Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the housing market in central Berlin has surged by 400%. 

According to data from German estate agency and property services company Ziegert Immobilien, the average price for a house hiked by four times as much over the past three decades. 

The average inflation-adjusted price for an apartment in Berlin’s Mitte district increased from roughly €500 per square meter in the early 1990s, to an average of €2,500 per square meter nowadays. 

The prices for land with the potential for development also increased to triple figures. Prices surged by 226% in Potsdamer Platz, from €6,000 per square meter in 1992 to €20,000 per square meter this year, the Berlin administration committee of valuation experts revealed. 

In the region surrounding the East Side Gallery – the open-air gallery where remains of the wall have been painted by artists – prices jumped from a modest €153 per square meter to around €10,000 per square meter, marking a whopping surge of 6,419%.

“The area around the wall was in the outskirts of the two cities, West and East Berlin,” said Ziegert’s head of research Till Johannes Brühöfener-McCourt.

“When the wall came down, all of a sudden the area became the centre of unified Berlin,” he added. 

In the past, Mitte was the location of the Wall’s border control points, including the notorious U.S. Army-operate Checkpoint Charlie. Nowadays, it is the primary and most central borough of the German capital. 

McCourt noted that it is the roughest areas where the Wall was once located which have seen the largest increases in property prices. 

“It’s an ongoing transformation […] Some of these areas are still being redeveloped,” McCourt said. 

During the decade of the 1990s, Berlin’s property market was struggling. It began to strongly recover during the early 2000s however, partly boosted by foreign investment.

Nowadays, Berlin is home to the highest growth rate for prices of luxury real estate in the world, according to official statistics from Knight Frank. 

For 28 years, the Wall divided the German city since its construction by the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) in August 1961. 

Its gates and checkpoints were opened to the public on November 1989, in what is now remembered as “the fall of the Berlin Wall.” The official destruction of the Wall began on 13 June 1990 and went on up until its completion in November 1991.

Nowadays, the former location of the Wall and its surrounding area is considered a key tourist attraction for those visiting the German capital.