Offering prices for houses and apartments across Germany increased on average by four percent in 2014, a sharp decline from the previous two years when prices increased on average by about seven percent, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Thursday.
According to online housing search portal Immobilienscout24, most big cities saw growth rates above the national average, except for Hamburg, which grew by only three percent.
But the rate of change slowed significantly in some cities.
While housing prices in Berlin grew by 11 percent in 2013, they only grew by 9 percent in 2014. The growth rate in Munich was down by more than half, with housing increasing by 6.3 percent last year compared to more than 13 percent the year before.
"The strong price increases of 2012 and 2013 were not repeated last year, as predicted," said Michael Kiefer, chief analyst of Immobilienscout 24.
"In the big cities mentioned, price caps are often reached, especially in the inner city. Other districts' development continued to have double-digit growth, so that real estate prices in the major cities continue to grow faster than the national average."
On the other hand, medium-sized so-called "B-locations" like Freiburg im Breisgau, Kiel and Lüneburg saw more growth because they don't have pricing caps.
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