Record in Berlin Office Market

All good things come in threes: For the third time in a row, the Berlin office market reports a record result.

According to figures from Angermann Real Estate, the agents achieved a letting performance of 928,000 sqm — after 871,000 sqm in 2016 and 832,00 sqm in 2015. The other brokerage houses achieved similar figures to Angermann’s CEO Tibor Frommold. The colleagues from Aengevelt account for 893,000 sqm, Marcus Lehmann from Colliers International for 937,000 sqm. But the letting result will be clearly above the ten-year average of approx. 621,000 sqm, Frommold looks into the glass ball. Lehmann is more courageous in this respect, assuming that the market will break through the 900,000 sqm mark again at the end of 2018.

Puny vacancies are the Achilles’ heel

The high demand and scarce supply are driving prices. “Both average and prime rents have virtually exploded in the course of the year,” says Lehmann. The average value climbed by 15% to 19.15 euros/sqm within a year, the top rent by 9% to 31.30 euros/sqm.

Zalando drives prices up

At 40%, the prices around the Mercedes-Benz Arena, where the online dealer Zalando is currently expanding, climbed the most. Here the average rental price is currently 27.50 Euro/sqm. Prices in the western part of the city centre, where the average rent is 18.30 euros/sqm, have risen by a fifth. The top rent, on the other hand, speaks a completely different language: “Up to 42 euro/sq. m. are being paid for new leases in the Upper West office tower,” Lehmann explains. The experts agree that Berlin rents will continue to rise. “With its top rent, which will be above the 30 euro mark in 2018, Berlin does not have to hide behind Frankfurt and Munich,” predicts Korablin.

Coworkers are hard-working tenants

The most hard-working tenants last year were the coworkers, along with the public sector and creative people. “Especially in the second half of the year, coworking providers have significantly increased their already strong activity,” says Frommold. One example is WeWork, which took 13,000 sqm off the market at Potsdamer Platz. This was the biggest deal in the last quarter of last year. The biggest fish in the whole year was Zalando. The online fashion retailer signed a contract for 49,000 sqm in Friedrichshain in the third quarter.