Renting in Munich
A one-bedroom flat in Munich costs about $2,100 a month. Landlords usually ask for a deposit of 3 months of rent, and the average commute to the centre is 29 minutes.
How the search works
Munich is the most expensive rental market in the country and the one with the fewest vacancies. A flat that appears on a portal at nine in the morning has two hundred enquiries by noon, and many never reach a portal at all: they pass from tenant to tenant through employers and university boards.
Landlords here expect a personal introduction with the application: who you are, where you work, why you are moving. It reads as old-fashioned and it works. Many flats also come without a fitted kitchen. The previous tenant may offer to sell theirs, and the price is negotiable, but you are not obliged to buy it in order to get the flat, whatever the advert implies.
Look along the S-Bahn lines towards Pasing, Trudering or Unterschleißheim. The ride to the centre adds a quarter of an hour and the same budget buys a second room. Inside the ring, Giesing and Sendling are the districts where ordinary flats still change hands; Schwabing and Maxvorstadt are priced for people who are not counting.
Rents in Munich are capped against a local reference table, and a landlord who asks far more than the table allows can be made to lower the rent after you have signed. Few tenants use this, because few know. The tenants' association checks a contract for a small annual fee and is worth joining before, not after, you sign.