Tracking my path to fair rent — and building a tool to help others
I'm actively improving and expanding Mietminder.de to provide the best possible experience for calculating fair rent in Berlin.
Eventually, I decided to use another service, which I'll reveal once my case is resolved and I'm satisfied with the outcome.
In the meantime, I started working on mietminder.de, with the idea of building an accessible tool that helps Berlin residents understand and calculate their fair rent based on the official Mietspiegel data.
I looked into joining a Mietverein (tenant association), but as a non-German speaker, I found it difficult to understand what level of support they could actually provide.
It seemed they might help draft a letter to the landlord, but it wasn't clear if they would represent new members in court.
I also reached out to several lawyers, but most were either too busy or on vacation at the time.
Meanwhile, according to my rental agreement, my rent increased by another €50 per month. So I was now paying €1,046 instead of €660. An extra €386 every month.
I downloaded the official Mietspiegel PDF and started studying it to calculate what my rent should be under Berlin's regulations.
According to my calculations, my fair cold rent should have been around €660 per month.
Since I was paying €996, that meant I was overpaying by €336 every month.
I sent a letter to my landlord asking them to justify the rent amount, but I haven't received a response yet.
Through a TikTok ad from Conny, I learned about Berlin's rental regulations and discovered that tenants have the right to dispute their rent if it's too high.
At that time, my monthly cold rent was €996 for a 49 m² apartment.
After reading Conny's contract, I saw that they take a commission equal to six months of the rent reduction plus 100% of any overpaid rent already collected by the landlord. That felt excessive to me, so I decided to look for other options.