Hamburg rent index: your reference rent with its range
Normal or good location, year built and floor area set the field; your fittings decide where you sit in the range.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
Maximum rent at the start of the tenancy
€515.59
€304.41 too much per month
| Local reference rent | €7.56/m² |
| Reference rent for your floor area | €468.72 |
| Range in the rent index | 7.25–10.82 €/m² |
| Rent brake | applies until 31 December 2029 |
| Increase cap | 15 % in three years |
| Limit: reference rent + 10% | €515.59 |
You can only reclaim after a written complaint. If it arrives within 30 months of the start and the tenancy is still running, it reaches back to the start (Section 556g(2) BGB).
How we calculateHamburg's 2025 rent index (Hamburger Mietenspiegel) is a qualified index from the Department for Urban Development and Housing, with a survey date of 1 April 2025, applicable since 9 December 2025. It distinguishes only two residential locations, normal and good, ten age bands from before 1919 to 2024, and five or six floor-area bands. Each field gives a mean value, for the first time a median, and a range covering two thirds of the rents surveyed. The city publishes the values as open data under the German open-data licence, and the calculator uses them unchanged. A 1910 flat of 55 m² in a normal location sits in field C2 at €11.50, a 1975 flat of 70 m² in field K3 at €6.76, and a 2018 new build of 85 m² in a good location at €16.43 per square metre. Across Hamburg, the rent brake applies until 31 December 2029 and the 15 per cent cap until 31 August 2028.
How the Hamburg index is built
Unlike Berlin, Hamburg has a single table. Its columns are the age bands, its rows combine location and floor area: four size bands for normal locations and five for good ones, where the largest band starts at 131 m². All values apply to flats with a bathroom and central heating. The calculator takes the field your flat falls into and shows the median and the range. The values come from the open dataset of the Department for Urban Development and Housing and were checked against the PDF table.
| Flat | Field | Range per m² | Median per m² |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1910, 55 m², normal location | C2 | 9.65 to 15.00 € | €11.50 |
| 1975, 70 m², normal location | K3 | 6.25 to 9.48 € | €6.76 |
| 2018, 85 m², good location | O7 | 13.89 to 20.25 € | €16.43 |
Rent increases in Hamburg
Hamburg has lowered the increase cap to 15 per cent for the whole city. For the 1975 flat at €620 rent, that means: the reference rent allows €473.20, the cap €713.00; if the landlord asks €700, you only need to agree to €620.00, by 31 December 2026. The rent increase calculator goes through every deadline.
For a new lease the rent brake applies: at most the field value plus ten per cent, unless an exemption applies. Because the mean has been a median since 2025, it cannot be compared with the arithmetic means of earlier Hamburg indexes; keep that in mind when comparing an older increase letter with the new index.