When can I let my apartment in Germany to tourists?

"On online portals like Airbnb you can offer private holiday accommodation and make good money with it. But this is not always legal.

Air mattress and breakfast - Airbed and Breakfast: The original idea is still in the name. Airbnb was launched 15 years ago as an online marketplace for private accommodation. Uncomplicated, cool, not as impersonal as in a hotel, but as a guest with friends and right in the middle of their lives - Airbnb and other brokerage platforms for private accommodation try to keep this myth alive, even though the sharing idea has long since become a highly lucrative business model is, often also for the apartment owners. 

Because with short-term rentals, especially in big cities, you can earn significantly more money than on the regular rental market.

And as an owner, can't you do whatever you want with your apartment, rent it out for a short time or for a long time? "In principle yes," says Oliver Elzer, a judge in Berlin and an expert on residential property law, "as an owner you can also rent out by the day or week." 

Nevertheless, there are limits - and they are set by the municipalities.

With every apartment that is only rented to vacationers, medical tourists or business travelers, the number of apartments available for the locals decreases. Affordable rental housing is already a scarce commodity in many large cities, which is why numerous municipalities restrict short-term rentals - meaning rentals for just a few days or weeks. There is no national regulation. 

If you want to rent, you have to ask your city or municipality how they deal with the topic of "misappropriation of living space".

For example, in some places individual rooms may be offered as sleeping places, but not the entire apartment. Registration is often required, and sometimes official approval is also required, for example in Berlin or Hamburg. In Stuttgart it is forbidden to use an apartment for more than ten weeks a year "for the purpose of third-party accommodation", but renting it out during a longer absence, for example a trip abroad lasting several weeks, is permitted.

In Munich, too, it is forbidden to rent out an apartment or house exclusively as a holiday home. Individual rooms, on the other hand, can be offered on the brokerage platforms, up to a maximum of 50 percent of the living space - and the entire, otherwise self-occupied dwelling, for example during a stay abroad, too, but only for a maximum of eight weeks a year.

Violations can be expensive: in the past five years, the housing protection team of the building supervision in Frankfurt am Main tracked down more than 1000 illegal holiday homes and received fines of two million euros. The cities also rely on attentive neighbors. In Munich, for example, there is an online registration form for this.

Even if holiday guests disturb: the community of owners is largely powerless

Nevertheless, says lawyer Oliver Elzer, "the gray market is huge". And regardless of whether it's legal or illegal, the constant coming and going around the house can become a real burden for homeowners. "Total strangers in the facility, noise, dirt in the stairwell, that's a real problem, especially in big cities like Berlin with lots of party tourists," says Elzer.

In principle, every owner is obliged to select their tenants carefully and not to rent to known troublemakers, "but it can hardly be proven that they were not careful, they usually do not know the tenants beforehand," explains the expert on residential property law. The other owners and the community of owners can hardly do anything against a holiday apartment in the house: "Theoretically, you can subsequently prohibit short-term rentals in the community regulations, but all owners have to agree, including those who rent to tourists," says Elzer . Rather unrealistic that they deprive their own business model of the basis. 

In the case of new residential complexes, however, there is certainly the possibility of designing the community regulations accordingly. "Anyone who buys can pay attention to this fact," says Elzer.

Otherwise, only the house rules remain to define the rules of togetherness in the house, for example the quiet times. "As a landlord, you should draft the rental agreement accordingly, agree on the house rules and signal to your holiday guests that you expect consideration for the household," advises Elzer.

By the way: The income from a short-term rental must be taxed. Tax-free only remains if your total income is below the annual basic allowance of currently 10,908 euros or if you have not earned more than 520 euros with the rental - whether you offer a luxury booth or just an air mattress does not matter."