🏠 Housing: student halls and shared flats
In brief
There is no special "student tenancy law": the general tenancy law of the BGB applies to rooms, shares in shared flats and flats. Special features arise mainly with subletting in a shared flat, with a furnished room within the landlord's own home and with student halls of residence, whose contracts are often linked to student status.
Step by step
- Look for housing earlyWaiting lists for places in halls of residence run by the Studierendenwerke should be used as early as possible before studies begin.
- Check the tenancy agreement carefullyCheck whether the contract is fixed-term and whether a recognised substantive reason is stated for this; the deposit may be at most three months' net rent excluding utilities (§ 551 Abs. 1 BGB).
- Draw up a handover recordRecord the condition and meter readings in writing on moving in to avoid later disputes.
- In a shared flat: obtain permission to subletIf you sublet rooms in an existing flat or live as a subtenant yourself, you need the permission of the main tenant or landlord.
- Observe the notice periodFor ordinary tenancies, a statutory notice period of three months applies, regardless of the length of the tenancy (§ 573c Abs. 1 BGB).
Deadlines
- Blanket "student clauses" that supposedly end a tenancy automatically when studies end are often invalid under § 575 BGB unless a substantive reason is stated in the contract.
- How exactly the halls of residence contracts of the Studierendenwerke are to be classified legally – as an ordinary BGB tenancy agreement or as a separate public-law right of use – is handled differently from one Studierendenwerk to another; this should be checked in the terms of use in the individual case.
- Subletting without the landlord's permission can lead to termination without notice (§ 543 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 BGB) – if you are changing shared flats during the semester, be sure to clarify this beforehand.
- The deposit may be paid in up to three monthly instalments (§ 551 Abs. 2 BGB); this right is rarely offered voluntarily, but it exists nonetheless.
In depth · legal basis, figures and practice – for advisers and professionals
No special law, but special cases
The general tenancy law of the BGB applies to students. Two special cases come up particularly often in student life: the furnished room within the landlord's own home with no more than two dwellings (shortened notice period to the 15th of a month, § 549 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 i. V. m. § 573c Abs. 3 BGB) and subletting in a shared flat, which always requires the consent of the main tenant or landlord.
Fixed term and substantive reason
A fixed-term tenancy agreement is only valid if a statutorily recognised substantive reason is communicated to the tenant in writing when the contract is concluded (§ 575 BGB, e.g. personal use or planned conversion). A general "letting only for the duration of studies" does not, according to the relevant commentaries, generally count as such.
Return of the deposit
The statute names no fixed period for returning the deposit after move-out; according to settled case law, the landlord has a reasonable period for review and settlement, which in practice is set at up to six months – this is case law, not a period from the statutory text itself.
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