Then we take Berlin
According to The Sunday Business Post, Irish investment company Elgin Capital is planning on spending €100 m on property in Berlin on behalf of Irish investors looking for rental properties.
From memory, post-DDR Berliners are still remarkably trusting of their landlords. With rents about a third of what they are in Dublin or London and solid tenancy rights, including caps on how much rent can increase, in what is supposed to be the capital of Europe, they see no reason to buy property. They would have to live to about 100 for it to be worth their while. A friend of mine (that’s Bernard) currently sub-lets a medium-sized, one-bed apartment with a separate kitchen for €168 a month. I pay €875 for roughly the same privilege in Dublin.
Now the Irish carpetbaggers are arriving, as they are doing in other Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Poland, snapping up old properties and building new ones. Those crazy, trusting Germans won’t know what hit them.
October 20th, 2005 12:42
My brother is getting into this business - although I think he’s focusing on commercial properties.
Jo (the girlfriend) used to live in Poland. Apparently the Poles are already sick of Irish landlords.
Tables have turned and all that. Soon Berliners will be planting potatos everywhere.
October 20th, 2005 14:32
Irish landlords will flee the market when they realise the flats are actually apartments and are not made of chipboard with hospital ward-style fittings as standard.