Studying like this has probably never been really cheap. But 700 euros warm for a room in a shared flat? Many don’t even have that available for the whole month, including eating and going out. Nevertheless, students will probably have to reckon with such a rent if they start at one of the Munich universities in a few weeks for the winter semester and do not yet have a place to stay in the city. And there is no such thing as luxury: the kitchen, toilet and hallway are shared, everyone has their turn to clean – just normal flat-sharing life.
This makes Bavaria’s state capital by far the most expensive place to study in Germany. But also in Frankfurt and Berlin, Hamburg and Stuttgart, the rents are in some cases far beyond the 500 euro mark – and consistently far higher than last year. The Moses Mendelssohn Institute (MMI) determined the values on the basis of advertisements and requests on the online platform WG-gesucht, a total of a good 10,000 advertisements from all 95 German university towns with at least 5000 students were received in the second half of August.
The result: In the nationwide average, weighted according to the number of students, a room in a shared apartment has increased in price by more than eleven percent or 44 euros to 435 euros within a year. For the individual cities, the study shows the median, i.e. not the average of all values, but the offer, which is priced exactly in the middle. This reduces distortions, for example from a few, extremely expensive luxury offers.
Rising heating costs and the corona effect are driving up prices
Nevertheless: “We have never seen price increases of this magnitude and breadth in the past ten years,” says study leader Stefan Brauckmann from the MMI. “I didn’t expect these increases either.” The development is being driven primarily by two factors, the lack of living space, especially in the larger cities, and above all the foreseeable drastic increases in heating costs.
After two years of Corona, in which many students followed the mostly virtual seminars and lectures from their children’s rooms, there has been a catch-up effect since the beginning of the year: Many higher semesters are only now moving to their place of study, with a delay. In any case, the number of students has risen continuously over the past two decades, from almost 1.9 million in autumn 2001 to more than 2.9 million in the last winter semester. Together with the recently longer average duration of studies, this leads to a much tighter offer.
On the other hand, the expected drastic increases in heating costs are already having an impact on shared rents. And this development should not be over yet, because the ancillary cost deductions are often not yet adjusted, especially in apartments with ongoing rental contracts. “There will certainly be negative surprises when it comes to billing,” says Brauckmann.
Freshers in particular lack the network for cheaper rooms
He also knows that the data only reflect part of the WG market. Especially in the big university cities, many rooms and apartments never appear on a platform, they go directly from one resident to the next, often across entire generations of students. But anyone who is new to a city lacks the network to get such rooms, says Brauckmann. First semester students and foreign students in particular are therefore mostly dependent on online advertisements if they do not get a place in the coveted dormitories. The evaluation therefore provides a realistic view of the housing market for this group in particular.
The German Student Union (DSW) spoke in an initial reaction of an “alarm signal”. The federal government must quickly increase the Bafög rates in view of the rent development. The increase of 5.75 percent that started in the winter semester has already been “taken away” by inflation. On average, almost two-thirds of students have to spend more for a shared room than the current Bafög flat-rate housing allowance of 360 euros.
In some cities, however, it is still significantly cheaper to live and study, especially in eastern Germany. In Freiberg and Mittweida, Chemnitz, Ilmenau and Cottbus, for example, the average shared room costs just 300 euros or less per month. In the larger university cities of Dresden and Leipzig, it is around 320 euros each.