Berlin-Mitte (Alte Jakobstraße) – partly furnished apartment: €1,009 → €698, €785 deposit claimed (pending)
Date Published
An approximately 40 m² one-room apartment on the 7th floor, built in 1997, in the centre of Berlin-Mitte between Spittelmarkt and Moritzplatz. Handed over partly furnished, with balcony, fitted kitchen and lift. Net cold rent since January 2026: €1,008.60 – €25.22/m².
Good location and furnishing are the two arguments regularly used in such cases to try to disapply the rent cap. Neither works. The central location is already in the Berlin rent index: it produces a good residential location and thus higher values – but it does not take the dwelling out of the index. Furnished housing is also subject to §§ 556d ff. BGB. There is no separate sub-market for furnished flats to which the rent index would not apply (among others LG Berlin, judgment of 12 April 2023 – 66 S 273/22).
A surcharge may be charged for furniture, but only one oriented to current value. Here the furniture consisted essentially of a bedstead without a mattress, a sofa and a television. Even generously calculated that is €40 a month. The fitted kitchen and built-in wardrobe are already in the rent-index classification and do not justify an extra surcharge.
Our calculation under the Berlin rent index 2026 – because of the agreed stepped rent, the last rent step is decisive (§ 557a para. 4 BGB) – produces a permissible net cold rent of €698.24 even with a consistently positive scoring of all five feature groups. The overpayment is €310.36 per month, about €3,700 a year. The deposit was correspondingly too high; we have claimed back €785.28.
One caveat: the tenancy has run since May 2023, so the objection comes later than 30 months after it began. Under § 556g para. 2 BGB it therefore only operates for the future. Claims for excessive rent (§ 5 WiStG in conjunction with § 134 BGB, § 138 BGB) are not covered by that – at around 58% above the local comparative rent, reclaiming overpaid rent since the start of the tenancy is therefore expressly reserved.
Anyone who objects within the first 30 months after the tenancy begins can usually reclaim overpaid rent since the start of the tenancy (§ 556g para. 2 BGB). Later, a review is almost always still worthwhile – for the future and, in cases of stark exceedance, beyond that as well.
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