February 11, 2025

Housing bubble index Q4/2024: Rents and prices come together

The empirica bubble index shows the regional spread of a bubble risk. The price-income (-1 pts.) and multiplier (-4 pts.) sub-indices are falling. By contrast, the construction loans sub-index (+2 pts.) is rising slightly, while the completions sub-index remains unchanged (+/- 0 pts.).

The overall index is falling slightly across Germany (-1 points). Accordingly, the proportion of districts at risk is stagnating because the thresholds for a bubble risk are still far exceeded in many places. This trend is favoured by the high growth in rents: too little new construction due to high construction costs with normalised financing costs. Energy-inefficient properties benefit less from this if rising warm ancillary costs limit the increase in net cold rents

Overall index and sub-indices of the empirica housing market bubble index Q1 2005 to Q4 2024

The empirica housing market bubble index  is a quarterly index that assesses the risk of a property bubble in various regions of Germany. All data can be obtained as an individual dataset or via database access from empirica regio. Further results and information on the methodology can be downloaded from the empirica ag website:

empirica (2024): empirica Housing Market Bubble 2/4024  (external download in German only).



housing market property rents housing market bubble regional data 2024
Housing bubble index Q2/2024: Distribution stagnates, but urgency continues to fall

Housing bubble index Q2/2024: Distribution stagnates, but urgency continues to fall

The current sharp rise in rents contrasts with the moderate increase in purchase prices. This is positive for the risk of a bubble, as the high valuation level of property is increasingly justified. At the same time, the slight fall in interest rates is leading to an increase in new lending for residential construction, which in turn harbours the potential for further price rises and thus increases the risk of a bubble.
Housing market data Q2/2024: Purchase prices stable and rents continue to rise

Housing market data Q2/2024: Purchase prices stable and rents continue to rise

Purchase prices generally appear to have bottomed out and are falling more slowly than before or are already rising slightly. However, there are no uniform trends, as there are still major differences depending on the segment or region. In general, purchase prices for new builds tend to rise more than for existing properties, for condominiums (ETW) more than for single-family homes and in urban regions more than in federal states.
Housing market data Q1/2024: Slow stabilisation of purchase prices

Housing market data Q1/2024: Slow stabilisation of purchase prices

The purchase prices in the empirica property price index for Q1/2024 indicate that the bottom has been reached. This is shown by the new data from the empirica property price index for Q1/2024. While new construction prices continue to show a stable trend, purchase prices across all years of construction should now also have reached a stable level. The first increases can already be observed across all years of construction in cities with a rather low purchase price level.