Step by Step Guide to Finding a House in Munich – Difficult but Not Impossible!
How to Find a House in Munich?
We have passed 9 months in Munich, friends. Now we can say that we know Munich, this city is our city, our home.. Our beautiful city, whose temperament we know, that attracted us a lot at first, but then made us love it so much.
When we decided to move from Frankfurt to Munich 9 months ago, We had a home in Munich. frankly, we never thought that we would find it difficult to search. When we first moved to Frankfurt, we found our dream house within 3 days, even though we were students and had zero income.. This time we had found a job and moved to Munich and everything should have been easier.. At least we had a steady income. Meanwhile, we missed something; The number of houses in Munich is limited and an average of 300 people apply for a house! ?
Fortunately, those days are gone and now we have a stable home and a good host.
If you are going to Munich for Erasmus and are looking for a shared room, or if you are looking for a master’s degree. If you are coming for a job, find a job and move with your family, do not be intimidated.. In the end, everyone finds a house in Munich, no one is homeless..
We are writing this article based on our experiences in Munich, but if you are looking for a house/room in another city in Germany, the process is very similar, just easier.. In other words, if you are coming to Aachen for a language school or Hamburg for Erasmus and you need a place to stay, we think it will help you too.
The process of finding our long-term house took 6 months and these 6 months were temporary we lived in a house. One reason it took so long was that 323232 people applied for a house, and the other was because some rogue landlords agreed to rent their house to you, but just because you were a foreigner, they tried to rent the house to you more than it was worth.. In other words, if the house is worth 1000 Euros per month, they advertise for 1300 Euros and they are already aware that no German will apply for this advertisement.. The intention of the hosts who put the ad at that price is to rent a German for 1300 Euros instead of renting a German for 1000 Euros.. In this way, there were many owners who wanted to rent their house to us, but we never approached, after all, being a foreigner in a city does not give anyone the right to rip you off.. Our stance on this matter was clear from the very beginning.
The distinction between Warmmiete (Hot Rent) and Kaltmiete (Cold Rent):
Another situation that will surprise you if you are moving to Germany for the first time warm rent (warmmiete) / cold rent kaltmiete. If you want to rent a furnished house in Germany, there is a 90 percent probability that the landlord will be renting the house as hot rent.. This means that you will pay the rent all inclusive and will not be involved in bills.. The reason why most landlords choose to rent this way is to ensure that the bills will be paid, and because most service charges (such as electricity and gas) in Germany are flat rate.. Just as you pay a fixed fee every month when you buy an internet package, items such as electricity and natural gas are also available with fixed packages in Germany.. That’s why landlords subscribe to a certain natural gas/electricity/water package and automatically add this fee to your rent.. No matter how much gas/electricity/water you use, your rent is stable!
Although this surprised us at first, we got used to it later on, it was actually a very nice thing.
When looking at house ads on websites, the rent is usually like this: being written; Kaltmiete: X, Nebencosten (invoices): Y and Warmmiete: X + Y. Don’t be surprised to see it like this.
Underkira Problem (untermiete)
Another reason why rents in Munich are getting more and more expensive year by year is that people who rented houses from the landlord on time cheaper than the “untermiete”
strong>. In fact, this is a right of every tenant in Germany arising from the rental agreement, but people abuse it as well.. So if you are a tenant in a house and are going to another place for a long time, you can sub-lease the house instead of completely vacating it.. Most people rent the houses they once rented for 700-800 Euros for 1000-1300 Euros.. Since inflation is zero in Germany, your rent does not increase over the years and the landlord cannot demand it.. That’s why people who rented their homes for 600 Euros 30 years ago still live at this price.. Those who want to profit from this situation rent the house they live in for 1200 Euros for 600 Euros.. He pockets the 600 Euros in between every month.
Believe me, we have come across dozens of such houses.. Therefore, when looking for a house, be sure to ask if the house will be sub-rent.. If it is under-leased, the rent is probably more than it’s worth..!
For these two reasons, it took us a long time to find our house, but as we wrote above, everyone finds a house somehow, some in 1 week, some in 6 months Because I can’t find a room or a house If you’re worried, you can relax a little now.. That house will show up eventually!
Additional note 1: If you’re coming to Germany for a master’s degree or language school instead of working and you’re confused about what to do, you can read our article first.. Here, we talked about what kind of accommodation you can find in Germany, and the “WG”, which is the most preferred shared house option for students, and student dormitories.. After that, you can return to this article.
The Step-by-Step Process of Finding a House in Munich:
The process of finding a house is generally as follows;
– You apply for a house posting online. Room in a shared house (WG in German) postings are also mostly on the same sites.
– Landlords invite a group of about 300-400 applicants to an open visit on a certain day and time (sometimes the open visit is really “everyone”). ” it is open and they write the time of the open visit on the internet advertisement without pre-selection).
– You take your home application form and all other documents with you and go to see the house.
– Sometimes 100 at home during visiting hours. Sometimes there are 20 people. If you succeed, you speak 3-5 words with the host.. You hand over your documents and leave. You rarely have the chance to visit the house in person, so the host gives you a private appointment.. If this happens, don’t be surprised, it’s your lucky day!
– If you are selected, the host will contact you.. ?
– If you were not selected, keep searching, if you are selected, congratulations, you have taken another step towards a new life abroad!
I think it’s easiest to talk about what you need to do step by step, while we gather our own experiences.
Finding a Home in Munich Step 1; Preparing the Required Documents.
You need to prepare certain documents before your house search process in Munich, just as you prepare documents when applying for a job or a master’s degree.. It might sound like we’re exaggerating when we say that, but think about it this way;
A house in Munich receives about 300 applications within 2 days from the moment it is posted on the internet, and since dozens of people come to open visits, it is not very likely that the landlord will remember you.. He then most likely decides by looking at the documentation.. The documents required by almost every landlord are as follows;
1-) Your last 3 months’ salary breakdown:
Even if you take your employment contract with you, they also want your last 3 months’ salary statement.. They wanted to make sure you were paid… If you are just moving to Munich, you can say that your employment contract will just start.. If you don’t want to show your full employment contract (it’s a very personal document after all) you can ask your employer to prepare a blacked-out version of your employment contract with only the salary part exposed.. They call it the ‘geschwärzt’ version.
Even if you came for a master’s degree, you can show your blocked account at the bank or your guarantor document.
The job of those who want to rent a WG room is a little easier. Generally, since those who rent rooms are students, they can be a little more flexible about the required documents.. In general, if you have a blocked account, guarantor certificate or internship income, you may not need to provide the documents we will write below, come on, you are good again!
2-) Reference letter from your former landlord:
No, we are serious..After all, the men make a very important decision for themselves..(!) if you live in the city you can easily ask your previous landlord. If you are moving to Germany for the first time, it would be better if you could have your landlord in Istanbul write a reference letter in English (or) in German.
We had lived in Frankfurt for about two years before, and our landlord there wrote very much in his reference. He mentioned that we use it properly and that we always pay the rent on time.. It was very helpful when looking for a house (so it’s free to say it took 6 months to find a house)!
We are attaching our reference letter here, maybe it will help;
3-) SCHUFA
This is SCHUFA we encountered this thing for the first time in Munich and it took us a while to even understand what it was. This document in English ‘credibility’ essentially means your credit score in Germany. Although we still do not fully understand how SCHUFA is calculated, as far as we understand, your SCHUFA score is high if you have paid your bills and cards on time during your life in Germany, you have never delayed your debts and you have a stable income.. Hosts want a minimum score of 91/92 out of 100. Ours was 98, but we are still not sure on what basis they calculated this score.. Maybe even 100 because they don’t have negative data, we didn’t know this part..! You can apply to SCHUFA from the following site, or you can apply to any branch of Postbank.. If you apply from the website, it takes about 15 days for the document to reach your address and you pay a service fee of 15 Euros.. If you go to Postbank, you can get your document within 10 minutes.. It has a fee of 30 Euros.. We bought it from Postbank.
The landlords we encountered while looking for a house were very happy with our 98 points..! Oh, how nice..
4-) Mieterselbsauskunft (tenant application form so to speak):
This is the classic house/tenant application form where you have to fill in all your information. form. Even if you go without filling, they already have it filled there.. If you search on Google, you can easily find it, you have to fill it out and take the printout with you, and sometimes they ask for it as a condition of application when applying for the house on the website.
We include a family photo while we are preparing our application file for houses. (32 teeth are ideal), we also put our CVs. These are not mandatory, of course, but there were even those who asked for them in the applications we did not put in… Therefore, it is useful to put them in.
If these documents are ready, you are technically entitled to apply for a house in Munich, congratulations!
Now let’s see which sites you can apply from!
Sites Where You Can Find House Ads in Munich
Those who want to rent a furnished or unfurnished house in Germany generally use two sites.. Immobilienscout24 and WG-Gesucht.
WG-Gesucht also offers WG room search and short-term rental options. is happening. For example, even someone who will go on vacation for 15 days rents out their house for these 15 days, you can see they don’t pull the key like we did.
If you can’t find a long-term house and you’re going to rent a house for a short time first, or if you’re coming for a two-month internship in the summer and only if you need a house or room for two months, WG-Gesucht is ideal for you. In addition, the above-mentioned documents may not be required for one-month houses/rooms or fixed-term houses.
Immobilienscout24 has mostly unfurnished houses for rent from their owners.. We found our house from this site.
In order to apply for a house from these two sites, you must first be a member of the site and create a profile.. You can add a family photo here or attach your social media accounts.. We have done both.
The most important thing is to prepare a printed text to use when sending messages to hosts.. You can only change the names in the greeting section when you prepare and send a single text.. we did so. In this article, it is important that you mention what you do in Munich and that you have a regular job.. It is not necessary for the article to be in German, but if you write in German, the returns are much more.. We tried English first and very few people came back, then we added both German and English and we were comfortable, the hosts at least started to respond.
Additional note:
Of course there will be those who disagree with what we wrote, but German hosts are generally very self-sufficient people.. We also met very good hosts, but there were also those who called us to talk about our applications and hung up on us when they realized that our German is not very good, or said that you are a foreigner and there is no home. If you experience such things, don’t get upset.. Racism is the shame of the racist.
For inspiration, we are copying the English text of the text we sent when sending a message to the hosts on the immobilienscout24 site;
”Dear Mrs/Ms. X,
We are interested in your flat and we would be very happy to arrange a visit.
We are a married couple. We moved to Munich 3 months ago after finishing our master studies in Frankfurt. I am a legal counsel working in company X and my husband, Umut, is an architect working in architecture firm X in Munich.
We are happy to attach our recommendation letter from our previous landlady from Frankfurt. We were tenants in her flat in Frankfurt between October 2015 – May 2017. We are also happy to provide our bank statements.
We are reachable on number X and on Facebook X.
We are willing to visit your flat and we are available to start the rent from the date X.
Looking forward to your response.
All the best from Munich,
Asia Karakus & Umut Karakus”
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Additional note:
As you read, in the printed text we wrote, we did not say that we are from Turkey in the first place.. Not that we had anything to hide, but unfortunately we lived in a city full of prejudiced people (which we later confirmed with racist messages from our hosts) and we didn’t want to make our job any harder.. When we went for a face-to-face interview, we didn’t get any bad reaction…
Most people include their salary in this text, but we didn’t need it.. In the documents we sent, our salary is like a pumpkin. apply within 2 hours. Since more than 100 applications are received in most homes within the first 2 hours, they either remove the advertisement immediately and evaluate the applicants within that 2 hours, or the open visit capacity has already been filled and they do not invite more people to open views.
We, We downloaded the phone app of WG Gesucht and ImmobilienScout24, saved our search filters and set the phone to be notified whenever a new posting is available.. Thus, we have applied for every advertisement that we have seen within 5 minutes.
When we go to see the houses, we always go to those who give us a special appointment. When there was an open visit, there were 100 visitors at the same time in a house and it was very annoying.. After a while, we stopped going to the ones with open visits.
Alternative Home Search Sites
Besides these two sites, there were other sites where we looked for houses.. The first of these is Ebay-Kleinanzeigen. You can think of this website as Germany’s largest second-hand shop.. There are also house ads for rent in the immobilien section of the site.. The options are not many, but since fewer are looking here, your hosts usually respond quickly to your messages.
Another option is ‘Search for a Home in Munich’ being a member of their group and following the posts in the group regularly. On these pages, those who want to sub-lease or transfer their house/room, rather than the landlords, share.. The most well-known groups are this and that. But you can find many more groups by typing ‘München Wohnung’ in the search bar.. There is also the International Friends Munich group that we have followed from the very first moment.. In this group there is all kinds of advice about Munich and people help each other. It has helped us a lot.
We think that these Facebook groups will be of great help to those who are looking for WG.
All the options we have listed so far are ‘tools’. were the options where you could rent a place to stay’ without paying the fee.. If you find a place to stay in Munich through an agency, you usually have to pay the cold rent for two or three months to the real estate agents.. Considering that the deposit is usually two or three cold rents, if you can’t get a lump sum of money out of your pocket, you have to stay away from real estate agents (see us!). There is a brokerage service site https://www.mrlodge.com/ MrLodge that rents homes for at least one and a half times their value, but we never recommend it unless you really have to.. No German is looking at this site because the way it works is based entirely on renting houses to foreigners who come to the city for twice as much.
Two pieces of insurance you may be asked to take out; Haftpflicht und Hausratversicherung
Yes, it’s not over yet! Some homeowners may ask you to take out these two insurances.
Hausratversicherung is what they call home insurance you know.. If there is a fire in the house, a thief enters or something happens to the parquet, this insurance pays the damage.. The monthly fee of the insurance is around 7 Euros per month.. Our landlord didn’t want it, but most of the hosts we went to interview did.
Now we come to the main nonsense.. The second insurance Haftpflichtversicherung is ‘Liability Insurance’. The meaning is this: if you cause damage to a third party due to your own reason and have to pay a financial compensation as a result and you have insured yourself with this insurance, this insurance covers the amount you have to pay as a result of your behavior! So again, the landlord says; If you hurt someone and you have to pay compensation, the insurance will cover it so that you don’t get broke and don’t pay my rent..! This insurance is 7 Euros per month on average.
Our friends who had to take out both of these insurances got it from Debeka.. At least they were satisfied with the service.
Weird Items in the Lease Agreement
We wrote this title like this because there are items that you will never encounter in a rental agreement in Turkey. It can be in their contracts.
For example, in the rental contract of a colleague of ours from work, he has to ventilate the house for 15 minutes every day(!) As if he would never have thought to open the window without that clause.
Another friend’s rent In his contract, there is a ban on the entry of cats / dogs into the house.. On the other hand, we broke with the “no smoking at home” ban in our contract.. It wasn’t a problem as we didn’t smoke at home anyway.. The guests who come to the house go to the nearby park and smoke like that!
One of the most important reasons why it is so difficult to find a house in Germany and to be accepted as a tenant is that once you enter a house as a tenant, you are no longer welcome. it’s almost impossible for them to kick you out of that house! Come on, we’re fine again.. If you pay your rent properly and don’t violate the terms of the rental agreement, the landlord can’t kick you out every year… Let’s add that too.. That is, until everything crosses the bridge!
Additional note: While browsing WG Gesucht and ImmobilianScout you will encounter a lot of fraudulent ads. You have moved to X country/city from Munich, you want to rent your house cheaply, you need to send X Euros to your account to forward the key to you, etc.. Never give credit if you receive an e-mail that says. If a house looks very, very cheap in the advertisements, it is probably a fraudulent advertisement.. Hundreds of people are defrauded on these sites every day and it cannot be prevented!
We wish the contestants the best of luck!
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