Mercers 2010 quality of living survey

Mercers annual Quality of living survey shows a good ranking for several German cities. Whereas Vienna keeps its unchallenged number 1 position, Zurich (2), Geneva (3) and Düsseldorf (6) are the other top World Wide Europeans under the top ten. But Frankfurt (7), Munich (7) and Bern (9) almost make the top 10 a European only affair. Only Vancouver, Auckland and Sydney can challenge Europe on the places 4 and 10. Read the rest of this entry »

The Property market in Frankfurt shows a strong interest of private investors which especially in the last four months have noticeably increased in numbers. Private investors want to shift funds from bank property investments with stable value. One especially can notice a strong interest by a buyer clientele in a price region of 100-200.000 €; either owner-used or increasingly also as a rented property. Whilst about two or three years ago the response to rented apartments was near to nil at least by German investors, this has increased enormously in volume in the last months. But even the “small” investor looks precisely for location, features and long-term rentability. Features like balcony, wooden floors like floor boards or parquet, energy consumption and even the apartments direction play a large role in the choice of the right place. Preferred areas of the city are Bockenheim, Nordend, Sachsenhausen and Bornheim. The Westend rather has become a focussed area by buyers of large or very large flats. Our tip: even in the other parts of the city the buyer of two or all apartments on one floor preserves the chance to unite these later to one large apartment which are much sought-after and can sell for a good price. For investors it is also important that when they buy an apartment with an existing tenant they should inquire into the payment of rent by that tenant, if there were delays or defaults, and if the tenant complained about things that may even have lead to shortening of the rent. All in all the investment climate has improved enormously and Frankfurt as a well-known value-stable location of many international banks and other firms is one of the best places to put ones money into. This is known very well by many, also younger buyers.

Might have been wondering why you didn’t get comments on the German property market recently on our website. Well, that does not mean that there were no news, but we are currently working on a pretty extensive market research project and will give you the results shortly. Right now, what might be of interest to you, is a study published in the German economic magazine CAPITAL (not DAS KAPITAL pls, this is stale dated by centuries and its author does not really have a good name here….), which you can find online in German here. If you need assistance with translation, please send me an email. It breaks down the property market in Germany by looking into 180 cities of Germany and 1800 city regions. The main article gives an interesting overview of the market in Germany. As I said, comments from our viewpoint will follow here shortly and of course comments from you are very welcome.

Well, today we can refer to an interesting headline of a press release from Reuters; its apparently only availabe in English, at least I did not find its German pendant. “German homes as good as Gold” is what it says. We advise to study that article in its full length. As a comment: We have been saying since the year 1999 on our international website that the German market is stable, secure and attractive for foreign investors. And we focussed on residential not commercial property as this is the really stable market. Read the rest of this entry »

We mentioned in our entry of 22 February that the German property market seems pretty unimpressed by the International financial crisis. Just yesterday we received an email from Global Property Guide – which is a company completely independent from ours – stating that the German property market is doing well despite the crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

How is the property market in Berlin doing these days? Contrary facts and opinions are the order of the day. But also really good news. In this article we publish an interview which we had with an architect, who overlooks the “scene” from his office in Friedrichstrasse “Am Checkpoint Charlie”.

Ingo Ronski leads the office “Ronski + Burke Architects and Engineers” together with his Partner Fergus Burke.

Mr. Ronski, you as architect and project development planner know the Berlin real estate market since many years. What changes did you notice in the recent months?

I.R.: Recently quite obviously a much smaller number of International Investors is searching to buy on the Berlin market. Subsequently the prices dropped and the situation once again has become interesting for buyers.

Read the rest of this entry »

The European Central bank has lowered the prime rate yesterday to 1.5%. Does that mean the general interest rates will go down on property financing? Not really as due to the refinancing means being short the interest rates on real estate mortgages will still be above 4% on 10 years fixed in average. Once the trust in the banking system has come back the interest rates may go down further but thats totally dependent on the general development of the economy. At a rate of 4.3-4.5% with a ten years fixed interest financing of property is recommendable now.

The German newspaper FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) referred in its Friday 20 Feb. 2009 Immobilien Property section to a recent study done by the Deutsche Städtetag (German council of Cities) where they did a research on sales prices of real estate houses and apartments in 2008. (The full study can be viewed online on their website as PDF-file in German.)* Read the rest of this entry »

Owners of residential property in Germany who are not familiar with the rental laws and interpretations thereof, especially in the residential market, can be put at some very unfriendly surprises. Not so much by the fact that the law is supposedly tenant-friendly – that is the case today in many countries of the world and it does have a certain value to protect tenants against arbitraries – no, rather by the fact that one or two small mistakes in a lease contract can have consequences like a clause becoming totally invalid and be costly for the landlord. Such “booby-traps” can be hidden in agreements about contract length, notice periods, monthly utility payments, repairs, wear and tear and last but not least, renovation and decoration. We do not want to go at length into any of these details, but what if you have a newly built or freshly renovated apartment and want to rent it out and get it back in such nice condition at the end of the lease? Virtually piles over piles of court cases have accumulated about quarrels on this subject, until finally one decision of the Supreme Court rolled like and earthquake over Germany in 2004. Since then landlords are very concerned to have the right and correct wordings in their lease contracts.

If you are about to rent out an investment property, make sure that the agent preparing the contract is familiar with the exact wordings needed and also knows about the very latest case decided to the favour of a landlord on 14 January 2009 (BGH, Urteil v. 14.01.2009, Az. VIII ZR 71/08) as this can help you ensure that the renovations be done by the tenant in the end.

Email us if you have any question on this.