EQS-News

15th ACCENTRO Homeownership Report 2022: Record Revenues of EUR 43bn on Homeownership Market - Seite 2

“The mid-size cities acted as stabilising anchor of last year’s revenue figures. As a result, these cities are attractive for buy-to-let investors. Their robust performance is often explained by sound economic conditions and low entry prices,” explained Lars Schriewer, the CEO of ACCENTRO Real Estate AG. “It is a trend that has gradually emerged over the past ten years. At the same time, our report shows that demand in the metropolises remains high.”

Among the ten cities with the fastest revenue growth over the past ten years are, in addition to Gera, Halle (Saale) and Chemnitz, other mid-size cities such as Magdeburg (+332 percent) and Offenbach near Frankfurt with a revenue increase by 299 percent. The number of apartments sold dropped in 41 of the 80 examined cities in 2021. At the other end of the scale, you find 16 cities that recorded double-digit percentage growth. These alone claimed a 38-percent share of all sales. Wolfsburg, home to Volkswagen, made the record with the biggest increase in the number of transactions (+75 percent), trailed by Kassel with a 42-percent increase.

Growing Motivation to Buy

Despite the persistently strong demand for housing, the supply shortage, and the inadequate completions figures, the year 2021 was characterised by demonstrable catch-up effects as far as the number of transactions goes, especially in the “Big 8” cities. Berlin is taking the lead here: The 19,784 apartment sales registered in the German capital account for more than 15 percent of all transactions. Runner-up is Munich with 10,965 apartment sales while Hamburg came in third with 6,241 sales. Given the size of these cities, this is not much of a surprise. Striking to note is that Leipzig and Dresden (with 5,481 and 4,071 units sold, respectively) are among the top 5 here, ranking fourth and fifth.

“There were 34 German cities with more than 1,000 transactions in 2021. This is a figure that has been stable for years, yet it also underlines the small-scale nature of the German housing market. So, even as the ten largest cities claim half of all transactions, investors showed keen interest in cities with lower transaction figures,” elaborated Prof. Dr. Michael Voigtländer, head of the research unit financial and real estate markets at the German Economic Institute (IW), who was once again in charge of the data collection this year.