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Are rents in Munich still rising?

Are Munich rents actually still rising today?

Yes, Munich rents are still rising today, although the latest increase is much slower than the jumps tenants faced a few years ago.

The freshest citywide evidence comes from Munich's Wohnungsmarktbarometer for the first half of 2026, based on ImmoScout24 advertisements. Unfurnished existing apartments offered for re-letting averaged €22.93/m², 2.6% more than a year earlier. First-occupancy apartments averaged €26.20/m², up 2.3%.

GREIX reaches the same conclusion with a different methodology. Its quality-adjusted index puts Munich asking rents at about €23.70/m², 3.7% higher over the year. Immowelt also has Munich apartment rents roughly 3% higher.

The exact numbers vary because the datasets cover different listings and adjust them differently, but all three point upward. We could not find a serious current dataset showing Munich rents falling across the market.

What has changed is the speed. Munich still has rent inflation, but these days it looks more like a steady climb than another surge.

Why do Munich rent numbers look so different?

Munich rent numbers look confusing because an existing tenant and somebody searching for a new apartment today are often operating in completely different price ranges.

The city's official Mietspiegel 2025 gives an average net cold rent of €15.38/m². That is far below the €22.93/m² currently being asked for an unfurnished existing apartment coming back onto the market.

There is no contradiction here. The Mietspiegel uses qualifying leases that were either newly signed or changed during a six-year observation window. The Wohnungsmarktbarometer looks at apartments advertised to prospective tenants. GREIX then takes asking rents and adjusts for differences in apartment quality and characteristics.

For anyone asking whether Munich rents are "still rising," we therefore have to specify which rents. Existing contracts usually move much more slowly. People searching for a home today are exposed almost immediately to current market prices.

That split has become large enough that a single Munich rent average can be quite misleading.

Are Munich rents rising more slowly than before?

Yes, Munich rent growth has cooled noticeably, especially for ordinary unfurnished apartments.

The city's 2025 Wohnungsmarktbarometer found unfurnished re-letting rents up 5.1% and first-occupancy rents up 4.2% over the year. In the latest half-year update, those increases have slowed to 2.6% and 2.3%.

Immowelt shows the same broad pattern over a longer period. Its Munich apartment series rose about 7.3% in 2024, 4.9% in 2025 and roughly 3% lately.

GREIX also points to moderation. Munich was still 3.7% higher year on year in its latest quarter, but the quarter-on-quarter increase was only 0.8%.

Tenants should not confuse slower growth with a turnaround. The speed has fallen quite a lot; rents themselves are still going up.

Are Munich rents still rising after inflation?

Only slightly in real terms for ordinary unfurnished apartments, which is a big change from the earlier rent boom.

Recent German consumer inflation has been running in roughly the same 2–3% range as Munich's latest 2.3–2.6% increase in unfurnished asking rents. The City of Munich itself says these rents have lately been moving broadly in line with general prices.

That makes the current period different from the previous decade. Research from the Planungsverband Äußerer Wirtschaftsraum München found that Munich asking rents rose 53.9% between 2015 and 2025. Those gains were far larger than today's annual pace and changed what Munich households had to spend on housing.

Furnished apartments are still running hotter. Their latest annual increase is above 4%, comfortably ahead of the unfurnished market.

For now, conventional Munich rents are roughly flat to slightly higher after inflation. In nominal euros, tenants are still paying more.

How much does a Munich apartment cost to rent now?

Munich rental costs are currently high enough that even a modest 2–3% increase can add hundreds of euros a year to a new lease.

At the city's latest average re-letting rent, a 50 m² unfurnished existing apartment works out at roughly €1,147 a month in net cold rent. A 70 m² apartment is about €1,605, while 90 m² comes to around €2,064.

New apartments push the bill higher. At €26.20/m², a 70 m² first-occupancy apartment costs roughly €1,834 a month before heating and other operating costs.

A 3% rise on a €1,600 monthly rent is another €576 a year. Munich no longer needs double-digit rent inflation to create a noticeable affordability problem.

Are people moving in Munich paying much more than existing tenants?

Yes, moving home in Munich can reset a household's rent dramatically higher than the price paid under an older contract.

The official Mietspiegel average is €15.38/m², compared with €14.58 in its previous edition. Meanwhile, today's advertised existing apartments are well above €20/m².

The comparison is imperfect because the two datasets are built differently, but the gap is much too large to dismiss as methodology alone. Regional research from the Planungsverband found Munich asking rents about 45% above existing rents and described the market as increasingly divided between insiders and outsiders.

That creates strange behaviour. A couple may stay in an apartment that has become too small because moving would increase the rent sharply. Older tenants may have little financial reason to leave a large apartment for a smaller one. Families then find fewer suitable homes returning to the market.

Munich's rental shortage is therefore partly about how many apartments exist and partly about how rarely reasonably priced apartments change hands.

Are furnished apartments making Munich rents worse?

Yes, furnished apartments are currently one of the fastest-rising and most expensive parts of Munich's rental market.

The latest city data put furnished existing apartments at €29.80/m², up 4.2% in a year. Furnished first-occupancy apartments reached €33.38/m², up 4.3%. Both increases are clearly above those of comparable unfurnished homes.

This is no longer a tiny niche. In the City's full-year 2025 sample, furnished apartments accounted for roughly 31% of the long-term advertisements it analysed. Small homes were especially common in that segment.

The premium is substantial. The previous city report put furnished existing rents around 28% above unfurnished ones. Furniture, flexibility and sometimes additional services justify part of that difference, but a market in which almost one-third of sampled advertisements are furnished changes what apartment hunters actually see when they search.

The federal government has also been looking at tighter transparency around furniture surcharges and temporary contracts. Regulators increasingly treat furnished letting as part of the mainstream affordability problem rather than a marginal corner of the market.

Are small apartments especially expensive in Munich now?

Yes, small Munich apartments remain brutally expensive per square metre, particularly for people who need a studio or compact one-bedroom home.

The City's detailed 2025 analysis found unfurnished new apartments of only 20–40 m² averaging €31.34/m². That was far above the overall first-occupancy average.

There is a straightforward reason why landlords can charge so much. Munich has an unusually large number of people competing for small homes. Of roughly 868,000 private households at the end of 2025, around 472,000 were one-person households, equivalent to 54.4% of the total. In Maxvorstadt, the share was close to 68%.

Furnished supply adds another layer. About 35% of furnished existing apartments in the City's 2025 sample were between 20 and 40 m².

A newcomer searching for 30 or 35 m² can therefore face a much harsher market than somebody looking only at the Munich-wide average would expect.

Where in Munich are rents still cheapest?

Munich still has meaningful rent differences between neighborhoods, although even the cheaper districts are expensive by German standards.

The City's detailed district data for unfurnished existing apartments put Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt at €25.53/m², Schwabing and Schwabing-West at €25.46, and Au-Haidhausen at €25.08.

At the other end, Feldmoching-Hasenbergl averaged €19.66/m², Hadern €20.18 and Trudering-Riem €20.44. For a 70 m² apartment, that puts the gap between Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt and Feldmoching-Hasenbergl above €400 a month.

Going outside Munich can save more, but the suburbs are no longer a static cheap alternative. Planungsverband data show that several surrounding areas recorded faster rent increases than Munich over the 2015–2025 period. Munich rose 53.9%, while some cheaper districts in the wider region exceeded 70%.

People are still trading commute time for cheaper housing, but that trade has become less generous over time.

Is Munich still Germany's most expensive rental market?

Yes, Munich is still comfortably Germany's most expensive major rental market today.

GREIX currently puts Munich at about €23.70/m². Frankfurt, the second most expensive of Germany's eight largest cities in the same dataset, is around €17.80. Hamburg is €16.50 and Stuttgart €16.30.

Munich is therefore roughly one-third more expensive than Frankfurt and about 45% above Hamburg or Stuttgart on this measure. That gap matters far more than whether Munich happens to have the fastest rent growth this quarter.

Munich is no longer always the German city with the strongest percentage increase. GREIX has lately found faster annual growth in cities including Cologne, Hamburg and Düsseldorf.

Munich's starting point is the problem. Another 3% increase on €23–24/m² hurts more in euros than a faster percentage increase in a substantially cheaper city.

Does Munich still have enough housing demand to keep rents rising?

Yes, Munich still has enough demand and too little new housing for us to expect a broad drop in rents anytime soon.

The city ended 2025 with 1.612 million main residents, 8,653 more than one year earlier. Munich has been growing for more than two decades, and its current population projection reaches roughly 1.83 million residents by 2045.

At the same time, only 4,348 apartments were completed in 2025. The year before, Munich had completed 6,501. That is a fall of about one-third.

Permits offer some hope for later years: 8,146 homes were approved in 2025. But permits do not immediately turn into apartments, and Munich's construction pipeline has to compensate for several weak years while demand keeps accumulating.

One-person households also make the shortage tougher than population growth alone suggests. More than half of Munich households contain only one person, so relatively modest population growth can still require a lot of individual housing units.

Current supply is simply nowhere near loose enough to give tenants broad bargaining power.

Has Munich finally become too expensive for rents to keep rising quickly?

Munich is getting close to an affordability ceiling, and that is probably one reason today's rent increases are much less aggressive.

Planungsverband research gives us a useful reality check. A reference 90 m² Munich apartment offered in late 2025 cost about €1,928 a month in net cold rent. For a household with €4,500 of monthly disposable income, rent alone absorbed 42.8% of income before heating, electricity and other housing expenses.

That is already far beyond the roughly 30% level commonly used as an affordability benchmark.

We can see the pressure in long-term regional data too. Munich's asking rents increased 53.9% from 2015 to 2025, while several cheaper surrounding districts rose by more than 70%. The cheaper markets had more room to catch up, while Munich was already pushing against what normal households could pay.

When rents get this high, tenants adapt. They rent smaller homes, live farther out, share apartments or avoid moving altogether. Those reactions can slow further rent increases without producing an actual fall in market rents.

That is pretty close to what Munich is experiencing now.

Doesn't the Mietpreisbremse stop Munich rents from going higher?

No, Munich's Mietpreisbremse can restrain rent increases, but it does not stop rents from rising altogether.

Munich remains covered by Bavaria's Mietpreisbremse. For qualifying re-lettings, the basic rule limits the initial rent to 10% above the local comparative rent.

There are important exceptions. Certain newer apartments and comprehensively modernised homes are outside the standard rule, and previous rents can also affect what a landlord is allowed to charge.

More importantly, the reference point itself changes over time. The Munich Mietspiegel average went from €14.58/m² in its 2023 edition to €15.38 in 2025, a 5.5% increase.

Federal evaluations of the Mietpreisbremse have generally found that it slows rent growth rather than freezes rents. That is broadly what Munich looks like today: regulation limits some increases while the underlying shortage keeps pushing market rents upward.

Are Munich rents likely to fall soon?

Probably not. Munich rent growth is clearly slowing now, but the evidence still points toward further nominal increases rather than a citywide decline.

The case for continued increases does not depend on one rent index. Munich is still gaining residents, more than half of its households consist of one person, and new housing delivery weakened sharply last year. Meanwhile every major current asking-rent dataset we checked remains positive.

There are also limits to how far rents can run. Affordability is stretched, ordinary unfurnished rents are lately rising only around the pace of inflation, and stronger construction could eventually take some pressure out of the market.

Another explosive rent boom is therefore harder to make a case for than it was a few years ago. A genuine citywide fall would probably require substantially more available housing, much weaker household demand, or enough economic stress that landlords start struggling to fill apartments.

We do not see those conditions across Munich today.

So, are rents in Munich still rising?

Yes, Munich rents are still rising, and the latest evidence makes that answer quite clear; what has changed is how fast they are going up.

For ordinary unfurnished apartments, today's market is mostly producing increases in the low single digits. As seen above, the City's latest figures put existing re-lettings around €22.93/m² and new apartments around €26.20/m². Furnished housing is still rising faster, while older leases remain far cheaper than what newcomers see online.

The broader picture explains why outright rent falls remain unlikely. Munich is still adding residents, the city continues to project long-term population growth, and only 4,348 apartments were completed last year. At the same time, stretched household budgets are beginning to put a brake on how quickly landlords can push conventional rents higher.

The conclusion is simple: Munich's rent boom has cooled, but the rental shortage has not. Rents are still moving upward today, just at a pace that increasingly looks like 2–4% a year rather than the much steeper increases tenants experienced earlier in the cycle.

Fact-checked and reviewed by our local expert

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Nicholas Runtic

CEO and cofounder of LDP Group

Based in Munich, Nicholas Runtic is CEO and co-founder of LDP Group, a real estate investment firm serving international professionals in Germany. His background in finance, private banking, and property investing gives him a strong understanding of Munich’s competitive market and the importance of selecting high-quality assets for long-term wealth creation.

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