Warning Looking for an apartment is difficult, espcially when you don't speak the language. In some of the platforms for apartment-searching there are scammers of which trying to ask you for money transfers in advance without showing you the room saying that they're currently living abroad or something like that. DO NOT transfer money to these people, these are most likely scammers that you'd never be able to get that money back again.
Warning Renting German apartment usually doesn't include the kitchen, so in that case you'd need to install a new kitchen which can be pretty expensive. So when you're doing an apartment view DO ask whether the kitchen stays or goes.
Looking for an apartment is quite cumbersome in Germany especially in big major cities (Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich), as the population is outgrowing the capacity. It should depend on your reason to moving into Germany, but if you're trying to look for a new job or trying to become a university student, you'll most likely have to move again for your job or for your studies. So my best recommendation is that you look for an accomodation where you consider temporary. There are cities which has some decent living price, yet still close to the big cities, so do your research to find a city that you want to live temporarily and move to the city once you've need. Here's a site (2022) where you can have a grasp of the living costs in big Germany cities.
There are some web-platforms to find an accomodation.
- wg-gesucht.de : You can find shared apartments here. It can be both short or long term, students usually use this platform to find a new place to live in the city they're studying or in case they're doing internship in other cities.
- immobilienscout24.de : A platform where apartments owned by companies or individual landlords are posted. Most popular option in Germany
- immowelt.de: Similar as immobilientscout24, but a different web site.
- ebay-kleinanzeigen: ebay-kleinanzeigen is a like a second-hand online shop where each individual sells their used products. You can also look for apartments under
Wohnung. - some facebook groups to share local rents
Sadly, most of the people in these platforms only speak German, so if you don't have anybody to help, use an online translator to translate.
For more information about housing, see housing in Germany
This section is for when you're looking for apartments for your own use such as in immobilienscout24.de.
Especially in big cities, it's really hard to find an apartment and thus landlords can actually be very picky. Tenent protection law in Germany is quite strict, which also makes landlords to be a bit defensive in tenent finding, because it's pretty difficult to kick people out. So it's not so uncommon that applicants voulentarily send out their personal information such as below, otherwise in many cases you won't even get a reponse from your email or your message.
- Copy of Schufa or Mietschuldenfreiheitsbescheinigung : Schufa is a Germany used certification of your credit status which is very commonly used in rental contracts. Mietschuldenfreiheitsbescheinigung is a proof from your former landlord that you have nothing in debt to your landlord in terms of rent.
- Copy of Personal ID
- Proof of income or a working contract
- A letter describing yourself in German
For many of the houses, pets are not allowed. (Citation needed) I think for cats they're slightly different from dogs that landlords cannot really prohibit you from having cats and you're also not obligated to notify them, but for dogs you cannot have them without landlord's concent. In the letters that I wrote, I wrote things such as introducing myself and the reason of staying, say that I don't smoke, don't have pets, do not play musical instruments and do not make parties at home and so on. These are the things that landlord tends to care about, so I usually include those in my introductory mail or an inquiry for an apartment.
One tip that you can get ahead of other applicants in the competitive situations and you really want the apartment, you can try to tell them to pay X months of rents in advance such that although you might lack some documents (e.g. Schufa) due to not being in Germany for the past, they might be confident you will be paying the rent stabily as you're financially stable.
This section is for when you're looking for shared apartments such as in wg-gesucht or other facebook apartment finding
Looking for a shared apartment is usually easier than renting a whole apartment as the main tenent (Hauptmieter/*-in) has already took the apartment from the landlord and they're taking the risks. Many cases, introducing yourself and asking for a apartment view should suffice.
You might do the apartment view alone, or it can be like an open visit for many people who're interested to save some time. Either way, you SHOULD bring the aforementioned documents with you to show how serious you are in your visit and hand them to the landlord or the real-estate agent who's acting on behalf.
On the day of signing the rental contract, you usually meet at your new apartment and do something called hand over protocol (Übergabeprotokoll) this process is extermently important as both parties are agreeing upon the condition of the apartment, and you will be writing down every flaw in the wall or pre-furnished items should be written down, so that when you're moving out, they're going to check this again and deduce the money based on the damage done to the properties. So try to be pickly on everything, there's no way to claim back once you've signed on the apartment control forumlar. You will also receive your key on this day, the number of keys are also part of the controll.
Unless you're living in a shared apartment, the rent usually has two parts:
- Cold rent (Kaltmiete)
- Warm rent (Warmmiete) = Cold rent + water & heating costs + additional maintenance costs (if you have a house manager or a house management company)
The additional cost in the warm rent is predetermined by the landlord, and varies depending on the size of the room, or the cost of gas or electricity. You cannot really negotiate this price, but if you use less during your stay, you will get some money back or you'd have to pay more (Nachzahlung). This recalculation is usually done annually, and you are legally allowed to ask your landlord to see the bill for the Nachzahlung to verify the additional amount is indeed valid.
The deposit by common law is three times the cold rent, and this is for the protection of the apartement, so that you don't damange anything during your stay.
Unless the electricity cost is included in your rent for a special reason, you usually need to make an individual contract with the electricity company, I'm not sure if this is different from cities, but if you don't select one, you'll fall back to the local default provider and have a contract automatically with them. To make electricity contracts you can see check24.com under Strom & Gas.
Internet is also an important part of our lives and it is very important to understand that internet installation can take very long to other countries. Find an internet provider immediately after you have a rental contract, I've had a waiting time from weeks to months for internet installations, because the situation is quite complicated in Germany such that the different internet providers need permission from the Telekom (Germany's Main ISP) for using their connection so this approval takes time. You can also look for internet providers from check24.
The process for looking an apartment can be quite stressful sometimes; and maybe you have money but not the time as your resource and you don't speak German which makes it worse. In that case, the best option for you would be contacting real estate agencies which can find apartments for you. They will get commissions for search (maybe in a scale of thousands of Euros upon signing the rental contract) depending on the apartment, but this will be much more easier as they'll do all the work for you and look for apartments which suits you.
Other alternatives for looking apartments can be online communities using your own language. If you come from a country which has a decent number of migrants in Germany, you'll most likely find a corresponding online community which also occasionally have some feature to rent out apartments to people. Sometimes its easier to find apartment in those because the competetition is less severe, and you'll have less problems with communication.
It might not be explicit in the rental contract, but it is (Citation needed) assumed by the law that there is a 3 month of notice period of cancellation of your rental contract. Always keep in mind this period if you're trying to move to another city or an apartment, otherwise you'll have to pay for the remaining notice period if you move out earlier. To avoid this on a quick moveout, you can look for a next tenent (NachMieter), but whether your landlord accepts this new person or not is totally up to their decision, and if they don't you'll still have to pay.
Very, Greatly, Vastly important. Please try not to lose your keys. In case you leave your apartment with keys inside, you'd need to call a keysmith which usually costs hundreds of Euros.
If you lose your apartment keys, it becomes a bit worse. In Germany, you're not allowed to duplicate keys without your landlords permission and they usually don't let you copy them. What happens when you lose is that you'd need to pay for the costs to replace the doorknob and the keys for the people living in the whole building, and this of course costs a lot. To prvent this situation, you usually can get a liability insurance (Haftpflichtversicherung) from check24, I think most of the should have the coverage for losing keys. I'll discuss about insurances in a different page.
ALWAYS check your all your contracts (rental, internet, electricity) throughly even before considering moving out and maybe check the conditions in advance.
Almost all types of contract in Germany has a notice peroid (Kündigungsfrist), which for rental is 3 months, for internet you usually would have 1 year or 2 years contract and you can only cancel three months before hand the contract ends. If it passes that three month advance period, it's quite difficult to cancel without paying more money. For electricty it should usually be a local provider and if you move out the city you'll also need to let them know in advance unless you want to pay more after you move.
For internet contracts you can usually transfer to wherever you move, so usually not a problem, and if you're moving outside of the country you can give them your proof to cancel with special reasons (Sonderkündigung).
Your landlord can legally hold your deposit upto one year after your move-out and the reason for that is due to the existence of Nachzahlung mentioned above, which the recalculation is done annually, so you'd need to wait for that a bit.