The High Cost of Rent in Germany

The ever rising cost of renting accommodation in Germany has become a hot political issue. German newspaper Zeit has used national real-estate data to map the average cost of renting across the whole of Germany and to show how those rental costs have risen over the last eight years.

Zeit's interactive map How Expensive is Living in Germany? visualizes the average rent charged in towns across the whole country. On the map individual German municipalities are colored to show the average rental cost of properties by square meter. If you click on an individual municipality on the map you can view the exact rental cost per square meter and a graph showing the increasing cost of renting in the municipality over time.

Rents in the former East Germany are still relatively cheap compared to those in western and southern Germany. However in East Germany rents in many areas have risen significantly in the last eight years. Rents in city suburbs are also still often cheaper than rents in the center of German cities but again rents in the suburbs have mostly risen sharply since 2012. Munich is the most expensive city in which to rent a property in Germany. In fact Bavaria as a whole contains some of the most expensive towns to live in, in the whole of the country.