Personal experience: moving flats, on real estate & rents

Personal experience from a value guy: we live in a rather cheap (value!) nice flat in a rather popular district in Cologne (Sülz), Germany. After almost 10 years we are moving into a bigger flat, and we already kind of miss the great location of our current flat.

Since some friends who indicated interest for the flat were not interested anymore, we posted the offer for searching the next renter (we want to sell our kitchen and move out earlier) on Immoscout and — foolishly as I am — on ebay. This time I won our usual bet with my wife, for a dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant (also a miss) next to our current flat – the first answer arrived within 10 mins.

Of course, all the interested renters are willing to pay us the requested money for our kitchen if a renting-contract materializes, which we defined as a precondition. This likely means two things: (i) I did not maximize profits here (selling too early, too low) and (ii) I probably still have a heart (who knew) since we barely ask for the money we ‘invested’. I think even a tad below (contrary to that we paid much too much for the garbage kitchen we took over). Not maximizing profits is an important topic within investing.

When we were looking for a new flat, we flocked to Immoscout24, as almost all our friends did. And, after a few days, we bought the ‘premium’ membership. As all our friends did. The platform left much desired from a usability perspective, but it is by far the best there is I guess. Primary factor is supply/demand and Immoscout is where it is. Two observations:
We decided against some flats in newly developed areas (which all look the same btw). More than once the price/rent declined instantly after we decided against the flat. Some sales shops made such an unorganized appearance — they really did not know which flats with which layout were in the inventory — my conclusion was the market was so good for them, there was no need for them to be better. This changed now, I guess. Many flats had to be rented without even visiting them.
Other flats, often with the tag line luxury flat, increased rents during a few weeks. These were mostly older flats in the inner city and not new builds. So, my guess is, the market indeed turned and people who bought a new build flat on credit are scrambling for renters. Such renters, might no be willing and/or able to pay the high rents anymore (inflation, energy, economic downturn…?).

Scout24 SE (G24 GR) does, understandably, not show a share price performance as many real estate company do, and it does not look cheap on first look.

Btw, after receiving hundreds of emails I thought: If by chance any of my readers is interested in the flat: write me! Best

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