German gov’t announces further rent regulations

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection has announced that it will reform the country’s rent regulations to better protect tenants against skyrocketing rents. Opposition parties say the reform has no teeth.

Hubig announces rent brake law updates

In June 2025, the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition extended the rent brake law (Mietpreisbremse) until 2029. Now, Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig has announced a “second package” regulating index-linked rental contracts, furnished apartments and short-term lets.

According to the draft law, which has been seen by public broadcaster ARD, landlords will be able to annually increase index-linked rents by a maximum of 3,5 percent of the previous net cold rent.

Currently, landlords can legally evict tenants who have not paid rent, or a significant portion of rent, over two consecutive payments or are in rent arrears amounting to two months' rent, which were not paid over a longer period. Under the new law, landlords will not be able to evict tenants who settle these arrears.

The government will also extend the Mietpreisbremse to protect tenants on short-term rental contracts. Currently, tenants with temporary or short-term rental contracts are not protected. In future, the law will apply to rental contracts longer than six months.

Finally, landlords letting furnished apartments will be obliged to break down their charges. For example, they would have to explicitly state what portion of the overall monthly rent is charged for base rent and what portion is charged for furnishings. 

The government will introduce a cap on how much landlords can charge for furnished lets and a limit on how old the furniture can be in a furnished rental apartment. In an interview with ARD’s Morgenmagazin programme, Hubig said the law should be ready by parliamentary recess this summer.

Opposition says reform has no teeth

While the government says it is making good on a coalition agreement promise to tackle Germany’s affordable housing shortage, opposition parties say the reforms are too slow and still too lax.

“Justice Minister Hubig is currently more of a minister of announcements,” Rental Policy Expert and Greens representative Hanna Steinmüller told taz. Steinmüller accused Hubig of announcing interim steps of the same law every few weeks and said the SPD politician should “speed up her own procedures instead of repeatedly marketing the same draft”. 

Steinmüller said the existing reform was the “absolute minimum” the government could do. “Anyone who wants to put a stop to increasing rents should lower the cap limits and, above all, ensure that tenants can actually enforce their rights.”

The rent brake, which was first introduced by the CDU-led government in 2015, has long come under scrutiny for having too many loopholes and failing to protect tenants who enforce their rights from the threat of eviction.

In November 2024 The Left Party launched a free online calculator which tenants could use to find out if they were paying illegally high rent. 220.000 tenants across Germany used the calculator in the first year it was online, two-thirds of whom found they were being overcharged.