Apartment hunting in Germany

In April 2014, in the words of Spencer Johnson, I made the proverbial change to move to the place of my cheese, Germany! Though I have made a change before, this one proved to be even drastic considering the lack of personal support system in the new place. And not to mention the language and ..ahem.. cultural differences. Needless to say, in spite of my best efforts of my company to ease my transition into Germany, initially I faced many struggles to get settled. I am recounting my thoughts here so that it might prove helpful for you in case you find yourself lost in translation.

Note that if you happen to know at least a reasonable level of German, setting up many of the below mentioned things would be a cake walk. In my case, on a scale on 1 to 10 in German, I was at "dumbass" level, so I found a few things infinitely harder. I like to do things myself wherever possible to save money, and more importantly to learn, so in a few of these cases, you might just throw some money at a consultant to help you out. I'll point out these things to you. To keep each post short, I'll discuss one specific item in each post. In this post, I talk about Apartment/house hunting, the mother of all hunts!

Apartment/House hunting

You can choose to do this task either before moving to Germany or after coming here and searching in person. Since is this one of the fundamental tasks to do, and more importantly, to do properly, I am giving it priority numero uno. In both these types of search, there are certain common themes.

Help of a broker: 

You can choose to find an apartment in private dealings or go through a broker, or as they call here, makler, to find an apartment for you on your behalf. A makler, who can be either a licensed person or a firm, MIGHT charge a commission from you (he or she could also charge the commission only from landlord), and this commission would be made upon drawing of the contract. That is, you pay the amount upfront based on your rent and the duration of your contract, with maximum possible duration. And the maximum a broker could charge is 2.38 times of your monthly "cold rent." The broker could also charge less than 2.38 times if the duration is less than a year, prorated accordingly. However, there is a piece of legislation in works (?? not sure what's the current status ??), WoVermRG, and section 2 (1)(a) mentions (well, whatever Google translated)

"The apartment brokers may call from apartment seekers for mediation or proof of the opportunity to enter into leases over dwellings not paid, have promised or accept, unless the home agent fetches only because of the agency contract with the home seekers by the landlord or by another claimant commissioned an offer the apartment"

If you strip of the legal jargon, it says that if the landlord takes the help of a broker, the landlord would pay the fees and none would be paid by the (prospective) tenant. And this would save you a buttload of money! The average apartment cost in Frankfurt is approximately €1100 cold rent per month for a 3 room apartment, and if you take a contract greater than 1 year, you would have to fork out more than €2600 upfront. For those lucky guys for whom the company pays this cost, good for you. For others, this is a significant cost to consider! So always make a point to negotiate moving costs in your work contract, it will really help you.

If you were to find an apartment without having to pay the broker fee, look for the term "provisionfrei" in apartment advertisements.

For my initial move, I took help the of HomeCompany agency to hook me up with a temporary furnished apartment while I was searching for a permanent dwelling. I had a satisfactory experience with them, but importantly, they offer support in English (website is also English). This is after I tried to find apartment from Chennai through online rental search engines such as immobilienscout24, immowelt and wg-gesucht. I wanted to make sure that my location had reasonable public transport access, and to identify that, I had to be here to check. But I can safely say that if you are in center of a German city, the public transport is excellent; you really don't need a car. I have a bicycle and it is perfect for my short distance needs. I will post in detail about the Frankfurt public transport in a later post. I eventually got the apartment I needed with all the characteristics to look for from wg-gesucht. All these tips are for you living by yourself or with your family. You can use wg-gesucht to find a roommate or find a student accommodation to share at studenten-wg. You can reduce you rent considerably by sharing your apartment. It might also help you to easily transition into German way of life, especially if your roommate is German. I didn't do this (regret it a lot!) and then I got married, so no possibility anymore of a "bachelor" life!

Cold Rent or Kaltmiet

I have mentioned this term couple of times already in this post, and this is the term you HAVE to keep in mind when trying to find the cost of the rental. It is a legal common term here, so there is absolutely no confusion when anyone uses the term.
Cold rent is the rent you pay for the apartment and apartment only. It is that simple. It doesn't contain extra frills cost. And absolutely nothing. So what are the extra costs.
Heating: Oh god, wouldn't you need heating! Heating costs of Heizkosten as called in German, is a cost you pay for heating, considering that many of the apartments here don't have AC (it's a good thing people!) It depends upon the size of the apartment and it's energy efficiency, and of course your usage.
Water: Self-explanatory, probably should have put it up at the top. oh well..
Nebenkosten: Supplementary costs that you pay, for example, cleaning, security and general upkeep.

Warm rent or Warmmiete usually includes all extra costs and cold rent. Sometimes it might just include heating costs, always read the contract carefully!

Utilities such as electricity, cable and internet are USUALLY out of these costs and you have to figure that out yourself. And you will have plenty of options to choose which service provider you want. Sometimes if you are lucky, you can find all these included in warm rent, especially in the case of furnished apartments, which I have further down. 

Note that garage and parking costs are extra, and in some cases, this is non-negotiable.

I pay approximately €900 including all rent+costs+utilities (separately) for a 2 room 50 sq.meter apartment which is about 20 minutes from the city center by train (metro) but still part of the main city with ALL the facilities accessible by public transport. But the important factory was that, my apartment is 10 minutes biking/25 minutes walk away from my office, and I wanted to reduce my daily commute time as much as possible. Trust me, it saves you a LOT of time to do fun things by yourself or with your family, when you don't spend 2-3 hours in commute.

Kaution or Deposit:

Before moving into an apartment, you have to pay caution deposit which can range from 1-3 month of either cold or warm rent. Legally, the landlord would have to keep your deposit separate and give it back to you along with interest accrued when you move out, subtracting reasonable costs for damage (wall, toilet, doors etc.) and cosmetic restoration (paint, nails etc.).  Based on the above example, it might come up to €3300. Now you add the broker commission, deposit and first month's rent, it is quite a large sum of €7000 to cough up right away. And no credit cards here people, so you better have that amount in cold cash. That's why it behooves well to include transportation and moving costs in work contract.

Now what can the landlord can claim to subtract from caution deposit is a question that warrants a large post, a topic on which you will find many pointers on the internet. In worst case scenarios, lawyers may also be involved. Always clarify with your landlord the terms of your move out and in that, include the condition of the apartment to be. Take pictures before you sign, I didn't do it, will have to see what would be my situation when I move out!

Furnished or Unfurnished apartments:

Cities such as Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich have a lot of expats, international communities and in general, a moving population. So there will be plenty of opportunities to find furnished accommodation as landlords may cater to middle/upper executives who don't want to bother with furnishing for a short period of time, or a tenant might have moved temporarily for a job and doesn't want to give up on the lease (as it is insanely difficult to find an apartment here). Furnished apartments usually deal with warm rent as most of the utilities have already been fixed and the rent would have already been fixed. And they also tend to cost much higher than unfurnished apartments.

When Germans say unfurnished, they mean unfurnished. In USA (at least where I was), an unfurnished apartment would have a fitted and working kitchen, a refrigerator, may be a washer and a dryer, a microwave oven and at least one move-in closet. In Germany, you would find an unfurnished apartment with absolutely no fittings, except may the bathroom/toilet fittings. So no kitchen, no refrigerator, no oven, no closets, no sofa, no bed nothing! So in addition to the first month's rent, kaution, provision (if using a broker), you have to factor in the fitting and furnishing costs (a fitted kitchen might cost you upward of   € 1500 ) if you are making the move on your own. Usually companies don't support this cost. If they indeed pay for rent, it would be for a furnished apartment, at least that's what I found to be the usual case; it is easier and less complicated that way.

However, during apartment search, you can choose to find apartments that have fitted kitchen (einbauküche) already so you are at least set on the food department. In my case, I bought kitchen, bathroom fittings, laminat floors, a sofa and a bar table and some lights from my previous tenant for a fixed sum. If not, my previous tenant would have had to throw away all of those things, restore the apartment to the previous condition (taken care of all nails, paints etc) and given it to me. In short, you can arrange to take over certain things from previous apartment with the blessing of the landlord so that you can move into a partially furnished apartment. You do this by writing a eignungserklärung (house eligibility statement) along with a Vereinbarung zur Übergabe von Wohnungsgegenständen (Agreement for the transfer of flat objects) with both parties (you and previous tenant) signed, and giving a copy to the landlord to be included in the lease contract. Note that by doing this arrangement, it absolves the previous tenant of all the liability and makes you liable for all things in the apartment, including any changes made during the tenure of previous tenant. So always double check what you are taking over. 

Zimmer or Rooms:

A little warning, rooms or Zimmer include the number of liveable rooms and includes living room. In India or USA, we usually say 2 bedroom apartment, meaning there are 2 rooms and a living room. Here in Germany, they would just say 3 room apartment, meaning there are 3 rooms and you can use the room any way you seem fit. And almost all of the places have a separate kitchen, bathroom, may be a closet and a cellar (storage) separately. My apartment has a small porch and a garden at the back. Bliss!! One thing you have to note in Germany is that there is a minimum space requirement for each person in the lease. This is usually 12sq.meter. So a 2 person apartment would need at least 24sq.meter or apprx. 260 sq.feet. But if you have have one kid, the landlords prefer that you give a separate room for your kid, so you might find yourself hunting for a 3 room apartment. The cost difference between a 2 room and a 3 room apartment, especially in a place such as Munich or Frankfurt, is quite substantial. 

So to summarize, there can quite a few things that seem confusing if you are just starting in Germany, but if you keep the above mentioned points in mind, you could save yourself a lot of trouble and money. Do use the comments section for feedback on this article to make it better or correct info and to share your experiences in Germany or any other city for that matter.