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title: How to find an apartment in Germany ?

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# How to find an apartment in Germany ?
    

Learnings from my adventures in finding apartments in Germany and searching for replacement tenants. Mainly in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

## Heads up	
Demand is high in most cities, so be prepared to be disappointed initially. Additionally, most low-cost apartments will likely not be listed on online websites. They are mostly found through friends and referrals. The article assumes one is new to Germany; hence, we will only talk about online portals.
	

## For students

Start from university websites in your area. Most large universities have public websites that contain much information about student accommodation. For example see here https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/unterbringung/index.html . These apartments are usually available to all students regardless of their university. Some are even open to research assistants, teaching assistants, and Ph.D. candidates.

These university websites are updated regularly !!

## For employees

> Physical presence is generally advised. This is because of two reasons: scams and your chances of convincing the landlord. If you are not in the city yet, an AirBnB that allows city registration is the safest bet for the first two months.

The largest expat-friendly online marketplace I've found is [immobilienscout24](https://www.immobilienscout24.de/). Although competition is high, with a complete profile, **finding a cheap apartment is not hard**.


For example, while I was looking for a replacement tenant for my current apartment through the same portal, within 12 hours, I had ~300 applicants. Among the ~300, only ~30 had a complete profile. Among the ~30, only ~20 met the salary/household income criteria set by the landlord. Then, after document screening , it became ~10, of which 8 visited the apartment. 7 people showed interest in signing the contract. I then asked them to let me know their final decision by the next day. However, two of them replied on the same day, and right away, I forwarded the two applications to the landlord, and then the landlord selected one.

![meta-chart](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/S1-xVg8I0.png)



In summary, the reason why some made it into the shortlist for viewing can be attributed to :
1. A complete profile, i.e. clear information about salary/household income,number of people moving, reason for moving, pets, educational qualifications etc.
2. They applied within the 12-hour window.
    * They must have paid for the immobilienscout24 premium account, facilitating the application process in the short window.
    * They found the listing and took the initiative to apply, meaning they must have checked for apartments at least once daily.
3. Willingness to make an appointment and visit the apartment for viewing.
4. Well structured application. Blurred photos of documents, discrepancies in numbers, etc, result in an immediate rejection. Ideally, it should be a single PDF with all the relevant documents in the proper orientation and order mentioned in the listing.
5. Salary/household income above the threshold set by the landlord. Ideally, warm rent should not exceed 40% of household income.

So what is a complete application ?

- [ ] Covering letter/ Short bio
    - [ ] In addition to personal information. Add details on the reason for moving and number of people moving.
- [ ] Schufa ( usually provided by immobilienscout24. It is also possible to get it for free once a year through schufa website. )
- [ ] Last 3-month salary slips include partners as well, if available.
- [ ] Proof of previous rent payments.
- [ ] Proof of liability insurance (*Haftpflichtversicherung*), if available.

Immobilienscout24 provides filters to discard incomplete applications. If the renter were to enable the same, **incomplete applications may not even reach the intended mailbox.**

### For shared apartments:
[wg-gesucht](https://www.wg-gesucht.de/) can help. One can find both shared and large apartments here. But it's usually gone in no time, so one needs fast fingers!


## Social Media
In addition to what mentioned above, local communities can be of help. I had used Indians in Munich in facebook. You can also find your own local groups in facebook, telegram and even in whatsapp. But there are a lot of scams, in fact more scams than the real thing.
	
## After finding an apartment

One can use [ebay-kleinanzeigen](https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/) to find house stuff incl. furniture, electrical appliances. There are also groups in facebook.

Good luck !