Compared to just about any other major western city, the Berlin housing market seems like a panacea. For about the price of a squalid outer-district shoebox in London, New York or Paris, Berlin offers you a spacious, light-flooded flat in a renovated pre-war building in a fashionable central neighbourhood. The population of Berlin is still lower than it was before the war, by about a million, and this odd phenomenon – a city with more space than people – combines with the relatively weak economy to create housing prices that make expat renters and buyers swoon.

Prices are creeping upward, especially in more stylish parts of the east, but at every point you will find good value for money. Both quality of housing stock (with some notable GDR-era exceptions in the east) and German renovation standards are quite high. Expats looking for single-family homes with gardens tend to settle in leafy far western areas such as Dahlem and Grunewald, which have particularly high standards of living and are close to most of the international schools. Some, however, do come to regret living so far out once they realise both how safe and liveable many of the more central districts are and how far from the action the outer reaches lie.