When looking for a rental apartment, interested parties are increasingly turning to the suburbs of the metropolises – because of the horrendous prices in the city centers. This trend can be observed particularly strongly in four cities.
When it comes to real estate ownership, it has long been common practice: prospective buyers look for houses and apartments in the suburbs of the metropolises. It’s cheaper there, and many families like the natural environment.
Biggest movement in years
Now the trend has also reached apartments and houses for rent. According to a study, at the beginning of 2024, for the first time, more residents of the seven largest German cities were looking for a new rental apartment in their suburbs (41.9 percent) than within the city limits (35.8 percent). This emerges from a study by the real estate portal ImmoScout24. All districts that are up to 50 kilometers away from the metropolitan center are referred to as suburbs.
Last year it was the other way around. At the beginning of 2023, 43.8 percent of searchers looked within the city and only 35 percent searched in the suburbs. This is the biggest movement in the past five years, according to ImmoScout24.
Berliners in particular are moving out of the city
“The majority of people can no longer find affordable rental apartments in the big cities. They are forced to expand their search to the larger areas surrounding the big cities,” explains Gesa Crockford, managing director of ImmoScout24.
The evasive movements are particularly strong in four German metropolises. The phenomenon is particularly noticeable in Berlin. In the capital, the proportion of people looking to rent in the city center has fallen by almost 20 percentage points over the past five years. At the beginning of 2024, only 43.1 percent of all search queries related to the city center. For comparison: in 2019 it was over 62.4 percent.
In Munich, every second tenant is looking for tenants in the suburbs
In Munich, at 50.2 percent, every second search query is for the fat belt. The proportion of search queries within the city fell again in 2024 and is now only 28.2 percent.
For the first time since this year, the majority of searches in Cologne are in the suburbs; this accounted for 42.2 percent of search queries. Only 35.6 percent of rental searches were in the city center area.
Rural area Prospective buyers popular
In Stuttgart, only 30.3 percent of tenants were looking for houses or apartments in the city center area. Here too, the majority (43.8 percent) were looking in the suburbs. At 17.2 percent, a particularly high proportion of search queries were in rural areas. That is 5.1 percentage points more than the national average.
The fat belt trend is nothing new among shoppers. However, at the beginning of 2024, this accounted for more than 40 percent of search queries for the first time – followed by rural areas in second place with 26 percent. Only 23 percent of search queries related to the inner city area.
It’s not always cheaper in the suburbs
Immoscout24 points to the limited supply and high rents in the cities as reasons for this “flight movement” to the suburbs. But the increased demand for apartments and houses for rent in the suburbs of the metropolises is causing prices to rise there too. According to an analysis by Immoscout24 from autumn last year, apartment rents in the suburbs of Berlin and Stuttgart even rose more sharply than in the center.
Although tenants can still save money by moving to the outskirts of cities, the savings potential is dwindling. In 2023, only 8.3 percent could be saved on rent within a radius of 16 to 30 kilometers from Berlin city center. In the previous year it was 13.7 percent.