Passed In: Why One in Three Munich Auction Lots Failed to Sell Last Weekend

Thirty-four percent of residential lots offered at Munich's weekend property auctions on June 28–29 were passed in without a sale — the highest clearance failure rate recorded in the city since the interest-rate shock auctions of October 2023. Of the 41 properties that went to the block across venues organised by Immo-Auktionen München and the state-licensed house Dießenbauer & Partner, 14 attracted no acceptable bid. Seven of those 14 were in Schwabing-West and Maxvorstadt, two districts that sellers have treated as near-guaranteed performers for the better part of a decade.

The number matters because Munich's auction calendar has historically functioned as a live temperature gauge for the broader market. When clearance rates drop sharply in a single weekend — rather than drifting down across a quarter — it usually signals a sudden mismatch between vendor expectations and what buyers will actually pay. That mismatch is back, and it is specific enough to deserve a postcode-by-postcode explanation.

What Killed the Deals

The single most common reason properties were passed in was a vendor reserve set at valuations from late 2024 or early 2025, before the European Central Bank's March 2026 rate hold disappointed buyers who had priced in a further cut. A ground-floor two-bedroom flat on Wilhelmstraße in Schwabing, listed with a reserve of €820,000, drew two registered bidders but stalled at €765,000 — €55,000 short of the floor the owner refused to move. A similar story played out on Schellingstraße in Maxvorstadt, where a 78-square-metre period apartment with original stucco ceilings was passed in at €810,000 against a €890,000 reserve. Neither seller had updated their pricing expectations since Dießenbauer & Partner's Q4 2025 valuation reports, according to publicly circulated auction documentation reviewed by The Daily Munich.

Three lots in Haidhausen also failed, though for a different reason: structural disclosure problems flagged in the Baugutachten, the official building survey required under Bavarian auction law. One property on Pariser Straße had documented damp penetration in the basement that bidders received only 48 hours before the auction, leaving insufficient time for independent surveys. Registered bidders withdrew rather than absorb the uncertainty. The auctioneer noted the lot would be re-offered, with a new disclosure window of at least 14 days, at the September 20 auction.

Across Munich as a whole, the median hammer price for lots that did sell came in at €7,340 per square metre — roughly 6 percent below the citywide median of €7,810 per square metre recorded by the Gutachterausschuss für Grundstückswerte München in its most recent quarterly report covering Q1 2026. That gap is widening: the same comparison in Q3 2025 showed auction hammer prices running only 2 percent below market median.

Who Is Still Buying, and Where

Not every lot struggled. The Glockenbachviertel continued to attract competitive bidding: a 62-square-metre one-bedroom on Müllerstraße cleared at €695,000, roughly €30,000 above reserve, after seven registered bidders pushed the price up in 18 rounds. The neighbourhood's walkability scores and proximity to Gärtnerplatz appear to be sustaining demand even as buyer pools thin elsewhere. A commercial unit on Sendlinger Straße, close to the Sendlinger Tor U-Bahn junction, also sold above reserve to an investor acquiring it for conversion into serviced apartments under the city's Zweckentfremdungsverbot exemption scheme for short-term professional lets.

Buyers active in the market right now are largely equity-heavy and rate-insensitive — private family offices, small institutional funds, and individuals relocating from Frankfurt and Hamburg who are selling into stronger northern markets and arriving in Munich with cash. Mortgage-dependent bidders have largely stepped back since April.

For vendors with properties entered into the September 20 auction at Dießenbauer & Partner's Maximilianstraße rooms, the lesson from last weekend is blunt: get a fresh Verkehrswertgutachten — a current market value report — before finalising your reserve. The Gutachterausschuss für Grundstückswerte München publishes updated reference tables each quarter; the Q2 2026 edition is due on July 31. Any seller setting a reserve on data older than that is gambling against a bidding pool that has already done its homework.