Lack of housing
Not to get an apartment? Now the run comes to the B cities
In Munich or Berlin, looking for an apartment is difficult. According to Immoscout, this ensures a demand boom in the country and in the cities of the second row.
Long snakes during the tour, horrendous rents for small holes: the search for an apartment has long been difficult in the largest cities in the country. The lack of living space in the metropolises also increasingly drives those seekers of housing into the bacon belts, in smaller cities and rural areas, as an evaluation of Immoscout24 shows.
The platform has evaluated and determined for its current residential barometer: While the demand for rental apartments only rose by four percent in the past quarter in the past quarter, it was in the surrounding area plus seven percent and in rural areas even plus nine percent compared to the first quarter of 2025. Even in the independent cities, which are not one of the top-eight major cities, the demand in the second quarter increased twice as much as Metropolises.
The trend in the metropolises is not uniform: While in Hamburg (plus seven percent) or Leipzig (plus eleven percent) significantly more people than in the previous quarter were looking for an apartment about Immoscout, it was even less than before in Stuttgart (minus two percent) and Frankfurt (minus one percent). However, the long -term view beyond the current year shows that those seeking apartments are particularly focused on cities from the second and third row.
Increased search for accommodation in B and C cities
The number of inquiries 2025 compared to 2021 (Q2 each) in the seven A-cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart) rose by a total of 27 percent. In contrast, in the so-called B cities, demand increased by 210 percent in the same period. Among the B cities, Immoscout is 15 major cities such as Bonn, Bremen, Dortmund or Dresden. In the 25 C cities (e.g. Erfurt, Freiburg, Mainz, Potsdam), demand also rose by 135 percent within four years and in the 82 D cities (e.g. Bamberg, Göttingen, Schwerin, Leverkusen).
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Conditions such as in the large housing emergency castles can now also be observed elsewhere. According to Immoscout, the absolute number of searches for rental apartments in the B and C cities are already half as high as in the large metropolises. The high demand shows that Germany urgently needs more living space, says Immoscout boss Gesa Crockford. “Not only in the metropolises, but also in the centers second row.”
A result of the consistently growing demand is still rising rents. There is a big difference between existing apartments, for which the rental price brake applies in many places, as well as generally except new apartments. While existing apartments were offered an average of 2.1 percent more expensive in the second quarter of Germany than a year ago, 6.6 percent more rent was required for new apartments.
As a result, 50 percent more rent is called for a new apartment than for an existing apartment. A 70-square-meter apartment costs an average of 600 euros in a monthly cold rental, a new apartment more than 900 euros. In the metropolises, the existing apartment costs an average of more than 1000 euros in rent, new apartments can devour 1400 euros cold (Berlin) or even 1800 euros cold (Munich) to rent per month.
Source: Stern
