Real estate market in Berlin. Is there any bubble? (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 2, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano , language: English, abstract: Latterly the capital of Germany alludes to a potential real estate bubble. Does the strong price increase of 73 % on average between 2007 and 2013 really rely on speculative market behaviour or is the trend rather determined by fundamental factors? In order to find this out, the following paper examines several determinants of demand for residential objects through a qualitative analysis. Relevant determinants such as supply of credit, demographic aspects, income and economic growth, real long term interest rates and monetary policy, rent prices, substitution goods as well as the factor of expectations of the future house price development were investigated by means of empirical analysis. Anyways, the unclear result argues in favour of a price increase mainly caused by the fundamental factors.

Aim of the thesis is to get a better knowledge on the assessment of bubble existence in housing markets. According to mainstream economics, the process itself is considered relatively difficult. However, an advantage of such a work is that I can eventually use the gained information to implement a real project in the future. In addition, this kind of problem approach could then be used for other markets as well: proving a price increase, finding out how it came about, discovering if its factors consist in a bubble risk or not.

Aim of the thesis isn't neither to determine if, how and when a possible bubble will burst, nor examining its effects on the overall economy. From the point of view of a relatively risk averse investor, namely, already the fact that a bubble may exist should be enough reason not to go for an investment in such a market. The reason why I look at a single region instead of an entire country is that plenty of past housing bubbles began to arise in single parts of lands and then eventually expanded to the whole country or even to a whole continent like it happened in the case of the US in 2007. House price dynamics are a local phenomenon, and national-level data conceal crucial economic differences among cities (Himmelberg et al., 2005).

This thesis refers to residential properties and not to commercial properties such as office buildings, industrial, retail or restaurants. However, I'm going to put prices of existing properties and new properties together since new buildings only account for a little part in this market (Sparber, 2014).