High rental costs: One in eight tenants lives beyond their means

Housing costs

One in eight tenants lives beyond their means

According to the survey, almost one in eight tenants lives beyond their means. Why the desire to own a home is great and what stops many people from buying it.

Rent and additional costs are overwhelming more and more people in Germany. Almost half (48.5 percent) of the 1,109 tenants that YouGov reported for the Postbank representative surveyed, can “barely afford” their housing costs. Almost one in eight tenants (12.2 percent) say they live within their own financial circumstances.

Only a good third (34.1 percent) of the tenants surveyed at the beginning of July said they could “well afford” their housing costs. In the 2023 comparison survey, more than 44 percent said this.

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“Housing is becoming a financial imposition for more and more tenants,” says Ulrich Stephan, chief investment strategist for private and corporate customers at Deutsche Bank, to which Postbank belongs. The results of the Opinion poll are “an indication of how important affordable housing has become for our society and how much the reality of life for tenants and owners has now diverged.”

Almost every second tenant (47.9 percent) would prefer to live in their own four walls. The biggest hurdle to buying real estate: a lack of equity. Read here how much equity you need to buy a house. Almost one in two (45.8 percent) of the 2,016 respondents believe that home ownership is most likely through a heritage is reachable.