Germany Retail Market Dynamics, H2 2024

The retail leasing market concludes the 2024 leasing year with a strong fourth quarter. The total result is 478,300 sqm, which is an increase of over 6% compared to the previous year. The decisive factor for this remarkable result was the continued high demand for retail spaces in size categories from 1,000 sqm upwards. 57% of the leasing volume was attributed to these large spaces. The consistently high demand and take-up of more than 100,000 sqm per quarter in 2024 have eased the availability rate surveyed by JLL. In the prime locations of the nine major shopping cities, the vacancy stood at 15.1% for retail units and 15.3% for overall space.

The prime rents for the Big 10 have remained stable compared to 2023, with the exception of Nuremberg. The forecast for the first quarter of 2025 assumes rental values will remain stable. For the other 56 cities examined by JLL, only a slight decrease of around 0.5% was observed in the population classes of 500,000 inhabitants and above, as well as in the adjacent class of 250,000-500,000 inhabitants. In smaller cities with 100,000-250,000 inhabitants, a decline in prime rent of 2.8% was recorded. For the Germany-wide average of all 66 cities studied, the rental values fell by 1.8%.