Freitag, 11. Februar 2005

Berlin: Luxury for less

BERLIN: The floor-to-ceiling windows on both the north and south sides of the penthouse reach up two stories and offer a view of the new Potsdamer Platz in Berlin's trendy Mitte district.Inside, the apartment features a fireplace and breakfast nook underneath a spiral staircase leading up to a small loft.

At €800,000, or $1.03 million, for 186 square meters, or 2,000 square feet, it is a relative bargain - "the kind of place that would be gone in London or New York," said Kerstin Lassnig, marketing director for Haus Bellevue, the luxury 25-apartment building.

But this is Berlin, and the apartment has been on the market for almost three years.

Real estate agents and city planning specialists are optimistic when it comes to the long-term prospects for Germany's capital, but they agree that things have not happened as quickly as they expected.

In the exhilaration that followed reunification in 1990, city officials estimated that 800,000 people would move to Berlin within a decade. Instead, the city of 3.5 million has only recently been able to stop a steady decrease in its population and a corresponding lack of demand for housing.

the beginning, you had an El Dorado feel," said Anne Riney of the Engel & Völkers real estate agency, referring to the immediate aftermath of reunification. "At the end, there was too much supply and not enough demand."

Riney estimated that, at the moment, about 10 percent of the city's real estate market was in high-end apartments, a majority of which were inhabited. The oversupply is a boon to buyers looking to invest in real estate in a European capital at prices significantly less than those in London or Paris.

"Berlin is affordable, and it isn't overpopulated," Riney said. "People have the feeling here that they have room to breathe."

In the past four years, the number of luxury apartments for sale has increased with the opening of new developments like the massive Beisheim Center and the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, once a no-man's land between East and West Berlin that has become one of Europe's prime building sites.

A collection of star architects, from Renzo Piano to Hans Kohlhoff, erected soaring office buildings around Potsdamer Platz in the late 1990s, just down the street from the Reichstag building, which houses the Parliament, and the new government and embassy quarter.Banking on an influx of new investment and residents, city planners required that at least 20 percent of the buildings be residential space.

The Sony Center was no exception. Designed in glass and steel by the German-American architect Helmut Jahn, its carousel-like roof has become one of the city's symbols.

Completed in late 2001, the Esplanade residences - the residential wing of the Sony Center - were built on the ruins of a hotel that was destroyed during World War II. As part of Jahn's complex that rings the center's plaza, the residences, which occupy 13 floors, feature apartments ranging in size from 60 square meters to more than 210 square meters.

Though Petra Höpfner, the real estate agent at the Esplanade, is hesitant to name prices, she said the building's 134 apartments sold for an average of €4,500 a square meter.Several are still available, Höpfner said, declining to be specific, although she has sold units to buyers ranging from professional soccer players to foreign investors looking for a good long-term investment to former Berliners looking for a way back home.

Eckart Rahn counts himself in the last group.After spending most of his professional life building a music publishing business in New York and in Tucson, Arizona, Rahn, 60, decided to come back to Germany. "It takes 20 years to find out that you can't be at home any place but at home," he said.

In the past four years he and his Japanese wife, Sonoko, have been to Berlin at least twice a year to look for a place.Last year, he settled on two apartments - one for living and one for work - on the third floor of the Esplanade because of its proximity to Potsdamer Platz, one of the city's transit hubs. The living rooms' windows have views of Potsdamer Strasse and the pedestrian bustle that Rahn said he had missed since leaving New York.

Nearby is the Ritz Carlton, which has luxury apartments on Floors 12 through 18, offering sweeping views of Berlin's central park, the Tiergarten, and the Chancellery. The 14 Tower Apartments range from 220 to 680 square meters, with prices starting at €1.9 million.

"Many of our clients are rediscovering the city and probably wouldn't have bought here if we weren't around," said Dirk Zabel, broker for both the Tower Apartments and the neighboring Parkside, designed by the London architect David Chipperfield.

"The people who are buying here are buying with perspective," believing that the market will grow, he said. "Why shouldn't it be like London, Paris or Rome?"

At the Haus Bellevue, 10 of the 25 apartments are still available.But units in the business and retail complex in which the apartment building is located are selling well.

Lassnig, the agent, figured it was only a matter of time before the apartment sales improved.

"It's happening," she said, "but just not as quickly as everyone thought."

By Andreas Tzortzis
Published: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2005