Dresden is Leipzig with baroque and chip factories: purchase prices around €2,700 per square metre, yields above 4 percent, Europe’s largest semiconductor region in the north of the city and a state government that raised transfer tax to 5.5 percent.
Buy or rent?
23.7 years of rentpurchase price divided by annual cold rentBelow 25 the ratio favours buying: the rent almost covers the mortgage payment on its own.
milinia’s take
- Purchase prices €2,700 per square metre, Blasewitz, Loschwitz and the Neustadt over €4,000, Gorbitz and Prohlis around €1,700.
- Silicon Saxony: chip factories in the north with collectively agreed salaries above €5,000 draw specialists.
- Transfer tax 5.5 percent, trade tax multiplier 450, property tax 635.
- Rental yield 4.2 percent, above 5 in Pieschen, Löbtau and Gorbitz.
Living
Existing flats cost €2,700 per square metre, in Blasewitz, Loschwitz, Striesen and the Äußere Neustadt over €4,000, in Gorbitz and Prohlis around €1,700. New lettings at €9.50 excluding utilities, the Neustadt and Striesen €12. Dresden has one of the highest home ownership rates of the eastern cities and, with the Elbe slopes and villa quarters, locations with Munich character at a third of the price. The correction since 2022 came to around 8 percent.
Earning
Median €3,700 gross, in the semiconductor industry, microelectronics and research under collective agreements above €5,000, below in services and tourism. Purchasing power index 92. The north of the city with the chip factories, the new plant of a Taiwanese maker from 2027 and the suppliers is growing by 20,000 jobs by 2030; that drives rents in Klotzsche, Hellerau and Pieschen.
Taxes and levies
Saxony: transfer tax 5.5 percent since 2023. Trade tax multiplier 450 percent, property tax multiplier after the reform 635. Church tax 9 percent with low membership.
Investing
The gross yield sits at 4.2 percent, in Pieschen, Löbtau, Cotta and Gorbitz above 5. With Silicon Saxony Dresden has a growth driver Leipzig lacks in this form, and a housing market that has not yet priced in the inflow of engineers. Investors choose Pieschen and Löbtau for upgrading, Klotzsche near the factories or Striesen for value retention. Risks: dependence on the chip cycle, the political mood in Saxony, vacancy in prefab estates.
milinia’s view
Dresden is the city where the industry of the future rises in a backdrop of the past, and both are undervalued. Whoever buys in Pieschen today lets to chip engineers in 2030.
Try it yourself
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