While German investors still display confidence in many parts of their domestic retail market, international investors are very cautious, especially with regard to eastern German shopping centres.

This caution is not unfounded. The East German market tends to be too specialised for them and requires a great deal of location expertise. What is more, 30 years on from the reunification of Germany, on the surface it appears that there are very similar problems with shopping centres in East Germany as there are in the rest of the country. Looking back, however, it is clear that different socioeconomic and urban planning conditions exist in the new federal states due to the different ways in which those systems have developed over the last three decades — and the consequences of these differences are still being felt today.

When converted into euros, gr