In 2019 the cost of new rental contracts fell in several top cities compared to the previous year, reported Spiegel on Monday.
That’s according to Research and Consulting Company for Housing, Real Estate and the Environment (F+B) which measures the rent and price developments on the German real estate market.Â
Researchers found that new contract rents in the fourth quarter of 2019 fell by 0.3 percent nationwide compared to the fourth quarter of 2018. Overall, according to F+B, rents fell in 11 of the 50 most expensive cities in Germany.
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With a drop of 4.4 percent, Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria recorded the sharpest decline in new contract rents, followed by Fellbach near Stuttgart (3 percent drop) and Olching, where rents fell 2.3 percent.
Munich remains at the top of the list as the most expensive city to rent. According to F+B, at the end of 2019 it cost an average of €16.40 per square metre for apartments newly leased onto the market. However, this is also 0.6 percent less than in the previous year.
For overall rents, F+B reported in November that Stuttgart was the priciest city in Germany.
Meanwhile, in Ingolstadt new rental contracts per square metre cost on average €10 – a drop of 0.7 percent.
Even in Berlin, where new rents been rising steeply for years, costs have fallen by 1.2 percent compared to 2018. However, the capital does not appear in the top 50 of the most expensive cities in the F+B Index. It's at number 72.
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In other major cities such as Stuttgart (plus 0.8 percent), Frankfurt am Main (plus 0.5 percent) and Hamburg (plus 0.1 percent), prices rose slightly when rents were re-leased onto the market, but stayed below the inflation rate.
Where rents went up in 2019
But there are also places where it continued to rise strongly. For example, Bietigheim-Bissingen in Baden-WĂĽrttemberg is among the 50 most expensive German cities. Here, new rental contracts rose by a hefty 13.6 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year.Â
In Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria, F+B recorded an increase of 11.4 percent, and in Ettlingen in Baden-Württemberg rents went up by 8.6 percent.
In contrast to rents, the trend in purchase prices for real estate continues to go up. Prices for family homes went up by 3.8 percent and the cost of buying apartments (plus 5.4 percent) continued to rise strongly compared to the previous year.
Vocabulary
New contract rents fell - die Neuvertragsmieten sind gesunken.
Sharpest decline – der stärkste Rückgang
Square metre - Quadratmeter
Purchase/buying price - der Kaufpreis
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