How much rent can you charge? A first-time investor's guide for Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden

In Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, the rent you can charge is set by the lease, the law and local evidence, not by what similar apartments are advertised for. In an existing tenancy, you can ask for an increase only up to the local comparative rent, and by no more than 15 per cent in three years. For a new letting, the rent brake generally caps the starting cold rent at 10 per cent above the local comparative rent, unless an exception applies and you have told the tenant about it in advance. So the answer to "how much rent can I charge in Germany?" starts with the city's rent index, not a property portal.

Below: where the legal figure comes from, what changes it, and the evidence to collect before a rent enters your calculation. Several rules expire in 2027 or 2028, so each is dated.

An existing tenancy. If you buy a tenanted apartment, you take over the lease and its rent. You can ask the tenant to agree to an increase up to the local comparative rent (ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete) if the rent has been unchanged for 15 months when the increase takes effect, and no earlier than a year after the last increase (§ 558(1) BGB). Within three years, the rent may rise by no more than 20 per cent, or 15 per cent where a state ordinance designates the area (§ 558(3) BGB). That lower cap (Kappungsgrenze) applies across Berlin until 10 May 2028 (KappGrV Berlin 2023) and in Dresden and Leipzig until 30 June 2027 (SächsKappGrVO). See buying a tenanted apartment for the timing of a request and what else transfers with the lease.

A new tenancy. When an apartment is let to a new tenant, the rent brake (Mietpreisbremse) generally limits the rent at the start of the tenancy to 10 per cent above the local comparative rent (§ 556d(1) BGB). It applies across Berlin from 1 January 2026 until 31 December 2029 (Berlin Senate) and across Dresden and Leipzig from 1 January 2026 until 30 June 2027 (SächsMPBVO). Federal law, extended in 2025, lets such ordinances run until 31 December 2029 at the latest (§ 556d(2) BGB).

Saxony said it would decide in the third quarter of 2026, after an external housing-market study, whether both rules continue in Dresden and Leipzig (Saxon State Government). By 26 September 2026, no decision had been published. Plan on the rules in force, not on their expiry.

Both limits use the same benchmark. The local comparative rent is built from the usual rents for apartments of comparable type, size, fittings, condition and location, including energy features, agreed or changed in the last six years (§ 558(2) BGB). Because it includes rents agreed years ago, it is usually below today's asking rents.

The practical source is the city's rent index (Mietspiegel), an overview of comparative rents prepared or recognised by the municipality or jointly by landlord and tenant associations (§ 558c BGB). A qualified rent index (qualifizierter Mietspiegel) is prepared by recognised scientific methods, adjusted after two years and rebuilt after four; while it meets those conditions, its figures are presumed to reflect the local comparative rent (§ 558d BGB).

All three cities currently have a qualified index, each with a free online calculator: Berlin's Mietspiegel 2026, Leipzig's Mietspiegel 2025 to 2027 and Dresden's Mietspiegel 2025. Dresden's expires on 31 December 2026 and Leipzig's on 30 June 2027, so use the edition in force when the lease is signed or the increase requested. The checklist below gives the dates.

Read the index with care. Its figures are net cold rent (Nettokaltmiete) per square metre, before operating costs, so compare them with the cold rent in a lease or advert, never the warm rent. Each result is a range around a middle value, and the apartment's features decide where it sits. Record the edition, the inputs and why you placed the apartment where you did.

Property portals show asking rents for apartments on offer. They are not the legal benchmark: if a lease copies an asking rent above the rent-brake limit, the excess is not owed. An exposé quoting a "market rent" or "potential rent" makes the same assumption. For a tenanted apartment, the figure that matters is the lease rent and how far the law lets it rise; for a vacant one, the local comparative rent plus 10 per cent, unless an exception applies. Our comparison of the three cities shows how rent-index levels differ between them.

Three exceptions matter most:

• Previous rent. If the previous tenant lawfully owed more, you may agree up to that amount. Rent reductions, and increases agreed in the last year of that tenancy, are ignored (§ 556e(1) BGB).
• Recent modernisation. Modernisation in the three years before the letting can justify a higher rent, calculated by statutory rules (§ 556e(2) BGB).
• New and comprehensively modernised apartments. The rent brake does not apply to an apartment first used and let after 1 October 2014, or to the first letting after comprehensive modernisation (§ 556f BGB). The 2025 federal extension kept the 2014 date (Bundestag).

An exception helps only if the tenant is told. Before the tenant signs, the landlord must state in text form, unprompted, which exception the rent relies on, for example the previous rent's amount (§ 556g(1a) and (4) BGB). Without it, the landlord cannot rely on the exception; if it comes late, only two years after it is supplied.

Overcharging is the landlord's risk. The rent agreement is void to the extent it exceeds the permitted rent, and the excess must be repaid once the tenant has complained: from the start of the tenancy if the complaint comes within 30 months, otherwise from the complaint onwards (§ 556g(1) and (2) BGB).

Two further limits apply whether or not the rent brake does. Demanding more than 20 per cent above the usual local rent, by taking advantage of a shortage of comparable housing, is an administrative offence with fines of up to €50,000 (§ 5 WiStrG). Exploiting a tenant's predicament or inexperience to obtain a strikingly disproportionate rent can be criminal usury (§ 291 StGB).

• Stepped rent (Staffelmiete): the rent brake applies to each step, measured when that step starts (§ 557a(4) BGB).
• Index-linked rent (Indexmiete): the rent brake applies only to the starting rent. Later changes follow the consumer price index (§ 557b(4) BGB).
• Furnished apartments: there is no general exemption. Whatever you charge for furniture forms part of the rent that the rent brake limits (§ 556d(1) BGB).
• Temporary lets: an apartment let only for temporary use falls outside the rent brake and the rent-increase rules (§ 549(2) no. 1 BGB). The need must be genuinely temporary; a short contract alone does not qualify.

These points are under review. The federal government's draft Mietrecht II would require a furniture surcharge to be shown separately, allow a flat 10 per cent of the net cold rent for a fully furnished apartment, limit short-term lets to six months (eight with an extension), and in tight markets count only half of any annual inflation above 3 per cent in index rents (Federal Ministry of Justice). It had its first reading in the Bundestag on 9 July 2026 and has not been passed (Bundestag).

Local rules differ by city and date. Record each source and the date you checked it.

For the specific apartment, add:

Alpha Minoris's Buyer's Agent service collects the lease, the rent history and the other property documents before you make an offer in Berlin, Dresden or Leipzig, so the rent in your calculation can be tested against this evidence rather than the exposé.

Illustrative example. Fictional figures, not market data or a forecast. Inputs: a vacant 55 m² apartment in a Berlin building first occupied well before 2014; purchase price €240,000; the exposé assumes €14.00/m² cold, based on portal listings; the rent-index calculator gives an assumed local comparative rent of €8.50/m², so the rent-brake ceiling is €9.35/m²; in a variant, the previous tenant lawfully owed €11.00/m². Gross yield is annual cold rent divided by the purchase price.

Without an exception, the exposé overstates the rent by €255.75 a month, or €3,069 a year, and the gross yield by 1.28 percentage points. Each €1 per square metre changes the annual rent by €660 and the gross yield by about 0.28 points at this price. To earn the advertised 3.85 per cent on the lawful rent, the price would need to be about €160,300. The previous-rent route narrows the gap only if the last lease proves the figure and the new tenant is told before signing.

Gross yield ignores the owner's costs. Put the lawful rent into the full calculation in our rental property cash-flow guide.

When the apartment is vacant, Alpha Minoris's Vermieter-Autopilot can coordinate the letting on your behalf: the advert, applicant selection and the lease. You remain the landlord and are responsible for the rent agreed, so settle the target rent, any exception and its written disclosure before the advert goes live. For the process, see finding tenants in Germany.

Before you make an offer, test the rent in your calculation against the current rent index, the local rules and the lease rather than the advert. Discuss your first rental property with Alpha Minoris.