Julia Menke

How the student housing market is changing

Julia Menke
Julia Menke
published 14/04/2022

While the summer semester for students at most universities of applied sciences already began in March, lectures for university students often don't start again until the end of April. If you weren't lucky enough to find a place to live last winter semester, the hunt for a room in a shared apartment, an apartment or a place in a student hall of residence is about to begin again. There is good news and bad news: Rents have risen once again, but on average students still don't have to spend more hours at a part-time job to pay the rent. These findings emerge from our current study series, Fachkraft 2030.

Rising rents, but also rising wages

In many regions, quite high average rental costs are offset by equally high hourly wages, such as in Bavaria. In the warm rent ranking, it is the third most expensive federal state - but performs significantly better in the rent index. This means that students here have to work fewer hours per month on average to pay their rent than in Hamburg, Saarland, Hesse, Berlin or North Rhine-Westphalia.

In Saarland, on the other hand, comparatively low rents are offset by a very poor average hourly wage. While Saarland's student wage level of €9.01 in 2013 was still close to the national average (9th place in the state comparison), the most recently measured €11.11 means the state shares last place - together with Thuringia.

Mietindex

The shared apartment is no longer in first place

As a student, you have to live in a shared apartment, don't you? The WG has become famous through the special form of the commune in the 60s and 70s, up to today's partly purpose-built, shared apartment. For the first time since the Professional 2030 surveys began (2012), the WG is now no longer in first place among housing types. The majority of students (30.2%) now live in their own apartments - which of course does not (always) mean a condominium, but usually simply living alone in a residence.

Diagramm Wohnform

"In Munich, students live on average in the smallest space - 24 square meters. And yet they pay the second-highest total warm rent (€523.6) in Germany. This comes from the absolute record price per square meter (warm) of €25.9. This means that Munich students* pay almost twice as much per square meter as students in the cheapest city, Leipzig (14.1€) and live on 10 square meters less than university students* in Essen. A further reduction of the floor space is thereby for many students in Bavaria's state capital on the one hand simply not possible by the housing market, on the other hand not always meaningful, since the rule applies 'the smaller the floor space, the higher the square meter price'." - Eckhard Köhn, CEO jobvalley

Je kleiner die Wohnfläche, desto höher der Quadratmeterpreis

Warmmiete je Bundesland

Julia Menke
About the author

Julia Menke

My passion is books, which is why I studied Literature, Culture and Media with the accompanying subject Language and Communication at the University of Siegen. After my traineeship in PR and marketing and a few years in an agency in Cologne, I joined the marketing team at jobvalley. Here I work as a PR & Content Strategist. Besides the strategic stuff, I still love to write!