Asking rents rose significantly faster last year than they did last year – by almost a third in one district. The high increases are likely to continue.
Anyone who is currently looking for a rental apartment in Rostock has to pay significantly more than a year ago: As data now published by the German Economic Institute (IW) shows, the asking rents in the city on the Baltic Sea with a population of 200,000 are from September 2021 to September 2022 skyrocketed by almost a third. The top value in Germany.
However, the Rostock rent increases are not an exception. Rents rose last year in 394 of 401 German administrative districts and urban districts, by an average of around six percent. In the north of the country in particular, growth regularly exceeds or approaches the ten percent mark. In a time of expensive energy and general inflation, tenants have to pay significantly more for their apartments.
Asking rents record the rents that providers charge for new rentals. They don’t signify degrees yet, but show the direction. Interested parties can only rarely negotiate rents.
More on the subject: Government plan – Freezing tenants should get 500 million euros relief
According to IW, the main reason for the rent increase is the increased demand. Higher mortgage rates and inflated real estate prices have made home ownership unaffordable for many people. You are now looking around the rental market to see what is driving prices there.
“It shows that the momentum is increasing,” said IW real estate expert Michael Voigtländer. People were increasingly looking to rent, while some landlords were charging higher rents, apparently because of inflation. In addition, there are catch-up effects in favorable rural regions.
!function(){var t=window.addEventListener?”addEventListener”:”attachEvent”;(0,window[t])(“attachEvent”==t?”onmessage”:”message”,function(t){if(“string”==typeof t.data
DZ Bank and the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks have also recently observed rising new contract rents. DZ Bank believes that the reason for this is the immigration of many refugees from Ukraine. A high demand for affordable housing meets falling vacancies in the cities.
Also read: Gas and district heating – the state pays your December bill – that’s how it works
After rents rose the most in the southern half of the Federal Republic for a long time, they have now shot up, especially in the northern half: with Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (increase of 10.3 percent), Brandenburg (9.1 percent) and Berlin (8.3 percent). ), the top three federal states are all in the north-east of the republic. Their western neighbors Bremen (7.6 percent), Schleswig-Holstein (6.6 percent) and Lower Saxony (6.2 percent) are also above the national average.
!function(){var t=window.addEventListener?”addEventListener”:”attachEvent”;(0,window[t])(“attachEvent”==t?”onmessage”:”message”,function(t){if(“string”==typeof t.data
Rents also rose in southern and central Germany, but less than in the north: Bavaria (5.3 percent increase) and Baden-Württemberg (4.4 percent) are in the lower midfield, Hesse (4.3 percent) and Saxony ( 4.1 percent) at the end.
In the Hanseatic city of Hamburg, rents rose by only 4.3 percent – the lowest value in the north. In Saarland, on the other hand, rents increased by 7.9 percent – the fourth highest value nationwide.
A look at the changes in rents in the districts shows that even neighboring areas have developed very differently in some cases. The IW points out that there can be distortions in smaller circles if, for example, an above-average number of expensive rental offers come onto the market. Nevertheless, the patterns allow some insights.
Around Berlin, for example, rents rose particularly sharply because apparently more people are fleeing the sharp increase in housing costs in the capital to the surrounding countryside. In the Oder-Spree district near Berlin, where Tesla attracts many employees with its mega factory, rents increased by 9.5 percent, for example. In Märkisch-Oderland to the north, they even rose by 25 percent. The mixture of new industries and emigrants from the capital drives up rents.
!function(){var t=window.addEventListener?”addEventListener”:”attachEvent”;(0,window[t])(“attachEvent”==t?”onmessage”:”message”,function(t){if(“string”==typeof t.data
In metropolitan areas, the surcharges for asking rents were limited. In Frankfurt they rose only slightly (1.4 percent), in Stuttgart (2.4 percent) and in Munich (3.5 percent) only moderately. In contrast, they increased particularly strongly in Düsseldorf (5.9 percent), Leipzig (7.8 percent) and Berlin (8.3 percent). “In the very expensive cities, the growth is lower – probably due to a lack of solvency,” said Voigtländer.
After years of the real estate boom, rents in the major cities have already reached a comparatively high level. The overall increase in asking rents lagged behind the general rise in prices in the third quarter.
Rents rose more sharply last year than the long-term trend. In all federal states, growth was above the average of the past three years. In the northeast of the Federal Republic even twice as strong.
In recent years, rents have risen less than real estate prices. The prices for single-family and terraced houses have roughly doubled within ten years, as the German Institute for Economic Research recently reported in a study of 97 German cities. At the same time, rents rose by an average of 56 percent. The rise had also weakened recently.
If you also include the ancillary rental costs in the analysis, i.e. pay attention to the total rents, you will get an even higher rate of increase. According to IW, the total rent increased nationwide by an average of almost eleven percent from September 2021 to September 2022 – around twice as much as the asking rent.
“We see that the affordability of rental apartments is declining overall,” says Voigtländer, “because of this triad: very sharp increases in heating costs, further increases in cold ancillary costs and further increases in rents.”
There is no sign of relaxation on the housing market for the time being, as there has been a wave of cancellations in housing construction for months. In November, around 17 percent of construction companies were affected by cancellations – after 15 percent in the previous month, as the Ifo Institute reported on Monday. Rising construction prices, higher interest rates and fewer funding options led to a noticeable number of cancellations.
The central association of the German construction industry expects a slump in residential construction: 245,000 apartments are likely to be completed in the coming year, a good twelve percent less than this year. This means that the federal government’s target of 400,000 new apartments per year would again be missed.
The German Tenants’ Association called on the federal government to act. Among other things, he blamed an increase in index-linked leases that link rents to inflation and a “hole-y rent cap” for the rise in asking rents. This also affects the stock, said Federal Director Melanie Weber-Moritz. “What is needed is a ban on new indexed rents, a cap on indexed rent increases in existing buildings, an applicable rent brake and the punishment of usury.”
