The supply of furnished apartments has increased significantly. Under certain conditions, these can be rented at significantly higher prices. The SPD now wants to counteract this trend with stricter rules.
The SPD wants to react to the rapidly increasing proportion of furnished apartments, which are often offered at significantly inflated prices, with stricter rules in tenancy law. The Social Democrats are “not ready to accept” that the market is regulating the situation “systematically to the detriment of tenants,” SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert told the “Tagesspiegel”.
“Landlords must be obliged to transparently disclose both the net cold rent and the furnishing surcharge,” said Kühnert. In addition, the furniture surcharge must be capped.
“The sentence ‘The market regulates’ is true in this respect – but it regulates it systematically to the detriment of the tenants” – SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert.
More than every fourth apartment is offered furnished
The background to the demands are findings from a current study that the research institute Oxford Economics carried out on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Justice. The researchers come to the conclusion that furnished apartments are no longer a niche market. Of all advertisements on the housing market that were publicly accessible in Germany in 2022, 27 percent related to furnished apartments.
A survey representative of the entire population also showed that around 14 percent of all tenants in Germany lived in furnished apartments last year. The offer, which is mainly used by low-income earners, is growing, especially in large cities and student cities.
In practice, furnished apartments have the advantage for landlords that, under certain conditions, they can be rented more expensively than the rental price brake actually provides. This so-called furnishing surcharge depends on various factors. According to calculations by Oxford Economics, between 2007 and 2018 it was between EUR 3.53 and EUR 7.04 per square meter in selected cities.
No indication of strategic change by landlords
The authors of the study see no evidence that landlords have systematically switched their offer to furnished accommodation in order to circumvent the rent control. “Lessors of furnished apartments seem to have taken the rent control as an opportunity to increase their furnishing surcharges,” according to the researchers.
Against this background, the rental policy reporter for the SPD parliamentary group, Zanda Martens, wants to ensure that the rules for rentals “for temporary use”, in which the rental price brake can be circumvented, are implemented more strictly. “This is the only way the rental price brake can really take effect,” Martens told the “Tagesspiegel”.
She refers to the fact that the rental price brake does not apply if an apartment is rented “for temporary use”. The study by Oxford Economics makes it clear, however, that the upper limit drawn by the courts in this regard, a maximum rental period of six months, is actually observed by only seven percent of tenants living in furnished accommodation.
Objection came from the FDP. “Instead of always just trying to regulate problems away, the SPD should finally consistently address the causes,” said the construction and housing policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Daniel Föst, the “Tagesspiegel”. Far too little new living space is being created in Germany, and building is more expensive than ever.