Rising rent prices remain front of mind for just about everyone living in Germany, but rising costs can be particularly impactful for students who don't yet have a steady income and need to survive on very modest budgets.
A recent study - carried out by the Moses Mendelssohn Institute and WG-gesucht (Germany's leading online marketplace for apartments and shared flats) - found that costs for student accommodation in medium-sized university cities have increased since last year.
The evaluation also found that rent prices for rooms in most cities exceed the federal housing allowance (via BAföG), which many students from low-income families depend on.
All 88 German cities with university locations that served at least 5,000 students (excluding distance learning and administrative universities) were included in the analysis. This includes a little over 90 percent of Germany's 2.7 million enrolled university students.
Prices given here are for rents for single rooms in shared flats (often including electricity, internet and basic furniture).
Previous studies have shown that rent prices for rooms in shared flats are a good indicator for student accommodation prices broadly - although those living in a dormitory can usually expect to pay less, and those living alone in an apartment will typically pay more.
Where is student housing most expensive?
It should come as no surprise that Munich, Berlin and Hamburg are the cities with the highest prices for student accommodation on average. These are also regularly among the German cities with the highest rents and housing prices generally.
Compared to the previous year, prices for students accommodation or rooms in shared flats have risen from €750 to €800 a month in Munich.
In Berlin the average price for housing for a single student is about €650 a month, which hasn't increased since last year.
In Hamburg, student rents have increased by ten euros to €610 per month on average.
And in Cologne rents have increased from €570 to €583 a month in the past year.
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Dr. Stefan Brauckmann, who led the study and has been watching Germany's housing market for students and trainees since 2011, noted that demand for housing tends to be lower before than summer semester than it is ahead of the winter semester.
"It remains to be seen how prices will develop from August onwards," Brauckmann said in a press release about the report.
But he added that according to his team's assessment, "prices should continue to stabilise."
Where are prices rising the fastest?
While rents remain high but largely unchanged in Germany's ten biggest cities, it's actually the medium-sized university towns that are seeing the fastest rise in prises for student accommodation.
The average housing costs for students across Germany stood at €493 a month ahead of the coming semester, which represents an increase of nearly one percent compared with the previous semester, and approximately 2.8 percent (or around €14) since the previous year.
Some of Germany's top universities are found in mid-sized towns, many of which are known to offer a good quality of life for less cost than the bigger cities.
These includes cities like Heidelberg or Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg, Marburg in Hesse or Weimar in Thuringia, for example.
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Where is student housing most affordable?
According to a report in the Tagesspiegel newspaper, some of the cities with the cheapest rents for rooms in shared flats included: Chemnitz (€265 a month), Magdeburg (€330), Dresden (€350), Hildesheim (€365), Erfurt (€370) and Kaiserslautern (€380).
Interestingly, in contrast to rents in Berlin, prices for rooms in shared flats in the surrounding state of Brandenburg appear to have recently dropped. According to the report, a room costs an average of €466 a month here now, as opposed to six months ago when it was €522. (One year ago the average price was €510.)
The city of Potsdam, which is the capital of Brandenburg and is home to an international university of its own, has higher average rent costs at about €500 a month for a student room.
'Housing allowance should be expanded'
Notably, the study's authors point out that only about a quarter of German university towns (23 out of 88 that were analysed) have ordinary rooms available that would be affordable with the current BAföG housing allowance.
BAföG (short for Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz) is Germany's state-funded financial aid programme, and is among the main ways students from low-income families can finance their university life.
The BAföG housing allowance was increased from €360 to €380 per month at the beginning of the last semester, but seen in comparison to an average rent cost of €493 across Germany for the coming semester, experts suggest its not enough.
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"BAföG should be dynamically adjusted to the actual price development," said Brauckmann is his report, adding: "It should also take into account that most students live in cities where the cost of living is significantly higher."
Most of the 23 German cities that did have an average student housing cost at or below the housing allowance rate were located in former East German states, or were particularly small cities.
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