Berlin Flat Finder

Glossary · Berlin

Kaltmiete and Warmmiete

Cold rent is the rent alone; warm rent adds the running costs. Confusing them is how a budget goes wrong by a hundred euros a month.

Kaltmiete — cold rent — is the rent for the space and nothing else. Warmmiete is the Kaltmiete plus Nebenkosten: heating, water, rubbish collection, building maintenance, the caretaker. The gap is typically €80–200 a month for a Berlin flat, and rather more in an old building with bad windows and a cold winter.

German long-term ads usually quote the Kaltmiete, because that is the number the law works in — the deposit cap and most rent regulation are calculated on it. Short-let and sublet ads usually quote a single all-in figure, because the person leaving for three months just wants their outgoings covered. So the same word “rent” in two Berlin ads can mean two different things.

When a sublet ad quotes a number, assume it is all-in unless it says otherwise, then check. The question is one line: “is that warm, including Nebenkosten and electricity?” Electricity and internet are frequently not in the Nebenkosten even when everything else is, and on a short let they usually stay in the main tenant's name, so you are reimbursing rather than contracting.

The reason to be precise about it is that comparison shopping across a feed of listings is meaningless otherwise. A €700 cold room and a €700 warm room are perhaps a hundred euros a month apart, which over six months is a flight home.

Related

Knowing the words is not the hard part — being in the room when a flat is posted is. Berlin sublets go within hours, in group chats you have to already be a member of. A free account gets you every listing from those groups and the big listing sites in one feed, filtered to the neighbourhoods, price and dates you actually want.

General information, not legal advice. For anything contested, Berlin's Mieterverein is who to call.