Drive-in apartments on sale in Berlin

Car fanatics can now buy drive-in apartments in Berlin, offering a unique property investment opportunity. A team of architects has designed a building where a heavy duty lift brings your car directly up to the loft-style apartment.

The Berlin drive-in apartment has been designed to make the car a feature of the interior decoration, reports The Times. "Cars have become design statements, an expression of your lifestyle. So why not integrate them properly into your life," Johannes Kauka of Topos, the company behind the apartment block, told the paper.

A stylish but heavy-duty lift hoists the car directly up to the apartment. It is then parked in a kind of conservatory, which is separated from the living space by just a glass wall.

Six of the eleven drive-in loft apartments have been sold so far and the smallest - 224 square metres - costs €468,000 (£373,000). The sixth floor penthouse costs €1.6m. Each apartment has a garden with an optional putting green. It takes just two minutes from approaching the building to enter the apartment and park the car.

The Berlin model is likely to be exported to other cities - St Petersburg and Cape Town have already expressed an interest. If it proves successful it could also be taken to Brussels, Mexico City and Abu Dhabi.

"The customers all have a special relationship to cars," said Kauka. "They have petrol in their veins."

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