As a teenager, I was a Maoist. One of our favourite aphorisms from the “Great Leader Mao Zedong” was as follows: “Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers.” The aphorism was actually not quite complete. In full, Chairman Mao actually said: “Hence, imperialism and all reactionaries, looked at in essence, from a long-term point of view, from a strategic point of view, must be seen for what they are — paper tigers. On this we should build our strategic thinking. On the other hand, they are also living tigers, iron tigers, real tigers which can devour people. On this we should build our tactical thinking.”

In recent newsletters I have explained just how I became a seller, rather than a buyer, in today’s real estate market. Prices for residential real estate in Berlin keep on rising. There is an ongoing shortage of housing in the city, and demand is surging. Even apartment buildings with maintenance backlogs are changing hands for […]

Property prices are spiralling upwards. Is it still sensible, against such a backdrop, to buy? An investor friend of mine recently told me that he has just sold an apartment building in Berlin for 50% more than he had paid for it, at a price-to-rent ratio of 37. And this wasn’t a luxury property he […]

A majority of the investors involved in Berlin‘s housing market have so far almost completely failed to recognise the serious risks posed by the proposed Rent Index Manipulation Act. And this is despite the fact that no other housing market stands to be so strongly affected as Berlin. After all, Justice Minister Maas‘ planned legislation […]

For twelve years, from 2000 to 2012, I regularly urged investors to buy residential real estate in Berlin. Now I am urging you to sell! The number of articles I have published over the last decade arguing in favour of investments in apartments and apartment buildings in Berlin is so large, I have honestly almost […]

I have started to sell my residential real estate holdings in Berlin. Not all of them, but some. Have you, like me, considered selling? When does it make sense to think about a sale? The speculation period should have ended. At least ten years should have passed between acquiring a property and disposing of it. […]

Many of the investors who are invested in rental property in Berlin are currently considering their options for profitable exits – especially on the back of such strong recent price growth. There are basically three models to choose between: A “global” sale, i.e. selling a building as a single object. In today‘s market, it is […]

None of the population growth forecasts put together over the last few years are now even worth the paper they are printed on. Without exception, they are based on the assumption that net migration to Germany would amount to 100,000 to 200,000 people per year. Over the last few months, more people have been arriving […]

Just enter “Oranienburg” into the search box on ImmobilienScout and see how many vacant apartments are listed. You won’t find more than 20 available apartments – and we are talking about a town of more than 42,000 inhabitants here! I bought my first apartment building in Oranienburg this year. Only one apartment was unlet at […]

Is residential real estate in Berlin overpriced? Or are prices reasonable? Or actually quite affordable? There is no other question people ask me as often. I tend to ask back: “Overpriced compared to what?” There is a term used in behavioural economics that is called “anchoring.” It refers to the phenomenon that people tend to […]

“All power to the soviets!” ran the slogan touted by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution in Russia. And since the days of the Paris Commune that Karl Marx admired, Germany’s left, socialists and Greens have been intrigued by the idea of a democracy based on the council system. Lately, that fascination has inspired the […]

“Buy on bad news, sell on good news,” goes an old stock market adage that people like John Templeton or Warren Buffett took to heart and got rich. For the time being, market players hear virtually nothing but glad tidings from the housing market in Berlin. While this does not necessarily imply that now is […]

The so-called “rent freeze” will enter into effect in a few months’ time. But if you think the Social Democrats will content themselves for now, you got another think coming. Most recently, another tenant protection measure was passed in Berlin, this time a condominium conversion ban in historic district protection areas (in analogy to similar […]

Berlin in 2015: the most popular destination for residential property investors in Europe. The economy is growing, unemployment is going down, the tourist trade is flourishing, property rents and prices are rising faster than in any other European metropolis. Even the formerly distressed borough of Neukölln has become an up and coming part of town […]

No other factor is as important for the performance of a given real estate market than the local industry structure. The main question is, does the city or region attract industries of long-term viability or not? For many years, the economic outlook of the German capital was bleak. While Frankfurt was seen as the German […]

The rent table will have a much higher significance going forward than it has anyway. The key word in the context of the planned rent control measure called the “rent freeze” is “local reference rent.” So far, German courts have generally accepted the rent table as an objective standard. But whether the rent table truly […]

“Nothing may changes, everything must remain as is, reads the maxim.” That is how the SPIEGEL news magazine summed up the policy of Berlin’s boroughs in an article it ran in early February. It reported that a property owner in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was denied permission to add balconies to an apartment building he owns. “The planned […]

Politicians of all camps, from left to right, have been going on about the need to create affordable housing. At the same time, they do everything they can to keep this from happening. The so-called rent freeze – and I warned against it as early as last March, right here in this publication – was […]

The SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG is not exactly known as mouthpiece of the German economy. Yet the left-liberal daily marvelled recently in a lengthy article about Berlin’s animosity vis-à-vis investors. “Berlin is facing a housing shortage,” read the headline. “But those who build are antagonised. About a city that wages war on investors and newcomers.” The article […]

In the area of stock investments, there is a school (“behavioural finance”) that studies the psychological components of investor behaviour. It is an approach that puts the feelings of market players centre stage, and studies them for clues that would explain price movements at the stock exchange. Here is one of the findings of this […]

According to a recent survey done by the IVD Federal Investment and Asset Management Association and the CRES Centre for Real Estate Studies of Steinbeis University in Berlin, residential rents in Germany rose by 9.4% during the past 20 years, climbing from 5.04 euros per square metre to 5.51 euros per square metre. It went […]

Berlin’s performance is on a par with Munich plus Hamburg plus Frankfurt am Main plus Düsseldorf plus Stuttgart. To be precise: Berlin actually outperforms all of these cities combined. While obviously not true in terms of economic power, it is definitely the case in regard to apartment building sales. The Rental Housing Market Report 2012, […]

Sales prices for free-standing homes and condominiums in Berlin keep going up and up – and have people wondering how long this will continue. Quoted prices for condominiums in this town have risen by 37.5 percent since 2009. Rent rates, too, are rising faster here than anywhere else. The estate agency of Jones Lang LaSalle […]

Estate agents in Berlin all seem to face the same issue at the moment: While there is any number of prospects eager to buy, few owners wish to part with their apartment blocks. It is one of the reasons explaining the price hikes. Yet many estate agents have failed to shift their approach: They mainly […]

The official figure is finally on the table – calculated by the renowned BBSR Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development. According to the math done by the institute, the city would need 12,000 apartments in multi-unit buildings, along with 1,000 housing units in detached and semi-detached homes, every year between […]

It is not as easy as it used to be to find a flat in Berlin, at least not if you are looking in the more coveted parts of town. While flathunting is still nowhere near as difficult as in Munich, Frankfurt, or Hamburg, the times when landlords bent over backwards to attract tenants are […]

The most successful real estate investor I know is Christoph Kahl of the company Jamestown. The investment volume in terms of real estate this company acquired and sold in the United States over the years adds up to a total of 8.8 billion US-Dollars. Meanwhile, Kahl dissolved all letting funds, and his investors collected average […]

Since the end of the previous millennium, a number of bubbles formed and popped. For one thing, there was the New Economy bubble which in Germany manifested itself most conspicuously in oddball valuations on the New Market. When the bubble burst, the head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, combated the subsequent crisis […]

Many property owners have probably tried to raise their rents after the publication of Berlin’s latest Rent Table. An endeavour that can prove more complicated on the ground than you would think. For it is hardly enough to pen a letter to the tenant saying that the rent will be brought up to the level […]

Just a few years ago, house owners in many districts of Berlin had to bend over backwards to find new tenants. Not so today, as things have changed for the better. An acquaintance told me the other day with frustration that she had applied for a small studio apartment on Kurfürstendamm only to be told […]

Glad tiding for investors in regard to Berlin’s residential real estate market keep coming in on a daily basis almost. The international auditing and tax consultancy firm of Ernst & Young recently commissioned an independent prestigious French market research institute to conduct a poll among the board members and senior executives of 812 internationally active […]

Berlin’s housing market is more attractive than ever. By now, even institutional investors are sharing this view – and the above-mentioned BulwienGesa survey says as much. However, I should like to add, this sort of announcement by institutional investors in surveys does not necessarily imply that they will put their money where their mouth is, […]

For once, I should like to use this column to talk to you about something other than residential buildings in Berlin. Indeed, I will share with you some of the things that I learned when writing “Dare to be Different and Grow Rich (German title: “Setze dir größere Ziele. Die Erfolgsgeheimnisse der Sieger”). In this […]

“Rents in Berlin Are Soaring” read a recent headline of an articles in the BERLINER ZEITUNG which reported that the average net rent will for the first time exceed the threshold of five Euros per square metre in the 2011 Rent Table, to be published in early summer of this year. The paper cited the […]

Germany’s housing market is more attractive today than it has ever been. The asking rents for new lettings are rising quickly (by 13.5% in Berlin) while vacancies are in rapid decline. All of this was rather predictable, because there has been virtually no housing construction in years. Notwithstanding these glad tidings from the residential rental […]

In the coming days, Berlin will once again host the “Berlin Fashion Week.” It is one of many signs suggesting that the city has made a name for itself in the fashion scene. Twice a year, fashion labels, designers, photographers and models flock to the German capital from all over the world. This is just […]