Problems ahead for german banks: Germany’s market for office buildings suffered its sharpest drop in two decades as higher financing costs and sluggish return-to-office trends soured investor appetite. The downturn accelerated in the fourth quarter with a 13% drop from the previous year, according to data published Monday by German banking association VDP. For the full year, prices slumped more than 10%, the most since records began in 2003, and the outlook is for further declines at the start of 2024.
We had a conversation on here recently about what might happen with the extra office space in America. What are the plans or expectations for how all the vacant office space will be used in Germany?
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why not just put another two million illegal migrants in there? in the eyes of the green communists, that's free of charge
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That idea was floated.
Longer term, though, once this particular political insanity has wound down, some other use will be made for that real estate. My guess is that it will mostly be repurposed to residential.
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it was clear that this was one of the first ideas these infantile commies had to come up with. as far as the conversion of commercial real estate into private housing is concerned, there are of course a lot of hurdles in terms of infrastructure or the remoteness of the commercial areas or the construction and internal infrastructure of the properties themselves.
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remoteness of the commercial areas
Are office buildings often in inconvenient locations in Germany? We discussed some of those other issues in the other thread, but American office buildings tend to occupy prime real estate. The remote work revolution is wrecking havoc on the businesses that used to rely on all those people working nearby.
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Municipal industrial estates are generally planned outside the municipalities, especially in Germany, but this also applies to southern europe. we have our own infrastructure and are often located many kilometers outside. this means that additional infrastructure would have to be created for potential residents
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Interesting. That also probably means there would be limited residential demand for that real estate, right? Maybe it will just need to be demolished and turned into farms, similar to what's happening around Detroit after it collapsed.
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Since these are mostly industrial settlements, as Germany once had an industrial core in the past, it would be virtually impossible to convert even 10% of this space into normal residential units