What Frankfurt tells us about Germany's office recovery

Frankfurt's office market has just produced two headlines that appear to describe different cities. Prime rents in the Central Business District reached €55 per square metre during the second quarter of 2026 — a new all-time high, surpassing even the peak of the dotcom boom. At the same time, office take-up during the first half of the year fell to just 150,300 square metres, the weakest half-year performance since the Covid shock of 2020. Vacancy has climbed to 11.6%, leaving 1.32 million square metres of office space standing empty.

Both figures are correct. Their coexistence tells us something important not only about Frankfurt, but about the direction of Germany's office market as a whole. Rather than moving through a conventional recovery, Germany's office market is becoming increasingly selective. Nowhere is that more visible than in Frankfurt.