SUMMARY
Yes, you should consider buying near the PaketPost-Areal now if you are a long-term buyer and the apartment is already good at today’s price. The opportunity is strongest for owner-occupiers and cash-rich buyers, not for heavily leveraged landlords.
The biggest change is that PaketPost has moved from planning speculation to a legally much firmer project. The key risk has shifted from “will this happen?” to “how long will it take to finance and build?”
The location already works without the redevelopment. Hirschgarten, Neuhausen-Nymphenburg, Arnulfpark and existing transport links mean a delayed PaketPost does not leave buyers stranded beside an unfinished peripheral district.
The most interesting evidence is the micro-location discount. Wilhelm-Hale-Straße is roughly 10% below the wider Neuhausen-Nymphenburg apartment estimate and Birketweg about 7% below it, with larger gaps versus Hirschgartenallee.
The timing is unusual in a good way: planning risk has fallen after local prices already corrected sharply from their 2021 highs. Buyers are no longer paying peak-era prices, but they also no longer have to underwrite the same political uncertainty.
A sensible upside case is partial discount closure, not a regeneration jackpot. A 5% to 10% relative re-rating can matter on a Munich apartment; assuming PaketPost alone creates a 25% or 30% premium is much harder to justify.
The roughly 1,180 new homes should not create a local glut. Munich remains supply-constrained, and 40% of the new residential development rights are allocated to subsidised or price-dampened housing rather than directly competing market-rate stock.
The rental math is the weak point. Gross yields around 3.4% to 3.6% sit below mortgage rates around 4%, so a leveraged landlord is likely to contribute cash before maintenance, service charges and other ownership costs.
The best apartment is probably not the one closest to the Paketposthalle. Quiet orientation, protection from railway and road noise, sensible future sightlines and enough distance from the construction perimeter matter more than shaving another 100 metres off the walk.
The Paketposthalle is the real wildcard. If it becomes a destination rather than just an impressive building, it could materially improve the area’s identity; that is useful upside to own, but not something we would pay a big premium for today.
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Should you buy near the PaketPost-Areal now?
Is the PaketPost-Areal actually going ahead now?
Yes. The PaketPost-Areal has finally moved far enough through Munich’s planning system that we can treat the redevelopment as a real property-market factor rather than an architectural promise.
Munich’s Bebauungsplan 2147 is currently in force. Before reaching that point, the city approved the revised Herzog & de Meuron masterplan, adopted the necessary land-use changes and survived the legal challenge brought by the HochhausSTOP campaign. The Bavarian Administrative Court ultimately rejected the opponents’ complaint.
For years, a buyer had to accept the possibility that the towers would be cut, the plan substantially rewritten or the entire process dragged out politically. Those risks have fallen sharply.
The approved project is also detailed enough that we know roughly what kind of neighborhood is coming. Munich plans about 1,180 homes, 3,050 jobs, shops, hotels, cultural uses, elderly care, childcare and substantial new public and private green space. The listed Paketposthalle becomes the centre of the district, with two 155-metre towers marking its western side.
What remains uncertain is execution. Construction has not started, and a legally approved development can still take much longer than expected to finance and build.
| PaketPost-Areal issue | A few years ago | Currently | What changed for buyers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masterplan | Still evolving | Revised plan approved | Much less design uncertainty |
| 155 m towers | Politically vulnerable | Included in valid planning | Cancellation risk has fallen |
| HochhausSTOP challenge | Could disrupt approval | Court challenge failed | Major political hurdle removed |
| Zoning | Still going through process | Legally in force | Development rights are much firmer |
| Construction | Not started | Still not started | Execution risk remains |
Could PaketPost construction still take much longer than expected?
Yes. PaketPost planning risk has fallen sharply, but construction risk is now the part buyers should worry about.
Munich currently describes the Paketposthalle and surrounding Pineapple Park as an interim-use area that will continue until building work begins. Developer Büschl has previously pointed to construction beginning around 2027, with completion of the wider quarter potentially stretching into the early 2030s. Those dates should be read as targets rather than promises.
This is an unusually complicated project. Two 155-metre towers have to be built alongside mid-rise housing and commercial buildings, while the enormous protected concrete hall must be restored and opened to the public. The urban-development agreement also makes the developer responsible for infrastructure, green space, affordable housing, childcare, school capacity and several public-access requirements.
Financing all of that is harder these days than it would have been during Germany’s zero-rate property boom. Even with the planning battle largely settled, a buyer should assume that parts of the site could remain under construction for years.
The area can still be transformed even if the timetable slips. We would be much less comfortable, though, buying an apartment whose value only makes sense if every phase arrives on schedule.
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Will the PaketPost-Areal genuinely make this part of Munich better?
Very likely. PaketPost is large enough to change the immediate area in ways that a normal apartment project could not.
The scale comes from combining several uses in one place. Around 1,180 homes create a permanent residential population while 3,050 planned jobs bring people into the neighborhood during the day. Shops, hotels, care facilities and cultural uses should add activity outside normal office hours. Munich also requires three integrated daycare facilities and a contribution toward expanding the Hirschbergstraße primary school.
The public realm is probably more important for nearby property values. The project includes about 8,500 square metres of public green space and 20,800 square metres of private green and open space. Streets and squares around the hall are designed to be largely car-free and heavily planted.
Then there is the Paketposthalle itself. The listed building is around 124 metres long with a span of roughly 148 metres. Munich wants its ground level to become a publicly accessible covered square where people can spend time without having to buy anything. Cultural and sporting events are also planned, with possible event or concert facilities underground.
Today, the area around Wilhelm-Hale-Straße still feels fragmented by railway infrastructure, major roads and large commercial sites. If Munich and Büschl deliver most of the approved plan, that fragmentation should shrink considerably.
| What PaketPost adds | Planned scale | Likely local effect | Importance for nearby homes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Housing | ~1,180 homes | More permanent residents | High |
| Employment | ~3,050 jobs | More weekday activity | Medium-high |
| Public green space | ~8,500 m² | Better streets and recreation | High |
| Private green/open space | ~20,800 m² | Softer residential environment | Medium |
| Paketposthalle | Huge covered public square | Creates a recognizable local centre | Potentially very high |
| Shops and services | Mixed-use programme | More everyday convenience | High |
Is the PaketPost location already good without the redevelopment?
Yes. PaketPost already sits in a strong Munich location, which makes the investment case much safer than buying into a completely new peripheral district.
The site belongs to Neuhausen-Nymphenburg and lies between Arnulfstraße, Wilhelm-Hale-Straße and Birketweg. Hirschgarten and its S-Bahn station sit immediately to the south, while Donnersbergerbrücke and Arnulfpark connect the area toward central Munich. Established Neuhausen and Nymphenburg extend north and west.
This means buyers are not waiting for the basic city to arrive. Public transport already works. Hirschgarten already provides major green space. Restaurants, supermarkets, schools and established residential streets already exist nearby.
Arnulfpark is particularly useful as evidence. Munich has already converted former railway land along the same central-western corridor into a normal, expensive mixed-use neighborhood. PaketPost is more ambitious architecturally, but it is building on an urban transformation that has already happened around it.
If PaketPost takes longer than expected, an owner still has a home in Neuhausen-Nymphenburg rather than an apartment stranded beside an unfinished satellite development.
That substantially reduces the downside.
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Are apartments right beside PaketPost still cheaper than Neuhausen?
Yes. Some streets closest to PaketPost currently trade at a real discount to the wider Neuhausen-Nymphenburg market.
Immowelt’s latest street-level estimates put apartments on Wilhelm-Hale-Straße at about €8,558 per square metre and Birketweg at €8,803. Friedenheimer Brücke is around €9,464. Across Neuhausen-Nymphenburg, the same model puts apartments at roughly €9,464 per square metre, while Hirschgartenallee reaches about €9,972.
Wilhelm-Hale-Straße therefore sits roughly 10% below the district benchmark. Birketweg is about 7% cheaper. Compared with Hirschgartenallee, the gaps are closer to 14% and 12%.
Those are asking-price estimates rather than notarised transaction prices, and individual building quality can easily overwhelm a street average. Still, the pattern is useful. The streets that currently deal with the roughest edges of the PaketPost site are also the streets carrying some of the clearest discounts.
That gives us something concrete to buy into. We do not have to assume that Neuhausen becomes dramatically more expensive; even partial convergence between these streets and the surrounding district could add value.
| Location | Current apartment estimate | Approx. gap vs Neuhausen-Nymphenburg | What we see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wilhelm-Hale-Straße | €8,558/m² | -9.6% | Clearest redevelopment discount |
| Birketweg | €8,803/m² | -7.0% | Interesting middle ground |
| Friedenheimer Brücke | €9,464/m² | roughly 0% | Already at district level |
| Neuhausen-Nymphenburg | €9,464/m² | Benchmark | Wider district |
| Hirschgartenallee | €9,972/m² | +5.4% | More established residential pricing |
Have buyers already missed Munich’s property downturn?
Mostly. Munich property prices are rising again, although the market is still well below the frenzy of the low-rate years in several nearby streets.
JLL’s latest Munich data put average condominium asking prices at €8,860 per square metre, up 2.2% over the previous year. Existing apartments rose 1.4% to €8,390 per square metre. Munich therefore no longer looks like a market searching for a bottom. Prices have started recovering.
The streets around PaketPost tell a more interesting story over a longer period. Birketweg reached about €10,156 per square metre in 2021, dropped to €8,415 in 2023 and is currently around €8,803. Wilhelm-Hale-Straße moved from roughly €9,863 to €8,172 and has recovered only to €8,558. Friedenheimer Brücke went from about €10,918 to €9,047 and now sits around €9,464.
So the deepest bargain phase appears to have passed, but nearby prices have not returned to their old peaks.
The timing is unusually clean: buyers can enter after PaketPost’s political and zoning risks have fallen dramatically, while several immediate streets remain roughly 13% below their 2021 values.
That is a much better setup than it was at the market peak.
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How much could PaketPost actually lift nearby apartment prices?
Probably enough to matter, but not enough to justify paying any price today.
The simplest way to estimate the opportunity is to look at the discounts that already exist. Wilhelm-Hale-Straße is currently around 9.6% below the wider Neuhausen-Nymphenburg apartment estimate. Birketweg is about 7% below it. Against Hirschgartenallee, the gaps are larger.
Some of that discount should survive. Railway exposure, traffic, building quality and noise do not disappear when PaketPost opens. A flat directly facing busy infrastructure will never automatically price like a quiet apartment deeper inside Nymphenburg.
But imagine that a €620,000 apartment benefits from only a 5% relative re-rating as the immediate environment improves. That is about €31,000. A 10% re-rating would mean roughly €62,000 before broader Munich market movements.
Those numbers are meaningful, although purchase costs and years of financing can eat a substantial part of the gain.
We would underwrite PaketPost as a possible single-digit or low-double-digit micro-location improvement over a long holding period. Expecting the redevelopment by itself to add 25% or 30% to an ordinary apartment is too aggressive.
| Example on a €620,000 apartment | Price effect | Value change | How realistic is it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| No local re-rating | 0% | €0 | Entirely possible |
| Partial improvement | +5% | +€31,000 | Sensible base case |
| Strong discount closure | +10% | +€62,000 | Plausible for a good property |
| Large prestige premium | +20% | +€124,000 | Too aggressive to assume |
| Wider market falls | -10% | -€62,000 | Can erase the PaketPost benefit |
Will PaketPost add too many new apartments at once?
No. PaketPost is a big development locally, but Munich still needs far more housing than this project can supply.
JLL’s latest comparison of Germany’s eight largest cities found that Munich completed only 28 homes per 10,000 residents. Building permits are running higher at around 40 per 10,000 residents, which suggests supply could recover, but JLL expects that recovery to remain slow.
The PaketPost housing mix also reduces the amount of direct competition with normal market-rate apartments. Under Munich’s development agreement, 40% of the new residential development rights must go to subsidised or price-dampened housing: 30% subsidised and another 10% price-controlled.
So even though around 1,180 homes sound like a huge wave of supply, they are spread across several types of tenure and will arrive in a city that has struggled to build enough housing for years.
A landlord owning a standard one- or two-bedroom apartment near the project should expect more competition once new buildings open. We do not see enough supply here to create a local glut.
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Do the rents near PaketPost make the numbers work?
Not really. Munich rents are very high now, but purchase prices around PaketPost are still too expensive to produce an attractive income yield.
Engel & Völkers currently estimates average apartment asking rents in Neuhausen-Nymphenburg at €26.53 per square metre. JLL’s broader Munich figure is €25.41, with the city still the most expensive rental market among Germany’s eight largest cities. JLL also recorded rent growth of 5.4% over the previous year.
Take Birketweg at roughly €8,803 per square metre. Pairing that purchase price with €26.53 per square metre of monthly rent produces a gross yield of about 3.6%.
Using the wider Neuhausen-Nymphenburg purchase estimate of €9,464 gives roughly 3.4%.
Those yields come before maintenance, non-recoverable service charges, vacancy, management, purchase costs and taxes. Once those expenses are included, the income return becomes fairly thin.
Rent growth helps. Munich rents have lately been rising faster than apartment prices, and a few more years of that divergence would gradually improve yields.
For someone buying today, though, PaketPost is primarily a capital-preservation and long-term appreciation story. It is not a strong cash-flow market.
Are mortgage rates still too high for a PaketPost investment?
Yes for many leveraged investors. German mortgage rates around 4% currently sit above the gross rental yield of a typical apartment near PaketPost.
Interhyp’s latest published mortgage table puts a ten-year loan at about 3.88% for borrowers below 70% loan-to-value, 3.97% at 80% and 4.24% above 90%. Interhyp says the market has broadly stabilised around the 4% mark.
Suppose we buy a 70-square-metre Birketweg apartment at the current street estimate. The purchase price is roughly €616,000 before transaction costs.
At €26.53 per square metre of monthly rent, annual gross rent comes to about €22,300.
A 70% mortgage would be approximately €431,000. At 4% interest, first-year interest alone is about €17,200. Add 2% initial principal repayment and annual debt service approaches €25,900 before maintenance and other ownership expenses.
That leaves a leveraged landlord contributing cash despite collecting close to €1,860 a month in rent.
An investor can still make money if rents and property values rise over time, but the apartment is unlikely to finance itself comfortably today.
| 70 m² Birketweg example | Approximate figure | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase price | €616,000 | Expensive even at a local discount |
| Monthly rent | €1,857 | Strong rent in absolute terms |
| Annual gross rent | €22,284 | About 3.6% gross yield |
| 70% mortgage | €431,000 | Moderate leverage |
| Interest around 4% | €17,240/year | Uses most of the rent |
| Interest + 2% repayment | €25,860/year | Already exceeds gross rent |
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Is buying near PaketPost better if you plan to live there?
Yes. PaketPost currently makes more sense for a long-term owner-occupier than for someone trying to maximise rental income.
An owner-occupier gets direct use from the things that should improve over the next decade: new green space, shops, restaurants, pedestrian routes, the public hall and a generally more finished urban environment.
They also avoid one of the biggest weaknesses in the landlord calculation. A homeowner does not need a 3.5% gross rental yield to beat a 4% mortgage rate; the alternative is paying Munich rent somewhere else.
The holding period becomes crucial. Someone expecting to stay for eight or ten years can live through construction and potentially own the apartment when most of the neighborhood improvements are finally visible.
A buyer expecting to move again after three years faces a much less attractive trade. Construction disruption could still be intense, transaction costs in Germany are high and Munich’s short-term price path is impossible to predict closely.
PaketPost suits patience much better than speculation.
Which apartments near PaketPost look most interesting now?
The strongest PaketPost purchases currently look like apartments close enough to gain from the redevelopment but far enough away to avoid its worst permanent drawbacks.
Birketweg deserves attention because its current price estimate remains below both the wider district and Hirschgarten. Selected parts of Wilhelm-Hale-Straße can also be interesting when the apartment itself is protected from traffic and railway noise.
We would care more about the individual building than the number of metres separating it from the Paketposthalle. A quiet rear-facing apartment 300 metres away may benefit more than a unit directly overlooking future service roads, nightlife or heavy pedestrian activity.
Light is another issue that buyers should inspect carefully. The approved scheme contains two 155-metre towers, a 65-metre residential building and several substantial mid-rise buildings. Existing open views toward the PaketPost site should never be assumed to remain open.
The best setup is fairly simple: a good apartment, an already usable neighborhood, a purchase price that still reflects some of today’s rough surroundings and enough distance from the construction site to live comfortably.
When an agent asks €11,000 or €12,000 per square metre for an ordinary unit purely because “PaketPost is coming,” much of the future improvement has already been charged to the buyer.
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Could living right beside PaketPost actually get worse?
For several years, yes. The apartments nearest PaketPost may experience the biggest short-term deterioration before they receive the long-term benefit.
Construction is the obvious problem. Excavation, demolition, delivery traffic, cranes and major building works could continue through several phases. Anyone buying directly opposite the site should be comfortable with an extended period of disruption.
The finished district will also be much busier. The Paketposthalle is planned as a public destination, while offices, hotels, restaurants, cultural facilities and thousands of workers will increase foot traffic throughout the area.
Some buyers will see that as exactly the upgrade the neighborhood needs. Someone looking for a quiet residential pocket may disagree.
Views can also worsen. A property that feels open today may eventually face new construction, while a flat close to railway lines or major roads will still have those disadvantages after the project is complete.
So proximity has a sweet spot. Being near PaketPost should be valuable. Being practically inside its construction perimeter is not automatically better.
Could the Paketposthalle become the thing that really pushes prices higher?
Yes, although the Paketposthalle still has more to prove than the housing around it.
The hall is the one part of the project that could give this neighborhood an identity beyond “the area between Neuhausen and the railway.”
Munich plans to turn its vast ground floor into a publicly accessible covered city square. The city received more than 1,000 ideas for its future use, and the current concept allows cultural events, sport and potentially larger event spaces below ground.
If the hall becomes somewhere Munich residents deliberately visit, nearby apartments gain restaurants, activity and a recognizable destination on their doorstep. That can influence perceptions of a micro-location far more than another block of expensive flats.
The uncertainty comes from programming. A spectacular building does not guarantee a lively public place. Someone still has to operate it, curate events, maintain it and make people come back.
That makes the Paketposthalle meaningful in the long-term case, but not something we would pay much extra for today.
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Is PaketPost turning into another Arnulfpark?
It could, although buyers should expect a messier transformation than Arnulfpark.
Arnulfpark provides a useful nearby precedent because it shows what can happen when former railway and industrial land along Munich’s western central corridor becomes normal urban fabric. Housing, offices, landscaping and public transport eventually turned the area into an established extension of central Munich.
PaketPost starts from a similar problem but has a much more distinctive centrepiece. The Paketposthalle and towers could give the area a stronger identity than Arnulfpark ever had.
Execution is also harder. Heritage restoration, 155-metre towers, affordable housing, public infrastructure and extensive open-space obligations all sit inside the same project.
The useful lesson from Arnulfpark is fairly modest: unpleasant gaps in Munich’s urban fabric can become desirable places once the roads, landscaping, housing and everyday uses knit together.
That is enough to make PaketPost interesting. We do not need to assume it becomes Munich’s next prestige district.
Should you buy near the PaketPost-Areal now?
Yes, but only if the apartment is already good and the price still reflects some of the area’s current weaknesses.
The timing has improved considerably. PaketPost has secured its planning framework, the political battle over the towers has largely run its course and the surrounding Munich property market is rising again rather than falling. At the same time, Birketweg and Wilhelm-Hale-Straße still sit below the wider Neuhausen-Nymphenburg price level.
That combination creates a real opportunity for a long-term buyer.
We would be particularly comfortable with a good owner-occupied apartment around the lower end of local market pricing, provided the building avoids direct railway exposure, major traffic and future construction immediately outside the windows.
A cash-rich investor could make the same bet, although today’s 3.4–3.6% gross yields leave little room for mistakes.
A heavily financed landlord has a weaker case. Mortgage rates are around 4%, while the gross rental yield is lower. The investment therefore needs rent growth and capital appreciation to do much of the work.
Short-term buyers should be even more cautious. PaketPost may take years to build, and several of those years could bring more noise and inconvenience before the neighborhood gets better.
For a buyer who can hold through that transition, PaketPost is one of Munich’s more interesting regeneration plays. The opportunity is not to buy the closest apartment to the towers. It is to find an apartment that still carries a discount for the neighborhood as it looks today, without suffering from disadvantages that will still be there once PaketPost is finished.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
We approached the PaketPost-Areal as a property question with several separate moving parts rather than assuming that a major regeneration project automatically makes nearby apartments attractive. The analysis combines project certainty, execution risk, local relative pricing, Munich’s wider market direction, housing supply, rental economics, financing and property-level exposure.
For the development itself, we relied primarily on official Munich planning material and the Bavarian Administrative Court. The key references are Landeshauptstadt München’s PaketPost-Areal project page, the official Bebauungsplan register for Plan 2147, and the Bayerischer Verwaltungsgerichtshof decision on the HochhausSTOP challenge.
We kept planning certainty separate from construction certainty. A valid planning framework tells us that the political and zoning risk has fallen sharply; it does not tell us when financing, construction phasing, restoration of the hall or completion of the wider quarter will actually happen.
For the local pricing work, we compared streets closest to the redevelopment with the wider Neuhausen-Nymphenburg market and Hirschgartenallee using the same Immowelt dataset. The relevant series are Wilhelm-Hale-Straße, Birketweg, Friedenheimer Brücke, Neuhausen-Nymphenburg and Hirschgartenallee. Keeping those comparisons inside one valuation model makes the relative gaps more useful than mixing incompatible street estimates.
We used recent Munich-wide research as a market check rather than as a substitute for the micro-location analysis. Key references include JLL’s Germany Living market overview, Munich’s Gutachterausschuss market analyses and the city’s Immobilien-Marktbericht München.
Where the future cannot be measured directly, we used scenarios rather than point forecasts. The potential PaketPost uplift is therefore framed mainly as partial closure of an existing local discount, while broader Munich price movements are treated separately instead of being credited to the redevelopment.
Rental and financing economics were tested with current asking-rent and mortgage-rate benchmarks, including Engel & Völkers for Neuhausen-Nymphenburg rents, Interhyp for current mortgage rates and Deutsche Bundesbank housing-loan rate data. That is why the owner-occupier and leveraged-landlord conclusions differ even though they refer to the same apartments.
Finally, we treated the individual apartment as more important than raw distance to the project. Railway exposure, traffic, orientation, future sightlines, construction proximity and the quality of the building can outweigh a street-level discount, so none of the local averages is meant to replace property-by-property due diligence.
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