study
Shared rooms for students are becoming more expensive
Rooms in shared apartments are becoming more and more expensive in Germany. Photo: Eman Helal/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Living in Germany is becoming more and more expensive. Young people who are looking for rooms in university towns also feel this. The prices have risen sharply. And there is no end in sight.
At the beginning of the year, a room in a shared flat in a German university town cost an average of around 414 euros per month – significantly more than in previous years. This is the result of a study by the Moses Mendelssohn Institute (MMI) in cooperation with the portal WG-gesucht.de.
For the “university city scoring”, 25,000 housing offers at 97 university locations with more than 5000 students were examined. The “Spiegel” had already reported on it on Friday.
In 2020, a room in a shared apartment including all ancillary costs cost around 400 euros, in 2021 the average price had even fallen to 391 euros. According to the authors of the study, the reason for this was the “price-dampening corona effect”. Now prices are going up again. “There are many indications that this is just the beginning of a significant wave of price increases in student housing, reinforced by rising energy prices, which are having a disproportionate effect here,” says Dr. Stefan Brauckmann, Managing Director of the MMI. He expects further price developments as early as the 2022 summer semester, but especially in September at the start of the winter semester.
Expensive in the big city, cheap in the east
According to the survey, students paid the highest room prices for new rentals in Munich at EUR 680 per month, followed by Frankfurt am Main at EUR 550 and Hamburg and Berlin at EUR 500 each. At the end of January, the cheapest shared rooms were in eastern Germany in Cottbus (230 euros), Freiberg, Mittweida and Chemnitz (256 euros) and Wismar (270 euros).
Also because of the course of the corona pandemic, the demand for shared rooms is likely to increase again, and with it their price, says Brauckmann. Because many learning events are again taking place in person instead of online, rooms near the university are becoming more popular again: “The demand for accommodation in a convenient location to the university is increasing.” In addition, many students had postponed a move during the pandemic and would certainly do so “in view of the foreseeable relaxation of the corona virus”.
However, it is likely to be more expensive for those who study longer than planned due to the many canceled events and exams. They, too, are likely to feel the price pressure due to higher demand for living space, according to the MMI director.