Sell retail in Essen.

Essen's retail leasing market in Q1 2026 is defined by a stabilising but still-transitioning city core. Kettwiger Strasse remains the undisputed prime high street, counted among Germany's top-20 shopping streets by footfall with roughly 40,000 pedestrians a day, and prime rents for small units have historically reached around 70 EUR/sqm. After several years of correction, headline rents on the best pitches have broadly bottomed, even as the street continues to rebalance away from comparison fashion. The closure of Anson's at the end of November 2025 illustrated the ongoing attrition among traditional apparel anchors. The western end of the high street is anchored by Limbecker Platz, one of Germany's largest inner-city shopping centres, whose role as a footfall magnet is central to the core's health. Its stabilisation is being driven by the backfilling of former Galeria space: Intersport is taking around 2,500 sqm and the Swedish value-fashion operator Lager 157 more than 3,000 sqm, alongside the existing Peek & Cloppenburg anchor. These deals are emblematic of the wider shift, with sports, value and food formats expanding into space vacated by department-store and mid-market fashion tenants. Ruettenscheider Strasse offers a contrasting and more resilient story. As Essen's premier lifestyle and gastronomy strip, it relies on experience-led demand from independent boutiques, cafes and restaurants rather than comparison retail, and it stands to benefit directly from the reduction of dine-in VAT to 7 percent effective 1 January 2026. Secondary city-core pitches and side streets, by contrast, continue to face elevated vacancy and a drift toward value and discount operators, mirroring the structural pressure on mid-size German high streets. The year ahead is therefore a tale of two markets. Prime, footfall-anchored space on Kettwiger Strasse and within Limbecker Platz is stabilising, helped by mixed-use repositioning schemes such as Like25 at Kennedyplatz and Midstad Essen on Kettwiger Strasse that blend retail with gastronomy, culture and office uses. The opportunities lie in re-tenanting former anchor space on favourable terms and in capturing F&B-led demand on Ruettenscheider Strasse. The risks are continued fashion-anchor losses, the relentless online shift in comparison goods, and a dependence on a small number of large backfill deals to underpin the core.

footfall kettwiger: 40,000 pedestrians/day on Kettwiger Strasse (most-frequented street, top-20 nationally per BNP PRE); prime rent high street: 70 EUR/sqm/month (indicative Kettwiger Strasse prime, ~100 sqm units; latest published level); national retail invest q1: 1,370,000,000 EUR German retail investment volume Q1 2026, +7% YoY (national context).