Renting in Germany

theflipdave

Hey, I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience renting in Germany. I want to rent a studio apartment somewhere in Berlin for 3 months. Do I need a German bank account or some sort of German social number to do this? Also would it be hard to find a place for only 3 months?

Soldie

http://www.wg-gesucht.de is your best bet. The site is available in English too and it's fairly self-explanatory. Set the filter to "Short Term" lets after you hone in on Berlin. You won't need a German bank account if you're just subletting for a few months.

keithclancy

theflipdave wrote: »

Hey, I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience renting in Germany. I want to rent a studio apartment somewhere in Berlin for 3 months. Do I need a German bank account or some sort of German social number to do this? Also would it be hard to find a place for only 3 months?

No, you don't need a German bank account, with SEPA you can work as normal using another Euro currency bank account without problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

Only issue is in many places your Visa Debit/Maestro card will not be accepted, many places only accept EC Geldkarte, so make sure you are always prepared to pay with cash.

murphaph

theflipdave wrote: »

Also would it be hard to find a place for only 3 months?

Berlin is hard to find anywhere at the moment. There is massive net inward migration to Berlin (40 to 50 thousand people a year) these days and they are all looking for somewhere to live and quite simply the supply side is lagging way behind the demand, so rents are shooting up. Have fun!

zweton

anyone know what munich is like to live in?

murphaph

It's a nice, fairly compact, safe, clean city with a very high standard of living, excellent public transport, has quick access to the Alps and winter sports and has plentiful jobs in high value industries and it's the capital of the richest state in Germany, Bavaria, which makes it the most expensive city in Germany to live in. It also has a rather nice beer festival now and again.

I can see why people choose Munich, but i also know a lot of Münchners that left it for Berlin to get that big city feeling. If you've only ever lived in say Dublin, then Munich won't feel as small and provincial as it would if you'd lived in London, Paris or even Berlin. Personally I would happily live in Munich but I couldn't afford to live there how I live in Berlin because the cost of accommodation is so much higher and wages aren't relatively that much higher in my sector.

zweton

murphaph wrote: »

It's a nice, fairly compact, safe, clean city with a very high standard of living, excellent public transport, has quick access to the Alps and winter sports and has plentiful jobs in high value industries and it's the capital of the richest state in Germany, Bavaria, which makes it the most expensive city in Germany to live in. It also has a rather nice beer festival now and again.

I can see why people choose Munich, but i also know a lot of Münchners that left it for Berlin to get that big city feeling. If you've only ever lived in say Dublin, then Munich won't feel as small and provincial as it would if you'd lived in London, Paris or even Berlin. Personally I would happily live in Munich but I couldn't afford to live there how I live in Berlin because the cost of accommodation is so much higher and wages aren't relatively that much higher in my sector.

Do you mean the cost of accom is so much lower?

murphaph

zweton wrote: »

Do you mean the cost of accom is so much lower?

Yes. We're building a decent sized house this year in the Berlin commuter belt (about 10km outside Berlin in the state of Brandenburg). We've bought a healthy 1000m² site for it in a nice little town 5 minutes walk to the train that can have us in Berlin central station in 30 minutes. Quite frankly this type of home would not be affordable for us in Munich or environs.

munchkin_utd

murphaph wrote: »

Yes. We're building a decent sized house this year in the Berlin commuter belt (about 10km outside Berlin in the state of Brandenburg). We've bought a healthy 1000m² site for it in a nice little town 5 minutes walk to the train that can have us in Berlin central station in 30 minutes. Quite frankly this type of home would not be affordable for us in Munich or environs.

+1

you'd be doing well to get change of 700,000 for a house in Munich in the suburbs. Anything that is cheaper (so half a million euro) has a catch, like say a few hundred a month in ground rent and a contract that means the house may have to be torn down in 50 or 60 years (which sortof defeats the point of building rather than renting in a sense)
http://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/S-T/P-2/Haus-Kauf/Bayern/Muenchen?pagerReporting=true

murphaph

Yeah it's shocking down there. The property prices don't reflect the salaries really...so much foreign investment money pushing prices up. The missus's sister and family used to rent a nice (100m² or so) flat in Haidhausen and when they started to consider buying they rapidly realised the flat or similar would be around the million mark. That's when they moved to Freising (they work at the airport so actually it's very practical, but they both really loved living in Haidhausen!) but still had to spend 500k on a slightly larger flat there....but still a flat!