Retail rents in German city centres rose 6 % over the last year in 16 selected cities-including the seven largest German cities-after a period of almost stagnant growth. This finding comes from an unpublished study by the Institute for German Economic Research (IW), which the “Rheinische Post” reported on last Saturday. The study notes that the rise “suggests a recovery of urban retail, yet increasingly focused on particularly central locations”.
In 2025, rent increases relative to the previous year were especially pronounced: Munich’s entire city area saw a 10.2 % jump, Düsseldorf’s 9.5 %, and inner‑city rents rose for Dortmund by 16.3 %, Bremen by 12.8 %, and Munich by 12.0 %. Across the full period from 2018 to 2025, the IW finds that average annual rent changes hover between two and four percent, both for whole city areas and for the city centres.
Outliers appear in the data: Bremen shows the strongest medium‑term growth at 4.7 % per year across both its overall city area and its inner city, whereas Stuttgart records the weakest development-1.8 % citywide and 0.4 % in the centre. Despite its modest growth, Stuttgart remains the second‑most expensive retail location after Munich when measured by median rents, according to the IW.
The analysis draws on retail lease offers from Value AG’s property database, covering structured information on listings, property characteristics, rent prices, and geographic details. The period examined is from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2025, encompassing roughly 268,000 retail lease offers across Germany.
The study concludes that retail rents have rebounded markedly, outpacing consumer price inflation at most sites, and that there is a growing concentration of city‑centre retail in particularly attractive locations.
