Text: Matti Schenk

Berlin's rental apartment market has witnessed particularly strong rental growth in recent years. Not only has this thrust the city into the spotlight of public debate, it has also made the German capital an extremely important location in the institutional residential investment market (transactions of at least 50 residential units). Berlin has accounted for around 23% of all apartments transacted in Germany over the last ten years, despite the city holding only around 7% of all rental apartments. Against this background, it is particularly interesting to consider which groups of owners currently have the largest holdings in the capital. According to census data, around 1.5 million of the approximately 1.9 million apartments in Berlin were let for residential use. In 2011, around 249,000 were located in buildings owned by a community of owners and a further 369,000 were owned by private individuals. This means that approximately 906,000 rental apartments in residential buildings were held by professional owners. (see Graph “Ownership structure of the Berlin rental apartment market”)

Hence, the German capital has an above-average number of rental apartments in the hands of professional owners. Berlin accounts for around one in six German rental apartments owned by private companies, giving private companies a correspondingly high market share in the city. However, housing associations and particularly the public sector also have an above-average presence in Berlin.

The six state-owned housing companies degewo, GESOBAU, Gewobag, HOWOGE, STADT UND LAND and WBM currently own approximately 327,000 apartments. According to the City of Berlin’s social urban development monitoring, these even own more than 90% of all apartments in some parts of the capital. This is true, for example, in some localities in Marzahn, Hellersdorf and Märkisches Viertel. Generally, the state-owned companies are predominantly represented in the north-east of Berlin. All six of these companies are among the ten largest apartment owners in the German capital (see Table “The 15 largest owners of rental apartments in Berlin”).

However, the largest apartment owner in Berlin is currently Deutsche Wohnen, which owns around 115,000 apartments in the greater Berlin area. The company's holdings are distributed across all boroughs of Berlin. The second largest private-sector owner is Vonovia with approximately 44,000 apartments, followed in third place by ADO Properties, which focuses exclusively on Berlin. French investor Covivio is also heavily invested in the German capital with almost 16,000 apartments. The fifth largest private-sector owner is Swedish company Akelius.

In addition to the state-owned companies and major property companies, local housing associations also have large apartment holdings. According to the census, these own approximately 178,000 rental apartments combined. The largest cooperative is WGLi Wohnungsgenossenschaft Lichtenberg with around 10,100 apartments, followed by Beamten-Wohnungs-Verein zu Berlin and bbg BERLINER BAUGENOSSENSCHAFT, each of which own more than 7,000 apartments. In fourth and fifth place are Berliner Bau- und Wohnungsgenossenschaft von 1892 with approximately 6,800 apartments and Charlottenburger Baugenossenschaft with around 6,700 apartments.

We were able to assign a total of around 828,500 apartments to 180 professional owners known by name. This represents approximately 91% of rental apartments in Berlin that are not owned by private individuals or communities of owners.
 
Of these 180 professional owners, we identified 89 players with at least 1,000 apartments. These owners alone have combined holdings of approximately 799,000 apartments and, hence, more than half of all rental apartments in Berlin (see Graph “Berlin stock of rental apartments by size of owner”). Besides the six state-owned housing companies with their 327,000 apartments, around 217,000 of these apartments were attributable to seven property companies and a further 172,000 apartments were assigned to the holdings of 47 associations. We also identified two church-related owners with a combined total of around 7,600 apartments. A further 27 private-sector owners with holdings of at least 1,000 apartments were also discovered. These include private housing companies and private equity funds as well as fund managers and asset managers. These 27 owners have combined holdings of around 75,500 apartments. Since this group is the least transparent of all the various types of owner, we assume that these will tend to be under-represented in our investigation.