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Who do you think lives here?
Refurbished old buildings in Berlin
Photo:
Thomas Trutschel / imago images / photothek
Half of the people in this country rent, even a little more than half.
And for many of them, rents have risen significantly in recent years.
Politicians have recognized the issue, but have not yet found the right solution.
The red-red-green Berlin Senate recently failed with its rent cap, states should not regulate this alone, according to the Federal Constitutional Court.
In federal law, only the rent brake applies.
But what good is it?
Skid marks from the rental price brake
A few years ago, the German Institute for Economic Research took a look at the large numbers on the rental market.
And found that this brake is not completely ineffective in any case.
In many places, rents have not continued to rise as quickly - especially in Berlin and Munich.
In addition, the purchase prices for residential property have risen significantly more than rents, especially in those areas where the rental price brake is used.
This is also a clear indication that the rental price brake is working.
To the author
Photo:
Financial tip
Hermann-Josef Tenhagen
, born in 1963, is editor-in-chief of »Finanztip«. The money advisor is part of the non-profit Finanztip Foundation. »Finanztip« is refinanced via so-called affiliate links. More about it here.
Tenhagen was previously editor-in-chief of the “Finanztest” magazine for 15 years. After studying politics and economics, he began his journalistic career at the »daily newspaper«. Today he is an honorary member of the supervisory board of the cooperative. Tenhagen writes weekly on SPIEGEL.de about how to handle one's own money properly.
But the brake does not yet fulfill its purpose in detail: From a bird's eye view, there are two essential criteria by which this can be measured. One criterion: do rents rise quickly with new rentals (and then through increases also with old contracts)? And above all, are they rising faster than net income? Yes, they do.
That is bitter for tenants because it lowers their standard of living.
And it inhibits the local economy because the tenants, who often have less money anyway, can no longer spend the additional money that goes on for the higher rent in the bike shop, at the Italian restaurant or in the supermarket.
The rising rent is their main risk of inflation and poverty, that is very real.
The second criterion is the comparison of the purchase price and rental price development.
And it actually shows that rents in cities with a rental price limit are rising much more slowly than purchase prices.
So there is - as mentioned - a slowing effect.
But it is usually not enough to secure the standard of living for most tenants.
Expensive new living space
Such galloping rental prices are a sign of scarcity.
If there was enough cheap, vacant living space, tenants wouldn't be willing to pay such high prices.
But there is no such thing.
And the living space that is newly created is too expensive.
If you now think that this is due to greedy builders and expensive craftsmen and architects, then that is only partially true.
It is mainly due to the property market, government agencies and construction costs.
A little digression on the most important cost factors in urban housing: the property, the building rights, the house.
Building plots have become extremely expensive, especially in metropolitan areas.
In the recent past, inner-city plots in Berlin or Munich have achieved prices of 5000 euros per square meter.
If the building authority allows a five-storey house on a plot of 400 square meters with a floor area that is half the size of the property, i.e. 200 square meters, this results in 1000 square meters of living space. This means that every square meter of living space costs 2,000 euros just because of the price of the property before the first planning step is done, not to mention the first groundbreaking. Even if the building is very standardized, but future-proof, add another 2,000 euros per square meter for the construction of the house, then we would be 4,000 euros.
As a landlord, you calculate as follows: You want to rent an apartment with 100 square meters of living space, built for 4000 euros per square meter. You currently pay 1.5 percent interest at the bank for the EUR 400,000 cost of the apartment. And you want to repay 3.5 percent of the building loan at the start of the year so that you have the money you invested back after around 25 years. This means that you have to raise a total of 5 percent of the construction cost per year. And 5 percent of 4000 euros is 200 euros rent per square meter and year. That would be a monthly rent of 16.67 euros per square meter. That is calculated with the very rough thumb. You can run through variants with a mortgage calculator.
If, on the other hand, you got the property for free, the cost-covering rent would be half.
Surrendering plots of land very cheaply for residential construction or making them available under heritable building rights for 100 years would be the most important help for inexpensive living space.
Expensive old living space
The calculation example above shows drastically why it is not so easy with inexpensive new buildings in inner cities.
But when living space is scarce overall, landlords can charge high rents for old living space, which they may have bought or built at a lower price - and thus reap higher returns.
The rent brake should only try to curb these rent increases in the housing stock when new rentals are made.
And that's why landlords are only allowed to rent their apartments at a price that is no more than ten percent above the official rent index.
That should act as a brake.
But it was only partially.
Because the rent brake does not apply to apartments that were newly occupied from 2014 onwards.
And then there were the rules of exception.
For example: Higher rents are allowed if the
previous tenant
has already paid insane rent.
This was even true until 2020 without the new tenant having the chance to at least check the amount of this old rental price.
Absurd.
Or: The
legal brake sometimes does not apply to
furnished living space
, so the resourceful landlord puts a sofa and a fitted kitchen in the apartment to be rented - and claims that when furnished, he can practically ask what he wants.
Finally - even after
extensive modernizations
, the rent brake does not apply, so the landlord naturally modernizes extensively.
This is good for the building fabric and the property's value retention and also helps to achieve significantly higher rents.
And finally, the typical
enforcement problem
.
If the landlord does not adhere to the legal rental price limit, exactly what happens to him - nothing!
After all, that is the private matter of tenants and landlords to argue about it.
Such exceptions and unpunished violations of tenancy law are problematic in two ways.
Firstly, tenants pay too much and their standard of living falls.
Approved by the legislator.
Second, the fair landlords who adhere to the law must feel like idiots when they look at the apartment advertisements on the net.
That damages the legal peace considerably.
What to do, tenants?
As a tenant, you can still defend yourself against excessive rents.
Thousands of tenants have successfully done this themselves with the rent control over the past few years.
Most importantly:
rent an apartment in an old building
.
In the case of apartments, which after 1.10.
Moved in for the first time in 2014, there are no rental price controls.
If in doubt, the landlord must also inform you about the year of construction of the apartment.
But there are more tips:
Basically: If the rent is too high, the rental contract remains valid, even if you can reduce the excessive rent.
Don't argue beforehand, just sign the rental agreement when you want the apartment.
And argue about it.
If you have signed the rental agreement since April 1, 2020, you can complain about the overpaid rent since moving in and claim it back. For older leases, you can only claim the overpaid rent since the time you questioned the rent. Legal service providers report an average of over 300 euros per month, which they would have brought back in Munich, in Berlin and Hamburg between 250 and 300 euros.
Should the landlord argue that the previous tenant had already paid more (one possible exception: see above), he should have
informed
you of this
before
signing the contract.
Otherwise, the rent according to the rental price limit applies for at least the first 24 months, so you have to pay a maximum of ten percent more than is usual in the comparable area according to the rent index.
Only then can the landlord demand the same rent as the previous tenant.
If the landlord argues that he has just completely modernized the apartment, as with a new building, that only counts if he has spent at least 1,000 euros per square meter on the modernization and you are definitely the first tenant after the modernization.
Installing new windows is not enough.
Unfortunately, you have to pay modernization costs that the landlord could have passed on to the previous tenant.
But the landlady has to prove it.
What many do not know: the rent brake also applies in principle to furnished apartments.
There are only two exceptions: You live in a room in the apartment of your landlord.
Or you can only rent it temporarily.
If the dispute with the landlord is too strenuous for you: There are now service providers who, as in the past with air travel, take over the dispute with the landlord for you. We at »Finanztip« recommend littleermiete.de for this. Or you can join a tenants' association - and let them argue for you. Help is often useful, also because individual state governments have not implemented the nationwide rent brake perfectly. The tenants' association does not have any current figures on request, but the number of consultations on the subject of rent controls is already in five digits.
In Berlin, after the constitutional court ruling against the rent cap, the rent brake is becoming more important again.
If you last rented a new one there and should now pay later without the rent cap, make sure you check quickly whether the rent brake helps you to pay nothing or significantly less.
Actually, however, violations of the rental price brake must be prosecuted by the state in such a way that tenants do not have to argue and landlords who are lawful can be happy.
I wish you success!
