Is your flat search in Berlin realistic?

What’s the one thing that unites everyone who has recently moved to Berlin? They’re all desperately searching for an apartment – ideally with an unlimited contract at an affordable price and anywhere within ‘the ring’.

In fact, a fair amount of people who’ve been living in the city for years already are still looking for this.

While short-term sublets and rooms in flat shares are abundant, finding an apartment with an unlimited contract in Berlin has been notoriously difficult for years. And there are no promising signs the problem will be resolved anytime soon.

In such a tight rental market, hopeful tenants can’t really afford to be choosers. So what’s a realistic goal for your flat search versus an impossible ask?

Is your search realistic?

Graham Pugh, founder of BerlinRelo, helps flat-seekers in Berlin through the entire apartment finding process. 

He recently developed an online tool – which you can try for free on the BerlinRelo website – that allows you to plug in details about your income and the kind of apartment you're looking for, and then calculates roughly how long it could take to secure that kind of apartment.

For example, someone earning €2,500 in net monthly income seeking a 3+ room altbau apartment in Berlin’s central districts, is aiming for a pretty unlikely find. According to the BerlinRelo calculator, this applicant should expect that their apartment search might take more than 850 days.

But if that same applicant were to expand their search to include apartments with two or more rooms in all of Berlin’s districts, then the odds of success improve dramatically. For this search, it’s estimated that an ‘average’ candidate could find a suitable apartment within about a year.

READ ALSO: How much do you need to earn to rent an apartment in Germany?

Pugh told The Local that the calculator is based on data from “having done nearly 350 apartment searches in Berlin over the past five years”.

He added, “Experience has allowed me to understand what is possible, and within what amount of time.”

Of course there are a multitude of factors involved with getting an apartment, including personal connections and luck. But this tool is useful for managing your own expectations, and considering what aspects about your dream home (neighbourhood, number of rooms, etc) you might be willing to do without.

The hardest apartment to get 

Asked what’s the hardest apartment to get in Berlin right now, Pugh said, “It will always be the classic 3-room (two-bedroom) flat.”

He added that these units make up roughly a quarter of the available units in Berlin, but that more than half of client inquiries he gets are seeking these 3-room apartments.

“They were tough to get before the pandemic but became much more challenging afterwards and this has not changed,” he said.

The surge in demand was driven by an increased number of couples with at least one person who works from home, Pugh suggests. Additionally couples who are planning to have a child, or even adopt a pet, often seek 3-room apartments.

Where is the hardest neighbourhood to move?

Ten or more years ago a new arrival to the German capital might think, ‘I want a studio apartment in Prenzlauer Berg or Mitte’, and then make it so. But now you’d be lucky to find something similar in Wedding, rather than in say Reinickendorf or Spandau.

Increasingly, flat-seekers in Berlin are heard saying they’re hoping for “anywhere in the ring”.

Asked which neighbourhood he thought had the fiercest competition, Pugh said in his experience it’s Schöneberg.

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Other trendy and central neighbourhoods, like Prezlauer Berg, are also challenging, he added, but suggests that in Schöneberg there simply isn’t much availability.

“People seeking – or already living in – Schöneberg tend to have settled into a more permanent phase of life, and once they get that dream three-room flat, thanks to the way the rental system works here, they tend to keep it for a very, very long time,” Pugh said. “So there just aren’t many coming onto the market there.”

How to improve your chances

Apartment hunting in Berlin is not for the weak of heart, and it will absolutely test the limits of your patience and perseverance. But that’s not to say that finding what you’re looking for is impossible.

Pugh maintains that in Berlin's unusually tight rental market, a candidate's success comes down to three main factors: time, luck and money.

“There are tons of very affordable units in all neighbourhoods,” Pugh says, but getting one is a matter of beating dozens if not hundreds or other applicants.

Therefore, applicants not wishing to shell out for an overpriced apartment need to spend either a lot more time searching, or stumble on a fair amount of luck – or usually some combination of the two.

If you're dead set on a particular neighbourhood, or a particular feature like having an elevator or a balcony, you might want to consider broadening your search. Beyond that it's about being strategic, highlighting your strengths in your applications, and getting a little bit lucky. 

READ ALSO: 'Always be vigilant' - Expert tips for finding an apartment in Berlin

Note that BerlinRelo's calculator includes a button to submit an inquiry for their services. However, at the time of writing, Pugh said that they have been receiving more requests than they have the capacity to take on.