Foreign investors are discovering Germany's secondary cities, according to Sascha Hettrich, managing partner of the German operations of brokerage firm King Sturge. ‘In the past when foreign investors looked at Germany, they focused mainly on Frankfurt,’ he said during a presentation at the PropertyEU Daily News Show at the EXPO REAL in Munich. 'Later Berlin entered the picture. Now Hamburg, Munich and Düsseldorf but also Cologne and Stuttgart have become interesting for international investors.'

Foreign investors are discovering Germany's secondary cities, according to Sascha Hettrich, managing partner of the German operations of brokerage firm King Sturge. ‘In the past when foreign investors looked at Germany, they focused mainly on Frankfurt,’ he said during a presentation at the PropertyEU Daily News Show at the EXPO REAL in Munich. 'Later Berlin entered the picture. Now Hamburg, Munich and Düsseldorf but also Cologne and Stuttgart have become interesting for international investors.'

Germany still offers good prospects for rental growth, Hettrich added, citing King Sturge’s recently published European Offices Property Report. 'Take-up of office space is growing all over Europe, but particularly in Germany. Germany is still very cheap in a European but also an international comparison. This is the right time to invest.'

Hettrich conceded that the bigger transactions are now slowing down somewhat in Germany in the wake of the global credit crisis. 'Investors are thinking a little bit more about a deal and it is taking more time to get the finance together. But the equity players are compensating for some of the loss.'