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Development area in Berlin-Adlershof: More than half of German households live in rented accommodation
Photo: Jochen Eckel / IMAGO
Even before the energy price crisis, around one in eight people living in a rented apartment in Germany was overburdened with their housing costs.
This is the result of an evaluation by the Federal Statistical Office, which refers to data from 2021.
Overburdening therefore means that all living expenses, including the recently sharp rise in energy costs, consume more than 40 percent of the disposable household income.
That was the case for 12.8 percent of tenants last year.
For the total population, the value was 10.7 percent.
On average, people spent 23.3 percent of their income on housing, and the figure for renters was even 27.6 percent.
According to the official statistician, renting single-person households, who had to spend an average of 35.4 percent of their disposable income on housing, were hit hardest.
On the other hand, childless couples had comparatively low costs at 23.7 percent.
Low-income households in particular were already suffering from cost pressure before the sharp rise in gas, oil and electricity prices.
In the lower fifth of the income bracket, more than a third (36.2 percent) of people lived in households that were constantly financially overburdened last year.
With a tenant share of 50.5 percent of the total population, Germany is at the top in Europe.
Only a few countries such as Austria with 45.8 percent or Denmark with 40.8 percent achieve similarly high values.
As a result, cold rents have a high impact on inflation in these countries.
They rose in Germany by 8.5 percent from 2015 to 2021 and thus somewhat more slowly than all consumer prices.
fdi/dpa