German residential prices rise by average 7% during pandemic

Real estate financing portal Baufi24 has published a new study showing how German residential prices have risen over the past 12 months. The average overall price rise is 6%, but there are regional differences.

The study analysed 200,000 property transactions since the beginning of the Corona pandemic, using data from the period November 2020 to April 2021, which they compared with data from the period May 2020 to October 2020. 

The price per square metre for apartment from November to April averaged €3,065 - that is 6.82% more than in the previous half-year. For single-family homes, a buyer paid an average of €3,708.72 per square metre, 5.08% more than before.

Housing in the seven German metropolises Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart is significantly more expensive. There, the average price per square metre for condominiums from November 2020 to April 2021 was €5,685.63 (+6.08% compared to the previous half-year). The top city, Munich, came out at €9,413.21 per square metre (+4.55%), while the biggest rise was in Hamburg at 9.7%

However, prices also rose in smaller cities with populations of 100,000 or more, in some cases notably. The price per square metre for condominiums in Halle/Saale, for example, shot up by 15.23% between the two comparison periods. In Kiel the increase was 13.27%, in Hagen 12.61%.

Only Bremerhaven saw price falls for apartment buyers: here the price per square metre fell by 3.57% to an average of €1,790 . Other cities with price rises of below 1% included Gütersloh, Remscheid, Saarbrücken and Gelsenkirchen.