Rent an apartment: List of offers from private individuals

Finding rental apartments: an overview of the market in Germany

Not even every second person in Germany lives in their own house or apartment. That is well below the EU average. What's more, there are hardly any countries in Europe with a lower rate. Although a lot has changed in recent years, most people are still looking for rented accommodation.

Regional differences in rental apartments and home ownership

However, the home ownership rate varies greatly. In Saarland, on the border with the expensive Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, it is at its highest. In contrast, city states such as Hamburg and Bremen, and especially Berlin, are typical tenant markets. There are often historical reasons for this. However, the home ownership rate in large cities is generally lower than in rural areas. This is partly due to nationalization during the Nazi era and massive (social) housing construction in the metropolises since the Second World War, on the one hand, and land ownership in the countryside, which is often passed down through generations, on the other.

At the same time, renting in Germany was more attractive than investing in your own home for a long time. If you wanted to rent an apartment, you paid less than for a real estate loan. This changed somewhat after the turn of the millennium because interest rates were extremely low for a long time. At the same time, rents rose sharply, partly because there were not enough apartments available. Nevertheless, rents in Germany are still affordable by European standards, even in expensive locations such as apartments for rent in Munich.

Commission-free apartments from private owners are sometimes cheaper

Among all apartments, commission-free offers are particularly attractive. The rental market is divided. If you want to rent an apartment, you can either take advantage of offers from a cooperative or a municipal housing association or from private developers. However, a relevant proportion is also rented privately. Among these rental apartments, there are many whose owners do not use an estate agent. This saves the landlords the estate agent's commission. As the landlords do not incur any additional costs from an estate agent in the event of a change of tenant, many of the private offers remain below the possible maximum rent.

Finding a rental apartment: How many rooms are allowed?

When looking for an apartment, the number of rooms is one of the most relevant factors alongside the basic rent per square meter. A one-room apartment is only suitable for singles. Students look for an apartment or a room in a shared flat. Couples like to look at 2-room apartments, but have more space in 3-room apartments. This is also the size for tenants with a child or who need a home office. If the need for space increases, 4-room apartments or even 5-room apartments are in demand. More rooms are already relatively rare.

The problem: while there are many 2-room apartments on offer, three-room apartments are already relatively rare. The more rooms someone is looking for, the more difficult it becomes to find suitable rental apartments at all. The market is smaller and there is considerable demand. However, even two-room apartments are hard to come by in some regions. Many people prefer to live alone as singles, which is particularly noticeable on the housing market in cities. As a result, there is a shortage of small and affordable apartments.

A rental apartment in the city: the neighborhood also makes a difference

Cities attract people more than the countryside anyway. Young people want to live in trendy districts, others prefer an upscale middle-class neighborhood. Still others are happy to find affordable living space at all. Those who don't want to move to the countryside sometimes have to make compromises.

Gentrification as a problem in German cities

The fundamental causes of gentrification in almost all large and medium-sized German cities are sharply rising rents - even for lower-class properties. High demand, the pull effect of cities and the upgrading ("gentrification") of formerly simple and affordable residential areas are causing rents to skyrocket. Gentrification in particular leads to social upheaval and much criticism. The areas affected include Berlin (Kreuzberg, Neukölln), Hamburg (Altona, St. Pauli), Hanover (Linden, Nordstadt), Cologne (Mülheim, Deutz), Frankfurt am Main (Westend, Nordend) and Stuttgart (Nordbahnhofviertel, Hallschlag). The increasing tendency there, as elsewhere in Germany, to convert old apartments for tenants into condominiums is reducing the supply of rental apartments and causing rents to rise sharply.

Shortage of housing in student cities

This also applies in particular to German university cities, which are traditionally in high demand. These include Aachen, Augsburg, Bamberg, Bonn, Bielefeld, Bremen, Darmstadt, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Erfurt, Freiburg, Fulda, Göttingen, Heidelberg, Jena, Kiel, Constance, Leipzig, Lübeck, Mainz, Marburg, Passau, Potsdam, Regensburg, Rostock, Speyer, Trier, Ulm, Weimar, Wuppertal and Würzburg.

Smaller affordable housing units are rare in these cities, as new students and teachers moving here have short-term needs and choose properties that are difficult to let, at least temporarily. The question is not so much whether an apartment is offered by an estate agent or privately - despite the availability of student residences, many prospective tenants are unable to find accommodation quickly and have to move to the surrounding area or to shared flats.

City or countryside - offers and tenant preferences

Most experts and observers expect regionalization to become even more pronounced in the medium and long term. This means that rents in cities will continue to rise, while rents in rural areas will stagnate or even fall in many places. On the one hand, this is tragic, as living space in cities is increasingly becoming a luxury good - at least in popular neighborhoods.

On the other hand, this creates opportunities for people who want to live in the countryside. Those who are mobile or have a local job can find affordable housing. With one caveat: falling rents are often a side effect of shrinking attractiveness and thus a decline in population, which as a direct consequence means a (further) deterioration in local amenities and infrastructure.

Find a suitable, commission-free rental apartment with ohne-makler

Landlords and estate agents are no longer allowed to charge prospective tenants a commission fee. This means that a commission is only permitted if the prospective tenant has used an estate agent themselves. In all other cases, all apartments are free of commission for tenants.

Nevertheless, the privately offered rental apartments have the advantage that the rents sometimes remain below the possible amount. This can be a big plus point, especially in areas with high rents.

You can find such apartments for rent with us on ohne-makler. We also offer you lots of useful information on tenancy law, tenancy agreements, utility bills, house rules and checklists for letting and renting in our guide and magazine. This also applies to a rent index for all of Germany for the apartments privately brokered by us, which landlords and tenants can use as a guide.

Renting an apartment in Germany - important key figures:

• The ownership rate is particularly low in Germany.
• There is a shortage of apartments because public housing construction is failing to meet its targets.
• The demand for very large and very small apartments has increased in particular.
• Rents have risen sharply in many cities.
• Major cities and university towns are experiencing significant rent increases
• In rural areas, on the other hand, demand and rents are falling or stagnating.
• Rents for privately offered apartments are noticeably lower in some cases.