The valuation committee (Gutachterausschuss) has published its new property market report. It shows a stable market for 2025 – yet the figures look backwards, and today's interest rate tells a different story. A derivation of what this means for the purchase-price multipliers in Berlin's apartment-building segment in 2026.
What does the new Property Market Report 2025/2026 say?
The Berlin valuation committee has determined price stability in almost all sub-markets for 2025. 22,912 notarised purchase cases were evaluated – around 10 percent more than in the previous year.
For me as a broker who predominantly brokers apartment buildings as well as mixed residential-and-commercial buildings, this is the single most important data source every year. It is not based on asking prices or estimates, but on every single actually notarised purchase contract in the city. After the sharp slump of 2022 and 2023, the market settled in 2025. That is good news – but it needs to be read correctly.
What is a purchase-price multiplier – and what does it say about the yield?
The multiplier is the purchase price divided by the annual net cold rent – and thus the direct mirror image of the yield.
Multiplier = purchase price ÷ annual net cold rent
A building with €100,000 in annual net cold rent that sells for €2,000,000 has a multiplier of 20. And this multiplier immediately says something about the yield: a multiplier of 20 corresponds to a 5 percent gross yield, a multiplier of 25 to only 4 percent, a multiplier of 14 to a good 7 percent. A falling multiplier is therefore good news for buyers – more rent per euro invested. For sellers the opposite applies.
This is how the market looked in 2025: across all construction years, the average multiplier stood at 22.6 for pure residential buildings and 21.9 for mixed residential-and-commercial buildings. Compared with the peak of around 32 in the zero-interest years of 2021/2022, that is a clear decline – one that has, however, slowed noticeably of late.
Does this multiplier apply equally to every apartment building?
No – all these figures are averages, and the range behind them is wide. The valuation committee forms mean values across many sales. The individual building can be traded significantly above or significantly below.
A refurbished building in a sought-after location, with healthy rent-increase potential and no structural backlog, regularly achieves multipliers above the average – buyers pay a premium for security and prospects. Conversely, a property with a refurbishment backlog, an unfavourable tenant structure, an energy-efficiency backlog or in a weak location is traded below the average, often significantly. Milieuschutz (social preservation), a high commercial share or a short economic remaining useful life also shift the multiplier.
The average is therefore the orientation, not the verdict. What a specific building is worth is decided by its own characteristics – and that is precisely the work a statistic cannot do.
Why are the valuation committee's figures a look in the rear-view mirror?
Because they are sales from the year 2025.
And in this rear-view mirror there is an interest-rate world that no longer exists today. For much of 2025, the building interest rate for ten-year financing was around 3.1 to 3.5 percent. Today, in August 2026, it is around 3.8 to 4.0 percent – partly already at the four-percent mark. The European Central Bank ended its rate-cutting course after this year's energy-price shock and even raised the deposit rate again in June. For 2026/2027, analysts expect no return to low interest rates, but rather a sideways movement in the region of about 3.6 to 4.2 percent – if anything with the risk to the upside. The tailwind of falling interest rates, which pushed the multipliers ever higher from 2010 to 2021, is therefore gone.
What is the most recent reliable data status?
The valuation committee's most recent official turnover report shows the evaluation of the first quarter of 2026 (published on 15 June 2026).
The valuation committee describes the market as „robust, but with waning momentum“. Two findings stand out. First, trading is thinning out: 17 percent fewer residential buildings were traded, and the monetary turnover slumped by 53 percent – fewer large apartment buildings came onto the market. Second, for residential buildings, the average price level per square metre also gave way for the first time, by 14 percent. That is the first official signal that not only the multiplier but also the pure per-square-metre price is now on the move.
An honest qualification belongs at exactly this point: the valuation committee itself warns that, given the low case numbers in this segment, individual large or particularly expensive properties can strongly distort the average. The minus 14 percent is a signal, not a proven trend. And the official figures for the second quarter of 2026 are not yet available: the valuation committee's half-year status only takes into account contracts submitted by 15 August, and is customarily published only in October. The half-year figures for 2026 currently in circulation come from market observers who, according to their own methodological statements, combine still-incomplete transaction data with asking-price data and evaluate them on a model basis; they themselves point out that their values do not replace official statistics. I deliberately rely here only on the audited official statistics.
How are interest rates and multipliers connected at all?
An investor compares the yield of the property with the cost of his loan – if the interest rate rises, the multiplier will probably fall.
This connection can be read cleanly in the valuation committee's data over 15 years: falling interest rates from 2010 to 2021, rising multipliers; then the sharp break from 2022, when the interest rate jumped and the multipliers collapsed.
Where are the multipliers heading in 2026?
The downward movement continues in 2026, but it slows – the market is approaching a floor.
The big fall is behind us: from around 32 in 2021/2022 to 22.6 (pure residential buildings) and 21.9 (mixed residential-and-commercial buildings) in 2025. The annual declines are becoming smaller year by year – the market is heading towards a floor. For 2026 I expect this braked compression to continue: at an interest rate of around 4 percent and with the first price softening from the first quarter, the average multipliers are likely to slide further towards 21 and approach the 20 mark, without yet breaking through it across the market. In the per-square-metre price the first softening is now visible, but the base remains high as long as rents keep rising and virtually no new construction follows.
Why do the multipliers not return to the 2011 level despite 4 percent interest?
In my assessment, this has various reasons.
The figures: in 2010 the building interest rate stood at 4.2 percent, the multiplier at approx. 14; in 2011 at 3.95 percent interest and a multiplier of approx. 15. Today the interest rate, at around 3.9 percent, is at almost the same level – but the multiplier is at around 22. A multiplier of 14 to 15 corresponds to a gross yield of around 7 percent, a multiplier of 22 to only 4.5 percent. The real question is therefore: why do buyers today content themselves with a much thinner yield at the same financing costs?
The answer lies not in the level of today's rent, but in the way the market values the apartment building. Three forces drive the multiplier. First, the shrunken risk premium: in 2010/2011 buyers demanded a thick yield buffer over the financing costs, a good three percentage points. Today they content themselves with a wafer-thin premium – a multiplier of 22 means a 4.5 percent gross yield at around 4 percent interest – because they regard the Berlin apartment building as a safe, scarce asset. Second, priced-in rent growth: the multiplier is forward-looking. Buyers pay it high because they expect rents to keep rising, driven by structural housing shortage and collapsed new construction. Third, the increased replacement costs: construction and land prices have climbed massively since 2011, which upgrades the existing stock relative to the weak new-build market.
And why are the absolute purchase prices nevertheless so much higher than in 2011? That is a second, separate question – and here the level of rent comes into play. A worked example: a building with €100,000 in annual net cold rent was worth around €1,400,000 in 2011 at a multiplier of 14. The same rent would fetch around €2,200,000 at today's multiplier of 22 – a good 50 percent more, solely through the higher multiplier. If the annual rent has meanwhile grown to €150,000, the price at a multiplier of 22 would even be €3,300,000. The higher multiplier and the higher rent thus lift the price together – the multiplier via the valuation, the rent via the absolute base.
In addition, a contextualisation from my own experience, which I want understood as an eyewitness account and not as a statistic: the low multiplier level of 2010/2011 was itself a special effect. In 2006 and 2007 we sold apartment buildings almost exclusively to foreign buyers – not only in Berlin, but also in Dresden and Leipzig. At the end of 2007 demand collapsed sharply because the buyers could no longer obtain financing in their home countries. It was the start of the global financial crisis. The market recovered from 2010 – but carried by domestic investors, and it rebuilt itself laboriously from the bottom. The low multipliers of that time were therefore not the normal state of a four-percent market, but the low point of a fresh start. Today we come the other way round, from above, from the record multipliers of the zero-interest years. The same interest rate as back then – and yet a far higher multiplier. The 20 mark is already being undercut by individual, more weakly valued properties, but a blanket relapse of the market average to 14 to 16 is structurally not in sight: for that, the risk premium would have to tear open again, rent expectations would have to tip, or the interest rate would have to rise significantly above five percent.
What does this mean for buyers and sellers?
For sellers, the era of extreme multipliers is over; for buyers, entry yields are improving for the first time in over a decade.
Anyone still offering their building with the multiples of 2022 in mind will find no buyer. Price expectations must adapt to the new multiplier reality. The market is thin, but not dead: realistically priced, clean properties find their buyers. For buyers, the average multiplier has fallen back from around 32 to a good 22 – the gross yield has thereby risen from about 3 to 4.5 percent, and individual, more weakly valued properties are already being traded below the twenty-times mark. Those with equity and a long breath will find conditions not seen for a long time.
And here the average caveat applies twice over: the right multiplier for your building does not follow from the table, but from the location, condition, tenant structure and potential of the specific property. A good building justifies a premium, a problem property a discount. It is precisely this individual-case assessment that is my job.
How certain is this forecast?
It is a corridor, not a point forecast – and I stand by that deliberately.
Three reasons for caution: the case numbers in the apartment-building segment are low, and individual properties can distort the average. The official figures for the current half-year are not yet available. And interest-rate forecasts are notoriously unreliable – even the institutions that produce them admit as much. What remains is a clear picture: the connection between interest rates and multipliers is real and cleanly documented over 15 years. It points downwards in 2026 – but not back to 2011.
Status: August 2026. All multiplier and price figures are averages; in individual cases the multipliers actually paid deviate both upwards and downwards. The assessments of the 2026 market development are a derivation, not a guarantee.