Brandenburg’s real estate market broke all records in 2021: At 10.1 billion euros, sales generated with building land, arable land and forest areas last year increased by more than a quarter compared to 2020.
This emerges from the current real estate market report for Brandenburg, which the chairman of the upper expert committee for real estate values, Jürgen Kuse, and Secretary of State for the Interior Uwe Schüler (CDU) presented in Potsdam on Tuesday. As early as 2020, the report reported a record sales of eight billion euros at the time.
For the annual real estate market report, the notarized purchase contracts for land, condominiums and houses in the state of Brandenburg are regularly evaluated: In 2021 there were a total of 35,000 business transactions, said Kuse.
However, the report does not cover so-called “share deals”, in which land changes hands as part of the sale of companies or company shares. The individual size of a plot of land or a condominium also plays no role in the values in the report.
“We’re coming from an incredibly low level and have grown significantly in recent years,” said Kuse. “You used to be able to buy a plot of land 30 kilometers beyond the Berlin city limits for ten euros per square meter – but those days are over and they won’t come back.”
The highest prices are still achieved in the Berlin area: in Kleinmachnow, a detached house now costs an average of 1.112 million euros. In Falkensee it is 667,000 euros.
On the other hand, if you move to the outskirts, you can still get a bargain: In Wittenberge in der Prignitz, an average single-family house costs 139,000 euros, in Angermünde 194,000 euros – and in Uebigau-Wahrenbrück in the distant Elbe-Elster district, the average, detached single-family house was already for 64,000 euros available.
Overall, the average price for a single-family home rose by 16 percent year-on-year to EUR 361,000 and for semi-detached or terraced houses by around a fifth to EUR 296,000.
Nevertheless, the report shows that the demand for building land and residential property is increasingly shifting to the rural regions of Brandenburg, said Schüler. This could also have something to do with the fact that the pandemic has made it easier to work from home and choose a flexible place of work.
The market for condominiums in Brandenburg has also picked up significantly. The state capital of Potsdam is clearly at the top here. When selling a condominium for the first time, the square meter cost an average of 6454 euros. In Frankfurt (Oder), on the other hand, a square meter only cost 2612 euros.
[If you want to have all the latest news live on your mobile phone, we recommend our app, which you can download here for Apple and Android devices.]
A total of 4,927 condominiums were sold in the state of Brandenburg last year. Of these, 872 were sold in Potsdam. This is an increase of 60 percent compared to 2020. In Prignitz and Uckermark, on the other hand, there were so few sales of condominiums that the average values could not be included in the report.
“Condominiums are becoming more attractive across the country,” said committee chairman Kuse. “Potsdam is still a market focus for residential property, but numerous new construction projects outside the surrounding area, such as in Zossen, Nauen or in the Scharmützelsee district, have contributed to the noticeable revival of the market for owner-occupied apartments.”
Finally, the prices for land in agriculture and forestry also rose slightly: one square meter of arable land cost an average of EUR 1.21, compared to EUR 1.06 the year before. And the price for a square meter of forest rose from 62 cents to 69 cents.
However, the geographic location of the land in the state plays a greater role here than with other plots of land: There is much better soil in northern Brandenburg than in Lusatia, where sales proceeds are correspondingly lower.
For the current year, Kuse expects business to be quieter. In the first half of the year, the number of purchase contracts fell by around a quarter compared to the same period last year, he reported. Due to crises caused by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, among other things, there is a certain reluctance, said Kruse. The chief expert expects the price increase to slow down in the coming years.
