Why International Investors Are Turning to Germany Now

Anyone looking for an apartment in Stockholm needs one thing above all: patience. On average, it takes almost nine years to get a chance at a rental apartment through the state allocation system. Nine years. In one of Europe’s wealthiest cities.

It sounds absurd, yet it is the logical consequence of a system that has regulated the market so heavily that it barely functions anymore. The same pattern can be seen in other major cities: Paris caps rents administratively, New York politically controls large parts of its housing stock, and Barcelona is experimenting with rent ceilings. What was intended as protection for tenants has, in many places, had the opposite effect: less supply, longer waiting times and, of course, rising shadow rents.

And it is precisely against this backdrop that one question arises, far too rarely asked in the German debate: where is the international capital flowing that is searching worldwide for stable residential markets?