DThe Greens are calling for index rents linked to inflation to be regulated. “Index rents are a problem that we have to tackle,” Katharina Dröge, co-chair of the Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “Inflation has risen so much that it will come as a shock to many tenants when the increase comes.”
It goes beyond what was stipulated in the coalition agreement, “but we have to discuss with the coalition partners how we can regulate index rents,” said Dröge. That could mean, for example, that existing index leases are capped and new ones are more tightly regulated. “We need a solution at this point.”
Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) had previously shown herself open to capping index rents. You could imagine linking index rents to the general rental price development or setting a cap here, too, she told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”. But that is not in the coalition agreement, and the FDP sees no need for action, said Geywitz.
FDP draws no need
Justice Minister Buschmann had already rejected demands from the SPD for a reform of index rents in December. In recent years, tenants with such contracts have been in a better position than tenants with other contracts, he told the “Rheinische Post”. Because the cost of living has risen more slowly in the past than the local comparative rents, on which rent increases are usually based.
Anyone who concludes an index-linked rental agreement foregoes the possibility of increasing the rent on the basis of a changed rent index or comparable apartments.
According to the tenants’ association, more index rents agreed
According to the German Tenants’ Association, more and more newly concluded leases are linked to inflation. In larger metropolises, so-called index rents were agreed for an average of 30 percent of new contracts last year, the tenants’ association said in mid-January. For Berlin, the tenants’ association assumes that even up to 70 percent of the new leases provide for indexation.
Inflation, which is relevant for index rents, reached its highest level since the founding of the Federal Republic last year. Consumer prices rose by 7.9 percent on average over the year.