Overseas: Berlin is bouncing back - but is it a good place for Irish first-time-buyer Carl O'Malley to jump onto the property ladder?

The moment is almost upon us. SSIAs are nearly here and when they are, all the young folk will finally be able to get their lovely new houses.

Then they can mow lawns and car pool the kids to school with the neighbours.

Of course, some may have to go further afield than they had initially expected, but that's okay because our infrastructure, especially public transport, is getting better everyday.

There is however, a crazy train of thought with some agitators that suggests this is not all going to go as planned. I would be one of those, and so would many friends.

We made the elementary error of not securing a diligent saving partner. What were we thinking?

You see, even if I chuck in the maximum every month the likelihood is, by the time the money floods onto the market, I will be back to square one of being talked into buying a shoebox for €300,000 and being asked for another €30,000 when I innocently inquire about the availability of a parking space. So having taken back a booking deposit on a city centre apartment recently because of the crippling amount of debt I anticipated being in in a few years, I set about looking beyond the Pale, and beyond these shores.

There has been an ever increasing number of ads in daily nationals lately highlighting investment opportunities abroad, and frankly, many of them sound quite appealing.

Having spent time in Berlin recently, the one that caught my eye was the German capital.

Germany has been in the economic wilderness for some time now, but there are signs that the sleeping giant might just be getting its act together.

Signs such as falling unemployment, increasing competitiveness with European neighbours and the fact that, according to the Economist, it has recently retained its status as the world's biggest exporter.

So for those of us with no dependants, yet, and a modest amount of money to play around with, listening to what some of these people had to say was, I figured, a good idea.

Where better to start than at last weekend's Berlin property Expo, hosted in the Burlington by Springs International?

Having googled my way through as many articles as I could find on Berlin's property market and being generally encouraged by what I had read, I went along to see if it all fell into place.

On offer were approximately 100 apartments on the very attractive boulevard known as Frankfurter Allee, in the city centre borough of Friedrichschain.

There are only 100 left because the other 299 have been snapped up by Irish investors in the last three weeks since the Expo began in Dublin and went to Cork the following weekend.

This is hardly surprising considering most analysts predict steady growth in the market over the coming years after it was resurrected from its lowest rung last year.

Each property is already occupied. This is very important for a potential absentee landlord, because German renters, unlike their Irish counterparts, tend to stay where they are for a few years.

Eighty-five per cent of the city's inhabitants rent and they do so for years at a time.

The drawback is that those very appealing rental yields that I had read about would not be available to me unless I turfed the tenants out and rented again at current rates.

Which, of course, I could not do. And rightly so.

Tenants in Germany can only be asked to leave if the owner wishes to occupy his/her property or if the occupants have not been paying the rent.

Rental yields, in any case, are not a massive concern. One step at a time for the fledgling investor.

A potential stumbling block for the first time buyer is that with no domestic property to my name, Irish lenders will not give me a mortgage and the prospect of negotiating a mortgage in another language is a daunting one.

However, I am assured by Michael Fleming of Springs International that assistance negotiating with a German lender, some of whom are located on the ground floor of said building, will be given by their Berlin office. Bear in mind however that German lenders are a responsible bunch and will only supply about 70 per cent of the purchase price.

Of course, one has to fancy the price. Selling prices per square metre in this case do not exceed €2,000 and in most cases are well below. Translation? Between €90,000 and €130,000 for a spacious one-bedroom apartment.

Alternatives to the grandeur of Frankfurter Allee are promised by Spollen Milmo-Penny, whose Dublin office will soon unveil a number of apartments in the more bohemian borough of Prenzlauerberg.

The package will include financial arrangement with German lenders, while prices in the more modest location are likely to be cheaper.

So for those who want to stay where they are for a while, but still feel the need to adhere to the Irish norm of buying property as soon as possible, investing in this dormant city looks to be one compromise.