Anyone who is reasonably satisfied in his current apartment should avoid a move. At least this is suggested by statistics from the Federal Statistical Office. Accordingly, the housing situation for tenants in Germany has worsened significantly, especially in the large cities. Last year, those households who rented apartments from 2015 paid higher rents nationwide than people with older leases.
Households had to pay according to the microcensus supplementary survey on the housing situation in the nationwide average 7.70 euros net rent per square meter for an apartment that was rented in 2015 and later. This meant that they were twelve percent above the average net cold rent of 6.90 euros per square meter in Germany.
In Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Berlin, the differences between long-term tenants and newcomers were even higher. Thus, in Berlin in 2018, the average net rent for 2015 and thereafter rented apartments was 9.10 euros per square meter and thus almost a quarter higher than the Berlin rent average of 7.40 euros.
In the comparison of the federal states tenants had to pay in Hamburg with 10,30 euro the highest net cold rents for new leases.
In metropolises, the rent consumes almost a third of the income
Less than the national average, the difference between the net cold rents for new lettings from 2015 onwards was the respective average rents, above all in Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate, but also in North Rhine-Westphalia.
High rents are according to the Federal Office "above all a problem of the metropolises". In 2015, the average net rent per square meter for new leases in the seven largest cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf was 10.80 euros from 2015, which is a good 21 percent above the general average in these cities (8.90 euros).
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This also has an impact on the so-called rent burden ratio, ie the proportion of household net income that households have to spend on total gross rent.
The gross rent is composed of the net cold rent and the ancillary costs such as the monthly operating costs for house and street cleaning, garbage removal or chimney cleaning; property tax or building insurance are also included.
Nationwide, this rate was 27.2 percent in 2018 and 29.5 percent in major cities. For households that have rented their apartments in the past four years, the rental burden rate nationwide already stood at 28.6 percent. If these households live in a metropolis or in a larger city, the rental burden is approaching or even exceeding 30 percent.
