Home Ownership:
Approx 80% of people in Ireland own their own house.
Approx 40% of people in Germany do the same.
Approx 11% of people in Berlin own their own house.

There is a very well established landlord tenant structure with the vast majority of people renting their house or apartment.

A typical apartment building in Berlin consists of approximately 30 apartments with a total size of approximately 2000 Square Metres. Usually the ground floor is in shops or offices.

Rents in Berlin are low relative to Ireland and especially Dublin.
A typical mid-range rent would be a person with an apartment of 80 square metres paying approximately €400 cold rent plus extra for heating and service charges.

The tenant pays for nearly all the costs associated with the apartment such as heating, gas and oil, waste removal, water, electricity, insurance, as well as all furniture and decorating costs inside his door.

The owner is responsible for paying the building manager and the cost of maintaining the structure of the building.

To have capital appreciation if the property is sold as a unit in 5 to 10 years time.
  
1. Rent the property. In general this rental income will meet the repayments on the building and give a good return to the investor for his equity.
2. Break up the building into its separate apartments and sell these off as individual units over a 5 to 7 year period. At the moment it would appear that you would expect to sell individual apartments at about 50% above the square metre price of the full block. So a typical apartment of 80 square metres that cost €80,000 as part of a block of 30 units would be sold for approx €120,000 today.

  1. Prices are very low compared to the rest of Europe.
  2. Interest rates are extremely attractive with banks offering 4.2% fixed for 10 years. Banks are also becoming aggressive at selling these packages as they realise the lending is very safe. Buyers for single-family homes can get up to 100% finance if their income is sufficiently high.
  3. First time buyers grant (“Eigenheimzulage”).
    A person with 2 children can get up to €25,000 in grants from the government over an 8 year period to buy their own home.