Greystar Opens 758-Home Momento Berlin Rental Community in Neukölln, Developed with Bauwens
Greystar has officially opened Momento Berlin, a 758-home rental community at Buschkrugallee 64 in Berlin's Neukölln district, completing a project developed in partnership with Bauwens and construction company Goldbeck on the approximately 30,000-square-meter site of the former BLUB leisure pool. The opening was celebrated on October 1, 2026, with residents, project partners, neighbors and city representatives, including Berlin's Governing Mayor Kai Wegner.
Project Overview: 860 Homes, a Daycare Center and Shared Green Space
Momento Berlin is part of a broader residential neighborhood that delivered 860 homes in total across the Buschkrugallee site. Greystar manages and operates 758 of those homes under its Momento brand, while a further 102 homes owned by Berlinovo provide rent-controlled and subsidized housing. The neighborhood also includes a daycare center with more than 100 places, green spaces, recreational areas and shared amenities.
The 758 privately financed Greystar homes are distributed across 14 buildings and span approximately 387,500 square feet of residential floor area. The community offers studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments in both furnished and unfurnished configurations. Residents have access to roughly 1,450 square meters of shared amenity space, including co-working areas, fitness and yoga studios, a rooftop terrace, and spaces for socializing and leisure. A dedicated onsite team handles day-to-day resident services as well as technical and maintenance support.
The project was acquired by Greystar through a forward-purchase structure for its develop-to-core venture in Germany and Austria, reflecting an intended long-term ownership and operating strategy.
Prefabrication and Serial Construction at Scale
The development employed serial and prefabricated construction methods, including wall elements delivered to the site with windows, conduits and cabling already integrated. Bauwens served as developer, with Goldbeck handling construction. The approach created economies of scale across the large project while still allowing for a variety of apartment layouts and individually designed shared spaces.
Michael Stapf, Managing Director – Development, Germany & Austria, Greystar, said the project illustrates how standardization can improve delivery certainty without sacrificing quality. "Germany needs more housing, but delivering it at the pace and scale required means finding ways to make development more efficient and give projects greater certainty," Stapf said. "Momento Berlin demonstrates how greater standardisation and prefabrication can create efficiencies across a major residential project without sacrificing the variety and quality that make a neighbourhood work. Delivering a project of this scale depends on strong collaboration, and I want to thank Bauwens, Goldbeck, Berlinovo, the city and everyone involved for what they have achieved together."
The neighborhood also incorporates several sustainability measures. Heat recovered from the local sewer system supports the buildings' heating and cooling, while rooftop photovoltaic systems generate electricity onsite. Green retention roofs store rainwater and help improve the local microclimate, and trees, shrubs and outdoor areas for play and exercise create shared spaces for residents.
Berlin's Rental Market Context
Momento Berlin enters one of Europe's most supply-constrained rental markets. Market-active vacancy in Berlin's multifamily stock stood at just 0.3% in the 2026 Berlin Housing Market Report, reflecting a severe mismatch between housing demand and available supply. That scarcity underpins the operating rationale for a large, professionally managed rental community even as asking rents have begun to moderate at the margin.
Median asking rents for new lettings in Berlin fell 4.3% year over year to €18.66 per square meter in the first half of 2026, while new-construction rents averaged €21.92 per square meter, down 0.8% year over year. Those corrections follow approximately 8.4% average annual rental growth over the preceding five years. On the supply side, Berlin authorities approved 13,754 apartments in 2025, up 40.7% from the prior year, though the city's permit rate of 36 apartments per 10,000 inhabitants still exceeds its completion rate of 29 per 10,000, indicating that the structural shortage is unlikely to resolve quickly.
Neukölln is generally considered a more affordable and higher-yielding submarket than Berlin's prime central districts. Gross yields for comparable higher-yield Berlin districts have been reported in the 4%–5% or higher range, though no yield figure was disclosed for Momento Berlin specifically.
Mark Kuijpers, Senior Managing Director – Central Europe, Greystar, said the project reflects how quickly living patterns are evolving. "One of the things we see across our communities is how quickly the way people live is changing, from smaller households and greater mobility to the way people now use their homes for work as well as everyday life," Kuijpers said. "Experience from different markets helps us anticipate some of those changes, but housing is inherently local, so the real value comes from combining that perspective with the knowledge of our teams, partners and residents here in Berlin."
Greystar's Broader Berlin Pipeline
Momento Berlin is part of Greystar's wider residential development pipeline in the German capital. In partnership with Ten Brinke, the company is developing 428 rental homes in Marzahn. Greystar is also working with PRIMUS on several projects across Berlin, with the joint platform comprising approximately 1,400 planned homes in Pankow, Charlottenburg, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg. Together with the 758-home Momento community, Greystar's announced Berlin pipeline represents at least 2,586 homes across various stages of ownership, development and joint-platform planning.
The Momento Berlin opening comes as high construction costs, elevated financing costs, labor constraints and lengthy development timelines have reduced the viability of many multifamily schemes across Germany. Greystar and its partners have pointed to repeatable building elements, prefabrication and economies of scale as tools to improve delivery certainty — a model the company has indicated it intends to replicate in future projects.
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