For a long time, Berlin was known as one of the most affordable cities in Europe.

Food and other consumer goods were and still are rather inexpensive and, most of all, the cost of housing has remained low, unparalleled by European standards. This is largely due to historical reasons. For decades, the Western part of the city was walled in by the socialist German Democratic Republic of the East and, therefore, largely detached from developments in the other parts of West Germany.