Berlin Apartment Market H1 2026

Resale Market

Resale apartments in Berlin are currently being notarised at an average of €5,320 per sqm, a change of €30 per sqm or 1.0 % against the 2025 average.

Looking further back shows how well the market has held up despite intervening corrections. Over 15 years, prices grew by an average of 8.6 % per year, and by 7.3 % over 10 years.

Location matters most

Where an apartment is located often determines its price more than anything else. The highest prices are currently notarised in Mitte (€7,020 per sqm), followed by Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (€5,780 per sqm) and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (€5,820 per sqm). The lowest are in Marzahn-Hellersdorf (€3,740 per sqm), Spandau (€3,340 per sqm) and Reinickendorf (€3,670 per sqm).

Prices can vary more within a borough than between boroughs. Mitte is the clearest example: within the district of Mitte itself, the price per square metre stands at €9,010 per sqm, while in nearby Wedding, just a few kilometres away, it is €4,250 per sqm, both part of the same borough. Similarly wide ranges appear in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The outlying boroughs of Marzahn-Hellersdorf and Lichtenberg are the most uniform.

Supply and demand are moving apart

Buyers and sellers have converged on price. The gap between asking price and transaction price, a measure of who currently holds the upper hand, stands at around 6 % or €340 per sqm in 2026. A narrow gap like this points to a balanced market, where neither buyers nor sellers can fully assert their price expectations.

Completed sales tell a different story. As at the cut-off date for this report, 5,069 resale apartments have been notarised in Berlin in 2026. Projected to the full year, that is around 19 percent below the 12,516 notarisations recorded in 2025. Because notarisations are reported with a lag, some of that gap is likely to close.

While completed sales are slowing, supply is growing. Across the whole of 2025, 28,923 resale apartments were listed; in the first five months of 2026, the figure already stands at 28,900. At this pace, full-year supply in 2026 would come in well above 2025 — more choice for buyers, more competition for sellers.

What else determines price

Location is the strongest price factor, but not the only one. Availability, construction period and condition all play a role, as does size. The more expensive a square metre becomes, the smaller the apartments buyers tend to purchase. In 2010, the average resale living area stood at 74 sqm; in 2026, it is 69 sqm, while the average transaction price over the same period rose from €109,200 to €376,900.

Vacant apartments naturally command higher prices than occupied ones, where rental yield helps set the price per square metre. Their share of the market is growing, while sales of occupied units have been declining since 2019.

Construction period matters too. Pre-war buildings and recent new-builds achieve the highest prices, while post-war and prefabricated (Plattenbau) buildings rank lowest.

Measured by transaction activity, Berlin remains a city of pre-war housing stock. Apartments built up to 1918 account for the largest share, followed by post-war construction. More recent vintages remain markedly rarer on the market.

New-Build Apartment Market

Buyers currently pay an average of €8,450 per sqm for new-build apartments in Berlin, around 3.0 % or €250 per sqm more than in the same period last year. Over 10 years, average annual price growth has run at roughly 7.5 %. A decade ago, the average price per square metre stood at €3,810 per sqm, a difference of 106.0 % compared with today's new-builds.

In volume terms, Berlin's new-build sales market is effectively frozen. With 571 new-build apartments sold as at the cut-off date for this report, sales are running well below last year. Projected to the full year, that is around 20 percent below the 1,428 units sold in 2025.

Notable is the sharply reduced average size of the units sold, currently at 57 sqm. In 2015, the average new-build condominium measured 82 sqm.

Rental Market

The average asking rent for resale apartments in Berlin stands at €18 per sqm net cold. For new-builds, €22 per sqm is being asked. Year-on-year, re-letting rents in the resale segment have stopped rising, while new-build rents have fallen by -€1.00 per sqm. The trajectory since 2015 shows a steady climb: from €9 per sqm (2015) through €11 per sqm (2020) to €18 per sqm today — a doubling within ten years.

Asking rents also include furnished and fixed-term lettings, which tend to carry higher prices per square metre, though their share of total supply is hard to quantify.

Setting asking rents against census rents makes plain the structural gap between market price and the realised rent level in Berlin. The average census resale rent in 2022 was €7.8 per sqm — less than half the current asking rent of €18 per sqm. In every borough, asking rents sit well above average in-place rents, with the multiple ranging, depending on location, from roughly 1.5 to over 2.5.

The divergence is most pronounced in inner-city boroughs such as Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Mitte and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, where high re-letting rents meet comparatively uniform in-place rents. In the outer boroughs the absolute gap is narrower, yet it remains structurally significant there too: even in lower-rent boroughs such as Marzahn-Hellersdorf or Spandau, asking rents lie well above census levels.

Social housing

According to the Berlin-Brandenburg Statistics Office, Berlin's building authorities approved 14,079 apartments in 2025, up from 9,772 in 2024 (+44.1%). Within social housing, the Senate granted approval for around 5,200 apartments, with a funding volume of some €1.3 billion. Eighty percent are being built by state-owned housing associations. Most of the subsidised apartments are aimed at middle incomes, with entry rents of €11.50 per square metre. At the end of 2023, Berlin counted just under 100,000 social housing units, down from 105,000 a year earlier. Each year, around 5,000 apartments fall out of their subsidy commitment.

Housing Shortage at the Core

Berlin's apartment market has been structurally undersupplied for many years. The 2024 Urban Development Plan Housing (Stadtentwicklungsplan Wohnen) quantifies total housing demand from 2022 to 2040 at 272,000 apartments. The figure comprises a demographic additional demand of 85,000 units from in-migration, a relief demand of 137,000 apartments to establish a fluctuation reserve of around three percent, and a strategic land reserve of 50,000 units for exceptional developments and crises. The plan itself makes no forecasts on future rent or price developments. Nevertheless, conclusions about potential market effects can be drawn from supply conditions and the spatial distribution of new construction. In inner-city locations, new-build potential is limited — additional living space arises predominantly through densification or conversion. While new quarters on the urban fringe add supply, established locations remain tight.

Investment Perspective

The structural fundamentals of the Berlin apartment market remain intact. The vacancy rate stood at 2.0 percent according to the 2022 census — well below the fluctuation reserve a functioning market requires. At the same time, construction activity is easing. In 2024, a net 15,362 apartments were added, after 17,310 in 2022. This persistent excess of demand underpins rental growth and secures the long-term value retention of resale investments.

That scarcity is reflected in long-run price performance. Over ten years, Berlin's resale market has delivered a CAGR of 7.3 %. The five-year figure stands at 1.3 %, reflecting the 2022/23 correction.

Outlook

Prices have been growing again since 2025, though transaction activity remains subdued. After price declines of -5.0 % in 2023 and -3.0 % in 2024, prices per square metre rose by 6.0 % in 2025 and a further 1.0 % in 2026. Values are approaching the previous peak of 2022 (€5,360 per sqm) without yet reaching it. Resale apartments currently stand at €5,320 per sqm.

This price movement runs alongside a shrinking transaction market. More listings meet fewer completions at rising prices, and the market is becoming more selective. Owners are using the price gains to sell, while buyers with lower financing needs increasingly set the pace. Rate-sensitive prospects remain on the sidelines. The effect is most pronounced in the new-build and investment markets, and in the new-build segment it also explains the shrinking apartment sizes.

2026 may also bring regulatory changes for Berlin's apartment market.

The federal government is pressing ahead with a reform of tenancy law. The draft bill, approved by the cabinet, provides for stricter rules on furnished apartments, transparency obligations for furniture surcharges, and a cap on index-linked rent increases. The bill still needs to pass the Bundestag and Bundesrat; enactment within 2026 is considered likely.

The cabinet has also approved the Building Modernisation Act (Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetz), which is set to replace the previous Heating Act. The blanket requirement for a 65 percent share of renewable energy no longer applies. Instead, the federal government is opting for technology-neutral rules and greater decision-making freedom for property owners. This bill is also still going through the parliamentary process, with enactment expected in autumn 2026.

The ECB has raised the deposit facility rate to 2.25 percent, after holding it at 2.0 percent for around eleven months. Mortgage rates are currently running at roughly 3.7 to 4.1 percent. Whether this level holds remains open given geopolitical and inflationary risks; the conservative assumption for now is a stable rate environment.

On 20 September, Berlin elects a new House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus). Housing policy is traditionally one of the defining campaign issues, from rent regulation and rights of first refusal to conversion bans.

Methodology

Data sources: Gutachterausschuss für Grundstückswerte in Berlin (transaction data) and IMV Immobilien-Marktdaten-Vertriebs GmbH (asking-price data). Own calculation, aggregation and presentation across Berlin’s spatial levels (borough, district, neighborhood). The figures shown are based on a model-based analysis and do not replace official statistics; despite careful processing, deviations cannot be ruled out.