchase price by eleven percent.
Here too, Rössler cautions against jumping to conclusions: “With nearly 150 properties sold and spread across the city, stick with trend statements.” Especially since in the same period last year an above-average number of expensive new buildings were sold in the city center.
[Wo entstehen neue Wohnungen – konkret in Ihrem Kiez? Eines der Top-Themen in unseren Newslettern aus den zwölf Bezirken. Die Newsletter gibt es kostenlos und schnell hier: leute.tagesspiegel.de]
Surprisingly, the number of condos sold was also down by a fifth compared to the previous semester. This cannot be due to supply – Internet brokers like Immoscout report that the number of condos offered for sale has increased considerably recently. Prospective buyers may well be holding back due to uncertain income and job prospects as a result of the pandemic.
Condos are getting more and more expensive
None of this affects apartment prices, on the contrary: the expert committee calculated an average increase of six percent. This is little compared to recent years. But this trend should be reliable, given that around 6,500 apartments were sold in the first six months of the year.
So has Corona or the introduction of the rent cap shaken the housing market to its foundations? “People are insecure and have been reluctant to buy investment property since the rent limit was introduced,” says Rössler.
Furthermore, in some cases prices “that the market cannot offer” would also be charged. But the (not yet released) third-quarter sales figures the committee is receiving do not currently suggest that the situation will deteriorate further this year.
It is forbidden to leave the living space empty for a longer time
The chief appraiser finds it quite astonishing that undeveloped land prices and the private housing market are not included in the correction. Rössler would have expected more reluctance here because many Berliners had to switch to a part-time job or face uncertain economic prospects.
“It would be premature to talk about calming the housing market, but we suspect that the rent cap and the corona pandemic have left their first marks on the Berlin property market,” said the managing director of the Berlin tenants association, Reiner Wild.
“It can’t be ruled out that previously rented condo owners prefer to sell, but it appears that there are hardly any self-employed buyers for the many deals,” Wild said.
In this context, the Berlin tenants association advised landlords willing to sell that it is forbidden to leave the living space empty for more than three months.
The fact that the number of condo purchases is also declining does not mean for tenant protection agencies that there is also a decrease in interest in converting rental apartments into condos. “That is why we are asking the Federal Cabinet to put the conversion ban into effect tomorrow with the amendment to the Building Code,” Wild said.
