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Berlin's new rules on furnished housing are intended to close long-standing loopholes that have allowed some landlords to sidestep Germany's rent controls. Few in the sector dispute the need to tackle those abuses. The more difficult question, explored during the opening panel discussion at Heuer Dialog's recent Jahreskongress Temporäres Wohnen, is whether the legislation can distinguish between landlords exploiting the rules and professionally managed temporary-living operators who were never relying on those loopholes in the first place.
The political case for intervention is straightforward. Hakan Demir, the Bundestag MP representing Berlin Neukölln and the SPD's rapporteur on tenancy law, told the panel that advertised rents in his constituency have roughly doubled over the past 10 to 15 years. He cited examples of pre-war apartments being let for close to €2,000 a month in net cold rent — in some cases around twice the level permitted under the local rent index, which he noted can constitute a criminal offence under Germany's anti-profiteering legislation. Some landlords, he suggested, may not even realise they are breaking the law.
A more complicated market than the headlines suggest
Before the discussion, Dr Max-Christopher Krapp of the Institut Wohnen und Umwelt presented findings from a federally commissioned study examining furnished and temporary housing. His research suggested the market is more nuanced than the political debate often assumes. Only 15% of furnished lettings in the study were also time-limited, undermining the common assumption that furnished housing and short-term housing are effectively the same phenomenon. Equally striking, two-thirds of tenants in furnished accommodation had not actively sought that form of housing, but had accepted it because few alternatives were available.
Krapp was equally clear about the limitations of the available evidence. Online listings capture only part of Germany's rental market: roughly 37% of privately owned lettings are ever advertised online, leaving much of the market effectively invisible to researchers and policymakers. Providers also disclose little about their underlying data, making reliable market sizing difficult. A large-scale primary survey covering 10,000 respondents across four cities is now under way, but for now the debate is proceeding with only a partial picture of how the market actually functions.
That uncertainty did not prevent broad agreement on one point: abusive practices should be addressed. Where opinions diverged was over whether the proposed rules can do so without undermining legitimate investment in professionally operated temporary accommodation.
Henrik von Bothmer, head of operated living at Union Investment Real Estate, said institutional investors have no interest in defending the grey zone and broadly welcome greater legal certainty. His concern lies elsewhere. The draft legislation's proposed 10% furniture surcharge, he argued, bears little relation to the economics of professionally managed furnished housing.
Using his own portfolio as an example, a typical 26 square metre apartment renting for around €430 a month in net cold rent would generate only around €43 a month through the surcharge. Furnishing a unit to Union Investment's standard costs closer to €10,000-12,500, well above the assumptions underpinning the draft legislation.
Spread over a typical furniture life cycle, allowing for depreciation and tenant turnover, the numbers no longer work, he argued. "That comes very close to a ban," he said — not because furnished housing would become illegal, but because professionally managed operators could struggle to recover their investment.
Demir rejected that interpretation. The proposed 10% surcharge, he said, should be understood as a default assumption rather than an absolute ceiling. Landlords able to demonstrate higher furnishing costs would be free to charge more. He also noted that the figure had already doubled from an original 5% proposal after what he described as industry lobbying of "certain decision- makers" — a detail he offered candidly rather than as a defence of the outcome.
A rule that may miss its target from both directions
Arkadi Jampolski, founder of the furnished-housing platform Wunderflats, which hosted the day's conference, argued that the debate risks focusing on the wrong symptom. Germany's rental market, he suggested, suffers as much from a lack of transparency as from problems specific to furnished housing. While between two and 2.5 million homes change tenants each year, only a small proportion ever appear on public portals. By Wunderflats' estimates, four out of five lettings in Berlin never reach the internet at all. Furnished and temporary accommodation appears disproportionately visible simply because tenants moving from elsewhere depend on online platforms to find somewhere to live.
Jampolski went further, raising a problem with the 10% rule that cuts in the opposite direction from von Bothmer's complaint. As drafted, he argued, the surcharge requires no proof of actual furnishing cost: a landlord can furnish a unit minimally, still claim the full 10%, and remain entirely compliant while continuing to overcharge in substance. He predicted that Krapp's own follow-up research would likely find the number of declared, regulated time-limited lettings falling — not because abusive practices had stopped, but because the rule's low evidentiary bar gives bad actors little reason to change behaviour, even as it asks compliant operators to justify costs that exceed it.
Taken together, the two criticisms point in opposite directions but share the same conclusion. Von Bothmer's numbers suggest the surcharge is too rigid to work for operators who can prove genuine, higher costs. Jampolski's argument suggests it is too lax to constrain those who cannot be bothered to prove anything at all. A rule that is simultaneously too strict for the compliant and too weak for the abusive is not closing a loophole so much as relocating it.
A developer in the audience, currently building purpose-designed temporary accommodation in Münster, offered a reminder that Berlin is not necessarily representative of the country as a whole. In his market, dedicated temporary housing provides accommodation for visiting nurses and other short-term workers, freeing conventional family housing for permanent residents. The business model itself, he argued, is not the problem; the challenge lies in ensuring regulation distinguishes between legitimate temporary housing and attempts to circumvent tenancy law.
The discussion ultimately suggested that Germany's debate over furnished housing has entered a new phase, and a more uncomfortable one than either side's framing fully admits. The question is no longer simply whether loopholes should be closed, but whether the specific mechanism chosen can tell the difference between the operators it should constrain and the ones it should not — and on the evidence aired at this panel, that remains far from certain.