Rent Price Check: Chemnitz Students Live Affordably

At the beginning of the year, an Internet real estate portal compared the asking rents for apartments in major German cities - Chemnitz is the cheapest major rental city.

In the crisis year 2020, no trend reversal can be observed in the housing market. The ongoing Corona pandemic has only had a minor impact on asking rents. In more than four-fifths of major cities, the prices per square meter for apartments with 40 to 120 square meters rose only slightly in the past year. This is shown by a year-on-year comparison published at the beginning of January 2021 by the Internet real estate portal immowelt.de for 80 German cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Even in the most expensive city of Munich, the rent level continued to climb: the price per square meter increased by two percent to €18.60 in the median. By comparison, Chemnitz is the front-runner among the most affordable large rental cities. Here, one pays €5.20 per square meter for new rentals. This means that students continue to live particularly affordably in the Saxon university city. Accordingly, the choice of university alone can have a significant impact on overall study costs. In general, the drastic regional differences in rents show that studying in eastern German cities is far less expensive than in other parts of Germany. A comparison of the locations is therefore worthwhile.

For the evaluation, the asking rents of 80 German cities with over 100,000 inhabitants were examined. Rents for apartments with 40 to 120 square meters of living space, which are increasingly in demand, were compared. The rental prices indicate the median of the asking rents advertised on immowelt.de in 2019 and 2020. The median is the middle value of the asking prices. The rental prices are net cold rents for new leases.

(Author: Mario Steinebach / Translation: Chelsea Burris)

Matthias Fejes
20.01.2021

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