Rents in university cities are rising
Where shared rooms are now the most expensive
March 20, 2024, 4:22 a.m
Students have little money, but have to dig deep into their pockets to pay rent. In the large university cities, the prices for a shared room will continue to rise sharply for the summer semester of 2024. The highest sums are called in Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin.
Munich and Frankfurt/Main are the most expensive places to study in Germany in the summer semester of 2024. This is reported by the newspapers of the Funke media group, citing a study by the Moses Mendelssohn Institute (MMI), which specializes in real estate research, and the internet portal “wg-gesucht.de”. According to this, an average of 760 euros per month is now charged for free shared rooms in Munich, which is 40 euros more than a year ago. In Frankfurt/Main, the average asking rent for shared rooms rose by 90 euros within a year to 670 euros per month.
Third and fourth place among the cities with the highest rents for shared rooms are Berlin with 650 euros (previously 640 euros) and Hamburg, where prices for shared rooms climbed from 570 euros to 610 euros. The fifth most expensive university city is Cologne (550 euros in 2023, 560 euros in 2024).
Matthias Anbuhl, the chairman of the German Student Union, told the newspapers: “We are now experiencing a new form of social selection: the question of which university I can study at depends more and more on whether I can actually afford the rent in the city can afford. The freedom of the young generation is so severely restricted. This is a misery in terms of educational policy.”
BAföG does not cover the costs
What the MMI study also shows: On average, a room in a shared apartment in Germany costs 479 euros. However, the BAföG housing allowance is only 360 euros. According to MMI, this is not even enough for an average room in 73 university cities examined. In 45 cities the lower price segment is already above this level; Around 54 percent of all students are enrolled here.
The MMI evaluation includes all university locations in Germany with at least 5,000 students (excluding distance learning and administrative universities). Around 89.4 percent of all around 2,774,000 students in Germany are enrolled here. At the beginning of the 2024 summer semester, students will have to pay an average of around 7 euros more for a shared room than at the beginning of the last winter semester. Compared to the summer semester of 2023, prices rose by an average of 4.7 percent, which is more than consumer prices.