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Old buildings in Berlin: the rent cap intensifies competition
Photo: Schöning / imago images
Rental apartments are nowhere as competitive as in Berlin, at least on the online platform Immoscout24.
On average, landlords of an existing apartment in the federal capital received 137 contact requests for an advertisement.
The company determined this on the basis of an internal data analysis for the year 2020, which SPIEGEL has exclusively.
For the data analysis, all contact requests on the platform were related to the apartments offered in the respective cities.
Cologne (63 inquiries) and Leverkusen (57 inquiries) follow at some distance in second and third place.
In the metropolises of Hamburg and Munich, 53 and 40 people were interested in an apartment.
Rent cap intensifies competition in the capital
Immoscout24 attributes the considerable distance between Berlin and the following major cities to the rent cap.
It came into force in February 2020 and has apparently intensified the competitive situation in the federal capital due to the associated decline in supply.
Accordingly, around 70 percent fewer apartments relevant to the rent cap were offered on the real estate platform in December 2020 than in the previous month.
When it comes to renting new apartments, Berlin leads with an average of 29 contact requests, followed by Karlsruhe (26 requests), Cologne (25 requests) and Wuppertal (23 requests).
According to a survey by the market research institute Innofact, which was commissioned by Immoscout24, 40 percent of those questioned who had been looking in the last five years stated that it was difficult to find a new rental property because of the large number of applicants.
Young adults in particular are struggling.
Less competition in the east
But the competition is not so high everywhere.
It is less difficult to find accommodation in the east of the Federal Republic.
In Zwickau, Gera, Plauen, Chemnitz and Hoyerswerda, on average, only one person was interested in an existing apartment.
A similar picture emerges in the new building, although the competition in Wolfsburg and Trier (two inquiries each) was limited.
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