Price-to-Rent Ratio 2026: Where Buying Costs 38 Years of Rent, and Where It Costs 20

Key findings

The spread between the two ends of the table is 18.1 years. Hamburg is the outlier: an average purchase price of €6,273 per m² against an average asking rent of €13.58 per m² produces a multiplier of 38.5, a full 6.6 years above Munich at 31.9. Munich is far more expensive in absolute terms, at €8,200 per m², but its rents are 58% higher than Hamburg's, which keeps the ratio lower. Hamburg's problem is not that it is Munich, it is that Hamburg rents have not followed Hamburg prices.

The low end of the table is North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony. Wuppertal (20.4), Leipzig (20.9), Mönchengladbach (21.1) and Dortmund (21.5) all price at roughly 21 years of rent. The five Ruhr cities in the study average 22.7, against 27.0 for the seven A-cities. A buyer in the Ruhr pays €2,444 per m² for rent of €8.99; the A-city buyer pays €5,499 for €17.07. Prices differ by a factor of 2.3, rents by only 1.9.

Stuttgart is the surprise in the top five. At €4,310 per m² it is priced like an A-city, but with asking rents of €16.76 per m² it trades at 21.4 years of rent, cheaper relative to rent than any Ruhr city except Wuppertal. Its price trend of -1.3% year on year is the weakest in the dataset, so this is a market where rents have held while prices slipped. Berlin (24.6), Frankfurt (24.2), Cologne (24.2) and Düsseldorf (24.0) sit in a tight band around the median: the big-city premium is real but modest once rent is in the denominator.

A high multiplier is not only a big-city phenomenon. Karlsruhe (29.4) and Bielefeld (28.2) rank 23rd and 22nd, above Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne, because their rents are mid-table while purchase prices reflect university-town and owner-occupier demand. Bielefeld at €8.21 per m² has the second-lowest rent in the study but a price of €2,776, the same as Essen. For an investor the multiplier is simply the inverse of the gross rental yield: 20.4 years equals 4.90%, 38.5 years equals 2.60%. The Rental Yield Calculator converts between the two for any unit.

Purchase costs push every multiplier up by roughly two years, and they widen the gap. Adding Grunderwerbsteuer plus 2% notary and land registry lifts Hamburg to 41.4 and Wuppertal to 22.2. Bavaria's 3.5% transfer tax is the reason Munich (33.6) and Augsburg (25.8) gain less than the 6.5% states, and why Augsburg overtakes Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Cologne once costs are included. The all-in mean across the 25 cities is 26.9 years against 25.0 before costs. Check the exact figure for your state in the Purchase Cost Calculator, and compare a specific unit's rent and price in the Rent vs Buy Calculator.

Rent regulation does not explain the ranking. The six cities without a Mietpreisbremse average 23.3 years, the 17 covered cities 25.7: a difference of about two years that is entirely driven by the Ruhr cities sitting in the uncapped group. Mannheim, uncapped since January 2026, trades at 26.4, well above the median, and Bochum, also uncapped, at 25.3. What the cap does change is the path from the current multiplier to a better one: in a covered city the rent side of the ratio can only move within 10% of the Mietspiegel at re-letting.

What a multiplier of 20 versus 38 means for a buyer

On the 70 m² reference apartment used across LDP studies, a Wuppertal buyer pays €157,500 for a unit that rents at €7,711 per year. A Hamburg buyer pays €439,110 for €11,407 of annual rent. The Hamburg flat costs 2.8 times as much but rents for only 1.5 times as much. In Munich the same reference flat costs €574,000 and rents at €18,010, so the absolute rent is highest there even though the ratio is not.

German practitioners use rough thresholds: below 20 is considered cheap, 20 to 25 fair, above 25 expensive, above 30 a market that is pricing in capital growth rather than income. By that yardstick no city in the top 25 is cheap, 16 are fair, 7 are expensive and 2 (Munich and Hamburg) are priced for growth. The low-ratio cities are not stagnant markets either: Duisburg (+7.7%), Wuppertal (+7.3%) and Dortmund (+7.2%) post the strongest year-on-year price growth of the 25 cities, which will push their multipliers up unless rents follow. The trade-off is letting risk: market-active vacancy is 5.7% in Wuppertal and 5.4% in Leipzig against 0.5% in Hamburg and 0.1% in Munich. Whether the ratio compresses further depends on the rent side, which is why the rent regulation status of each city matters more to the forward multiplier than to the current one.

Methodology and sources

Price-to-rent ratio (years of rent) is computed as the average purchase price per m² for existing apartments divided by the average net cold asking rent (Kaltmiete) per m² multiplied by 12. Both inputs come from the source-cited LDP research dataset for the 25 largest German cities, compiled from Gutachterausschuss transaction data, ImmoScout24 WohnBarometer, immowelt, Homeday, wohnungsboerse.net and comparable market reports dated Q1 to mid 2026, and are the same figures published in each city report. The ratio is the inverse of the gross rental yield shown on those pages; small differences arise where a city report cites a source-reported yield rather than a computed one. Asking rents include new lettings and can exceed the official Mietspiegel level for existing contracts, which makes the multipliers here lower than a Mietspiegel-based calculation would give. The purchase-cost column adds the state Grunderwerbsteuer rate (3.5% in Bavaria, 5.0% to 6.0% in most other states, 6.5% in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein) and 2.0% notary and land registry fees; agent commission is excluded because it varies by transaction and is often zero for new-build purchases. Mean of the 25 multipliers: 25.0; population-weighted mean: 26.3; median: 24.3. Rent regulation status as of September 2026 per state ordinance.