{"id":5796,"date":"2015-07-22T19:46:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T17:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.popup-berlin.de\/?p=5796"},"modified":"2015-07-22T19:46:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T17:46:24","slug":"valuable-lessons-on-berlins-real-estate-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/valuable-lessons-on-berlins-real-estate-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Valuable Lessons On Berlin\u2019s Real Estate Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little summary of 4 major lessons learned at the TOA satelite panel event on the topic “Why real estate is ripe for disruption.” The panel took place on July 17th at Karakulowa<\/a> in Kreuzberg and was hosted by Go\u2014PopUp and Setting<\/a>. If you let, rent, buy or need real estate, you should read on.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hot and sweaty Friday afternoon, when a small crowd of twenty- to thirty-somethings enters the pleasantly cool rooms of an old butchery located on Graefestra\u00dfe<\/a> in the heart of Berlin Kreuzberg. The shop windows are flooded with warm sunlight, the historic walls are covered with antique floral tiles and beautiful crumbeling stucco decorates the high ceilings, giving an almost other-worldly feel to the location. Unique locations like this one are disappearing rapidly, affordable empty space is becoming a very scarce ressource in central Berlin, making it increasingly difficult for creatives and young entrepreneurs to find leases for their ateliers, creative projects or small retail businesses. Commercial as well as private sector property prices have been sky rocketing in the German capital for the past few years, obviously with no or little adjustments to resident\u2019s shockingly low salaries.<\/p>\n

Experts talk real estate turkey in the butchery<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everybody, who is taking a seat in the old butchery space, is somewhat aware of the problems that are shaping the dim reality of Berlin\u2019s real estate market, everybody in the room at least once has been through the painful process of visiting an overpriced appartment who-knows-where, with 50 other people in line and hands full of documents for who-knows-what. But on this particular Friday afternoon, 6 of those people are speaking up, asking questions, discussing possible solutions and shedding light on a pressing social and commercial issue: Why Berlin\u2019s real estate is ripe for disruption. While the answers given by the 5 panelist and one presenting hostess Caroline de Jager were long, complex and peppered with many more questions, we put our brains to it and identified the 4 most valuable lessons to be learned about Berlin’s present and future property market.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0220\"<\/a>(Left: Caroline de Jager, right: Andreas Kr\u00fcger)<\/p>\n

Lesson 1: Going off the beaten track and creating value through sensible usage<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you were to take real estate advice from one person only, it should be Andreas Kr\u00fcger. He really knows (t)his city. The CEO of belius<\/a> (former Modulor Projekt) was the driving force behind exemplary urban development projects, like Moritzplatz, with the art supply shop Modulor, the urban gardening project Prinzessinneng\u00e4rten and the co-working and creative space betahaus<\/a>. His credo: \u201cDon\u2019t put profit but sense and usage first.\u201d For about 70 years nobody was interested in the piece of land around Moritzplatz. From both, the eastern and the western side of the city, Berliner\u2019s (including the senat) saw it as a no man\u2019s land or \u201cthe end of the world\u201d as Andreas puts it. After acquiring the land in 2009 and developing the area by finding suitable projects and businesses, the result is not only a socially, culturally and creatively successful \u201cBerliner Mix\u201d, but land value that has been quadrupled to \u00a0become a nearly 16 million\u2019s worth filet piece of city. There are countless lesson\u2019s to be learned from Andreas Kr\u00fcger, one important one being, that we should all dare to think outside of the S-Bahnring, which is still drawing an invisible border between highly demanded property and property that is basically considered wasteland. \u201cJust take a walk through areas like Obersch\u00f6neweide or Viktoriastadt and simply take over what’s there! There are millions of hectares of undeveloped land in Berlin, to realize projects of any scale.\u201d In Andrea\u2019s view and contrary to common believes, the location is not what is most important, rather finding the perfect match for projects and creating awareness. “If the music is loud enough, people will come to you.”<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0691\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Middle: Patrick Burkert, right: Johnathan Teh)<\/p>\n

Lesson 2: Pop-Up Stores are a great tool to create awareness for a product, a business or an property<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patrick Burkert initially co-founded Go\u2014PopUp (formerly known as PopUp Berlin) because he wanted to spread the word about pop-up shops and events. He then continued, after having been ever so frequently approached by people on the lookout for empty spaces, to open their pop-ups in. Ever since, finding these empty spaces and matching them to entrepreneurs and companies with pop-up concepts, has been one of the main areas of focus for Go\u2014PopUp. \u201cWe take our role as matchmaker between spaces and ideas very seriously and are taking on the challange to educate the market about the value, a pop-up creates beyond any net rent profits.\u201d The pop-up cannot only be a business model in itself, moreover, it provides a powerful marketing tool, like a 3D billboard, generating a huge buzz. \u201cIt can be that loud music, that Andreas Kr\u00fcger is talking about\u201d, says Patrick. Imagine an empty, old storage depot somewhere in a dead end of Berlin – it is part of our vision to bring in multiple complementary brands into such locations, who in turn bring along their social media crowds, as a result benefit each other\u2019s success, bring a deserted area back to life and naturally give the landlord or owner some income, they would otherwise have forfeited.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0259-2\"<\/a>(Andre Torkler)<\/p>\n

Lesson 3: The private property agent is a model to be discontinued<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Andr\u00e9 Torkler is co-founder of Wunderagent<\/a>, a private property agency, that digitalizes the process of matching landlords and tenants. The conventional process of renting out a flat as a landlord is overcomplicated, time consuming and outdated, while being purely frustrating for applicants. Both, landlords and applicants, are often facing crowded apartment viewings, an overwhelming amount of paperwork and horrendous commission fees pocketed by private property agents. While legislative regulation has erridicated some unfairness in this area by the Bestellerprinzip<\/em><\/a> (in force as of June 1st 2015), unnecessarily high costs and administrative efforts are still incurred, when hiring private property agents. Wunderagent <\/a>is set out to be a harsh competitor to this conventional model, promising landlords to rent out their property in a cheaper, quicker and more sustainable way. At the same time, all of us desperate appartment seekers could soon benefit from their streamlined process for apartment viewings, as well as an online tenant profile, that can be created once, and then reactivated every time we applying for a flat. Who would not agree, that it’s about freakin’ time?<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0402-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(f.l.t.r.: Caroline de Jager, Andreas Kr\u00fcger, Marcus Lehmann, Johnathan Teh)<\/p>\n

Lesson 4: \u00a0Most startups neither can be nor need to be a real estate expert, what they need is flexibility<\/strong><\/p>\n

Johnathan Teh co-founder of the startup Setting<\/a>, a marketplace for flexible shared and private offices and Marcus Lehmann, head of letting at Colliers<\/a> are both faced with the challenges of startups’ rapidly changing office space demands. The headcount of a startup can grow or shrink within a few months, creating\u00a0either urgent demand for bigger office space, or a waste of resources, when rent needs to be paid but half the desks stay empty. Thus, a five year minimum rental period can virtually break a startup’s neck. With Settting<\/a>, Johnathan is creating flexible and short term rental solutions for entrepreneurs and startups, thereby shaping the commercial real estate market to accommodate these newly arising needs in the startup hub Berlin.
\n\u201cWith an office space vacancy rate of roughly 4% in Berlin, it takes creativity and expertise to find offices for innovative and fast-expanding clients like Zalando\u201d, says Marcus Lehmann. Marcus and Johnathan agree that their companies need to work on the stagnant views of property owners and landlords, to be able to do justice to the changing needs of their commercial clients. This is the only way startups or entrepreneurs can focus on doing what they do best: work on their startup idea without getting held back by inflexible and burdensome real estate conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"_MG_0675\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Delicious Cake)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little summary of 4 major lessons learned at the TOA satelite panel event on the topic “Why real estate is ripe for disruption.” The panel took place on July 17th at Karakulowa in Kreuzberg and was hosted by Go\u2014PopUp and Setting. If you let, rent, buy or need real estate, you should read on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazinetest.atomic4dev.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}