Bremen property market: prices, rents and yields in 2026

Apartments in Bremen are listed at an average asking price of €2,955.7/m² in Q3 2026 (CASAFARI Area Insights, location id 531239), 0.5% below a year earlier and almost exactly where the series stood in Q1 2023. Asking rents have edged up to €13.5/m² per month, which puts the indicative gross yield at about 5.5%. These figures are asking prices from indexed listings, not transaction prices. Bremen is a domestic, owner-occupier and yield market, far cheaper than Hamburg, an hour down the A1, and heavily regulated on the rental side.

Imagine an investor from the Hamburg area who has just lost another bidding round in Eimsbüttel. Pulling up the Bremen series, they spot a 75 m² flat in Findorff listed at about €222,000 that would rent for around €1,010 a month cold, just an hour down the A1. On paper, the arithmetic is compelling. The twist comes in the fine print: if that flat is already tenanted or falls under the city's rent cap (Mietpreisbremse), it may not legally be re-let at that asking rent. That tension between a strong paper yield and strict local regulation is the defining feature of the Bremen market.

Where the numbers come from and what they do not say

CASAFARI Area Insights indexes listings across portals and agency websites for the city of Bremen (location id 531239), strips out duplicates and outliers, and averages asking prices and asking rents per square metre by quarter. It is a clean, timely measure of what sellers and landlords ask, rather than what buyers ultimately pay at the notary.

That distinction matters in Germany. Asking prices move months before the Gutachterausschuss für Grundstückswerte (the official valuation committee that records notarised deeds) publishes its annual transaction report, whose 2026 edition covers November 2024 to October 2025. Because the two sources answer different questions, this guide uses both, and you can inspect the underlying query in the Area Insights API documentation.

What does an apartment in Bremen cost per square metre?

In Q3 2026, the average asking price for an apartment for sale in Bremen is €2,955.7/m² (CASAFARI Area Insights, queried on 23 October 2026). For a standard 75 m² two-bedroom flat, that equates to an asking price of roughly €222,000 before purchase taxes and notary fees.

The shape of the last three years is a shallow curve that ends where it began. Asking prices opened at €2,961.0/m² in Q1 2023, dipped to a trough of €2,796.4/m² in Q4 2024 (−5.6%) during the European interest-rate squeeze, and recovered to a peak of €3,023.3/m² in Q1 2026. Since then, two softer quarters have left Q3 2026 at €2,955.7/m² (+5.7% above the trough, −2.2% below the peak, and −0.2% since Q1 2023). A year-on-year change of −0.5% against Q3 2025 (€2,969.3/m²) is simply statistical noise around the €2,950 mark. Note that Q3 2026 is provisional and may adjust slightly as late listings are indexed.

For an international buyer, this places Bremen well below Hamburg and Germany's top-seven metropolises, and roughly mid-table among the country's larger independent cities (kreisfreie Großstädte). You can compare the gap directly in our Hamburg property market guide.

Rents and yields: why investors look at Bremen

While sale prices moved sideways, asking rents in Bremen crept higher. In Q3 2026, apartments are listed for rent at an average of €13.5/m² per month, up 2.3% from €13.2/m² in Q3 2025 and up 3.1% from €13.1/m² in Q1 2024, after touching a series high of €13.7/m² in Q2 2026 (CASAFARI Area Insights). Our 75 m² example flat therefore commands an asking rent of about €1,010 per month before service charges (Kaltmiete).

Dividing annualised asking rent by the average asking price (12 × €13.5 ÷ €2,955.7) produces an indicative gross rental yield of 5.5% in Q3 2026, up from 5.3% in Q3 2025. For a West German city of nearly 600,000 inhabitants with a deep industrial base—Mercedes-Benz in Sebaldsbrück, Airbus and OHB in aerospace, the ports, and two universities—5.5% is an eye-catching number.

It requires immediate qualification. This is an indicative gross yield calculated on asking figures, before non-recoverable service charges, maintenance reserves, vacancy and tax. More importantly, Bremen enforces the Mietpreisbremse (rent cap on re-letting), meaning an investor buying an older flat cannot automatically re-let it at the €13.5/m² asking average.

Who buys here for yield? Primarily private investors from Bremen, neighbouring Lower Saxony and the Hamburg region buying single flats or small multi-family houses, alongside institutional funds and housing companies focusing on new-build stock in Überseestadt. Before bidding, it is wise to see how investors use CASAFARI data to screen German cities for yield and to check a Bremen flat against real comparables with CASAFARI Comparables and a market study.

Is the Bremen market active or just quiet? What the registered sales show

A flat price line can mean either a frozen market or a balanced one. The official transaction figures from the Grundstücksmarktbericht 2026 of the Bremen Gutachterausschuss (in German) show that activity has returned in earnest.

In the 2025 report year (which runs from November 2024 to October 2025), the committee registered 6,519 purchase contracts in the city of Bremen, a 13.4% increase on the 5,751 contracts of 2024 and well above the 5,100 recorded in the slump year of 2023:

• Condominiums (Eigentumswohnungen): 3,388 notarised sales in 2025, up 22.5% from 2,766 in 2024 (and 2,351 in 2023).
• New-build condominium first sales: 145 transactions in 2025 versus just 39 in 2024, a small but telling restart after higher build costs froze pipelines.
• Built properties (houses and apartment buildings): 2,545 sales in 2025, up 11.6% from 2,280 in 2024.

The reading is straightforward: transaction volume recovered sharply from the 2023 financing shock without pushing prices up. Buyers and sellers met at roughly the old price level. The next official report, due in spring 2027, will be the first to capture the 2026 quarters that CASAFARI asking data already covers.

How does Bremen compare with Germany as a whole?

To put Bremen alongside the national picture in the exact same period, we look at Q2 2026. In that quarter, Bremen apartment asking prices stood at €2,984.9/m² versus €2,954.9/m² in Q2 2025, a rise of 1.0% year on year (CASAFARI Area Insights). Over the same period, the official transaction-based Destatis house price index for Q2 2026 (in German), published on 24 September 2026 (provisional, base 2025 = 100), rose by 0.6% year on year and 0.3% quarter on quarter across Germany.

Both figures sit just above zero, with Bremen marginally ahead. Because one measures asking prices for apartments in a single city and the other measures completed transactions across all housing types nationwide, the comparison serves as a sanity check rather than a league table.

Underpinning Bremen's stability is gentle demographic growth. According to the Statistisches Landesamt Bremen, reported by Radio Bremen on the end-2025 population figure (in German), the city counted 588,413 residents on 31 December 2025, up from 586,271 at the end of 2024 and 576,947 at the end of 2022, driven by international migration. The official yearbook Bremen in Zahlen 2025, Statistisches Landesamt Bremen (PDF, in German) puts the average age at 43.1, with 20.6% of residents aged 65 or over at the end of 2024. For broader national context, see our guide to the German property market as a whole and CASAFARI's property market trends.

Which districts should a buyer look at, and for what?

A city-wide average of €2,955.7/m² hides sharp contrasts in a city-state that combines affluent leafy streets with post-industrial port quarters. The river Weser and the historic Altstadt divide the map into distinct sub-markets.

• The owner-occupier core: Schwachhausen northeast of the centre is Bremen's premier residential address, known for grand villas and high-ceilinged period flats. Adjacent Östliche Vorstadt (popularly called the Viertel) and Neustadt on the left bank of the Weser draw young professionals, academics and students, generating the city's tightest rental demand. Findorff, just north of the main station, offers quiet streets popular with families.
• Family and house districts: Horn-Lehe (home to the University of Bremen), Oberneuland and Borgfeld cater to buyers seeking detached houses and gardens. Further downriver, the districts of Bremen-Nord (such as Vegesack and Lesum) offer considerably lower entry prices in exchange for a longer commute.
• New-build quarters: Überseestadt, built across the former docklands, is one of Europe's largest inner-city regeneration zones. Its modern apartment blocks attract institutional landlords and private investors because post-2014 new builds are exempt from the Mietpreisbremse. Closer to the centre, the Hulsberg quarter on the historic hospital site adds further modern stock.
• Yield-and-caution districts: In western and eastern peripheral areas such as Gröpelingen, Blumenthal and Tenever, asking prices per square metre sit well below the city average. High gross yields on paper here must be weighed against street-by-street variations in vacancy, social indicators and capital expenditure needs.

Across Schwachhausen, Findorff, Walle and the Viertel, buyers will constantly encounter the Bremer Haus. Unique to the city, this is a narrow, pre-1945 terraced townhouse built over a raised basement (Souterrain), either kept as a single-family home or split into three or four flats. While architecturally prized, many require careful budgeting for heating and insulation upgrades under Germany's Buildings Energy Act (Gebäudeenergiegesetz, GEG). You can search Bremen listings by district with Property Sourcing to see how current stock compares across these neighbourhoods.

Rules, taxes and costs an international buyer must know in Bremen

Germany places no restrictions on foreign buyers: both EU and non-EU nationals may purchase residential property in Bremen without special permits, though ownership confers no visa or residence rights.

Transaction costs, however, are substantial. Under an amendment passed in December 2024, the real estate transfer tax (Grunderwerbsteuer) in the Land of Bremen rose from 5.0% to 5.5% of the purchase price for contracts signed from 1 July 2025 onwards, matching Hamburg while sitting half a point above neighbouring Lower Saxony at 5.0%, as detailed in the Haufe overview of transfer tax rates by Land, including Bremen's rise to 5.5% (in German). Adding notary and land-registry (Grundbuch) fees of roughly 1.5% to 2.0%, plus estate agent commission (which since December 2020 must by federal law be shared at least equally between buyer and seller on houses and individual flats), buyers should budget roughly 7% to 10% on top of the purchase price.

On the rental side, three city ordinances govern returns:

1. Rent cap on re-letting (Mietpreisbremse): Following the Senat press release on the Mietpreisbremse extension to 2029 (in German) on 18 November 2025, the ordinance runs from 1 December 2025 to 31 December 2029 across the city of Bremen (Bremerhaven is excluded). When re-letting an existing flat, the rent may not exceed the local reference rent (ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete in Bremen's qualified Mietspiegel) by more than 10%, unless the previous tenant legitimately paid more. New builds and comprehensively modernised apartments are exempt.
2. Cap on running rent increases (Kappungsgrenze): For existing tenancies in the city of Bremen, landlords may raise rent toward the local reference level by at most 15% over three years (down from the federal 20% default), under an ordinance in force until 31 August 2029.
3. Short-term lets and vacancy (Wohnraumschutz): Under the Bremisches Wohnraumschutzgesetz, Senatorin für Bau (in German) of 2021 and its municipal Ortsgesetz of October 2021, letting a home as holiday accommodation for more than 90 days per calendar year counts as misappropriation of housing (Zweckentfremdung) and requires formal notification; leaving a flat vacant for more than six months requires a permit, with fines of up to €100,000. As reported by the Weser-Kurier on the May 2026 extension of the Wohnraumschutz Ortsgesetz (in German), the city parliament voted on 19 May 2026 to extend this ordinance to 2030. In short, Bremen is not an Airbnb play.

Rental income is subject to German income tax, and private sellers face capital gains tax if they sell within the ten-year speculation period (Spekulationsfrist); non-resident buyers should always structure acquisitions with a German tax adviser (Steuerberater).

For analysts, family offices and developers building their own screening models, the entire Bremen time series is a single API call using location id 531239. You can review the endpoints in the Comparables and valuation documentation for developers, query the same Bremen series from an AI assistant with Casafari MCP, or create a CASAFARI account and run the Bremen query yourself.