10.01 euros per square meter: That’s how high the average net rent in Erding is, as shown by the current rent index of the large district town. However, the list is from 2021 and is only valid until October 2023. At Tuesday’s meeting, the city council unanimously decided that the administration should draw up a new rent index based on current data. An institute commissioned by the city will write to the households. This time there is an obligation to provide information.
Rental prices are high in Munich’s commuter belt. Years ago, the large district town decided to introduce a qualified rent index – voluntarily, as Mayor Max Gotz (CSU) emphasized in the city council. According to department head Eric Stauch, a municipality is only obliged to introduce such a list if the number of inhabitants exceeds 50,000. Nevertheless, Erding continues to rely on a qualified rent index, in which tenants’ associations and homeowners’ associations are involved. Because this has prevented some legal disputes, explained Mayor Gotz.
The city has regularly published rent indexes since 2009. The last newly created rent index is from 2019. At that time, the list was “created on the basis of a representative sample according to scientific principles” on behalf of the city, writes the administration. In 2021, the mirror was “adjusted to the market development and updated by index”. The city writes on its website that the data is based on more than 525 households that are relevant to the rent index. The new rent index can also be viewed there free of charge.
It is “high time” that the rent index is now being renewed,” said Stauch, with reference to a new rent index reform law and a corresponding ordinance. What is new is that there is an obligation to provide information to tenants and landlords. Anyone who refuses to provide information can be fined up to 5,000 euros. The data from the registration offices could also be used and social welfare offices or job centers can now use the rent index as a basis for renting.
The costs are “not small for a voluntary service”
CSU parliamentary group leader Burkhard Köppen said that the qualified rent index saved many legal disputes. “And we were able to find some fairness in the rental price.” Rainer Mehringer (free voters) referred to the budgetary costs for the new rent index. “45,000 euros – that’s not a little for a voluntary service”. When asked by Mehringer, Gotz explained that there was financial support: the tenants’ association in Erding and “a local cooperative bank” would contribute a larger amount to the costs.
Frederic Hack, chairman of the tenants’ association in Erding, is happy that Erding has a rent index. “We fought for it for many years,” he explained when asked by the SZ. The rent index offers advantages for both tenants and landlords, because the information is based on determined figures and data, has been scientifically evaluated and thus reflects the actual average rent and not “perceived”.
In addition, the rent index also plays a role in the rent brake, which refers to the local rent and which can then be read in black and white, so to speak, in the rent index. Not every city has a rent index, Hack emphasized. This is really useful, as he found out in his work for the tenants’ association. When tenants seek advice about a rent increase, “then we go through the rent index and when we see that the future rent is customary in the area, then they also see that they have to swallow the increase,” says Frederic Hack.