FAQ

You can find all of our currently published apartment offers here: Wohnungen in Berlin - Wohnungsangebote der WBM, Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Berlin-Mitte mbH

If you find a suitable offer here, you can request a viewing appointment directly. You will find the online form at the end of each offer. This offer also applies to sponsoring associations looking for apartments.

If you have requested an apartment offer directly via the attached online form, you will usually receive the specific property information from us in the following days, including detailed photo documentation/digital apartment viewing.

In addition to direct inquiries, we also consider interested parties who have registered via the interested party form with an apartment request and whose request matches the apartment on offer. However, due to the large number of interested parties, we cannot guarantee any matching offers.

If you are interested in renting a specific apartment after a detailed photo documentation/digital apartment viewing, you will be given the opportunity to complete your details. No documents will be requested from you at this stage. Based on the information you provide, a pre-selection is made for a viewing appointment on site.

Following the viewing appointment, one interested party will be given the opportunity to submit documents for review. A systematically randomized procedure is then used for selection.

To conclude a tenancy agreement, we will need the following documents from you for all adult residents of the household:

Proof of income 

Proof of your net household income for the last three months. Depending on the situation, this can be provided by the following or similar documents, for example:

• Wage/salary statement
• Pension statement
• Benefit statement from the Jobcenter/ Basic Social Security Office/ Social Welfare Office
• Parental allowance statement
• BAföG statement (federal student grant)
• Confirmation of maintenance payments, proof of child benefit

• Business statement (BWA) for the last 6 months or current tax assessment if self-employed. Bank statements are unfortunately not sufficient as proof of income.

   

Proof of rent payment

This can be done by means of a proof of a rent debt-free certificate (Mietschuldenfreiheitsbescheinigung) from the current landlord or proof of the rent payments made to date. At least the payments of the last three months, e.g. via bank statements, and the amount to be paid, e.g. via the current rental agreement, must be proven. If you are currently living rent-free (e.g. in your parents’ house or in property you own), this is done by means of a confirmation from your parents or an extract from the land register.

Credit rating report 

For example, via a current Schufa report. However, you are also welcome to complete and attach the form "SCHUFA-Klausel zu Mietanträgen". A credit report should not be older than 3 months. 

Proof of eligibility 

If available and necessary for renting the apartment, the following documents must also be submitted: 

Certificate of eligibility for subsidized housing including proof of income in accordance with Section 9 (2) of the Housing Assistance Act (WoFG)

Many apartments require a certificate of eligibility for housing (WBS) or at least an income that qualifies for a WBS. You can apply for this WBS at the housing office responsible for your current place of residence. You can use the Berlin Senate’s WBS calculator to check your income. If you do not yet have the WBS itself, you should at least submit proof of your own WBS eligibility via the WBS calculator.

• Proof of study when renting an apartment for students
• Residence permit
• Proof of eligibility for market segment

Note: 

For all documents, please provide all the necessary pages, ideally in one PDF file. The files must not be larger than 1 MB each. The documents can be provided in German or English and with the amounts stated in euros. Currently, documents in other languages cannot be reviewed. 

You may of course black out/blur out any details that are not relevant for the apartment rental in all documents.

Please submit your documents only after being expressly requested to do so via the link provided to you personally. Documents sent unsolicited by e-mail or by post cannot be checked and considered. Our staff will also not accept any documents at the viewing appointment. 

After the viewing appointment, the documents will be requested from one randomly selected interested party to check the information in their self-disclosure form.

If none of the published apartment offers are suitable for you, you also have the option of sending us a general inquiry. To do this, please use our interested party form with your apartment request. In order to be able to send you the most suitable offers possible, it is important that you enter all the information required from you in the query fields so that we do not send you apartment offers that are too small or too expensive.

We would like to point out that we cannot guarantee suitable apartment offers during the registration period. We therefore recommend that you regularly keep an eye on the apartment offers we publish on our website and, if you are interested, request the offer directly via the online form in the property details. Sponsoring associations can also use this method to send us their interest in an apartment.

If you are actively searching, we also recommend that you visit http://www.inberlinwohnen.de to find out about current housing offers from municipal housing associations.

A complete and plausible self-disclosure form is a basic requirement for a positive letting decision. 

Please consider the following instructions:

If you are not looking for an apartment for yourself, but for a third party, please ensure that you enter the details of the person(s) looking for accommodation directly when registering and also when completing the self-disclosure form. The obvious passing on of the forms to be completed or of viewing appointments to persons not directly addressed by us is not permitted and excludes them from the further selection process.

The viewing appointment can only be attended by the invited parties or the contractual partners registered by you in the self-disclosure form. Due to repeated cases of fraud, we currently do not allow viewings by third parties, even with a power of attorney.

In the next step, we use the self-disclosure information to check that those rental requirements have been met (e.g. WBS, income limit of the WBS, senior citizens, students/trainees) which are indicated in the housing offer. 

The financial burden for the applicant is also checked, where the maximum tolerable total rent burden (gross warm rent) is 40% of the net household income.

With due regard to the desired room-to-person ratio for the apartment, a pre-selection of applicants is made, and these are invited to a viewing appointment.

From the remaining interested parties who are still interested after the viewing appointment, one is then randomly selected and asked to submit the necessary documents in preparation for the tenancy agreement.   

Provided that these documents are submitted in full and on time and do not deviate from the self-disclosure, the final letting decision can be made. 

Any rejection therefore always relates exclusively to the specific inquiry at hand and does not represent a general rejection as a suitable tenant. The best way to increase your chances of a successful housing inquiry is to provide complete and plausible information and to be able to verify this information on demand.

The certificate of eligibility for subsidized housing (Wohnberechtigungsschein – WBS) entitles you to rent a state-subsidized apartment. However, it does not guarantee that you will get an apartment.

Without a WBS, you are not allowed to rent social housing. As a municipal housing company, we have made an additional commitment to let a significant proportion (currently 63%) of our apartments that become available each year exclusively to prospective tenants with a WBS. For this reason, following viewings of subsidized apartments we can only accept applications with a suitable WBS.

On the website of the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing you can find out under which circumstances you can apply for a WBS or whether you are entitled to receive a WBS. 

You can also find further information under “What differentiations are there for WBS?”

When applying for a housing entitlement certificate (WBS), the income and space requirements are checked by the Citizens‘ Office or Housing Office. 

By this means the WBS confirms the determined income limit, leading to a classification as WBS 100, WBS 140, WBS 160 and WBS 180 or WBS 220. 

In the case of WBS 100, the income determined is within the relevant income limit of Section 9 (2) of the Housing Assistance Act (WoFG). 

In the case of a WBS 140, the calculated income exceeds the relevant income limit of Section 9 (2) of the Housing Assistance Act (WoFG) by a maximum of 40% and in the case of a WBS 160, WBS 180 or WBS 220 by a maximum of 60%, 80% or 120% respectively.

Depending on the funding regulations for a property, renting is only possible up to a certain income limit or a different subsidy depending on the income limit. You can find more detailed and up-to-date information on this on the website of the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing in the tenants' manual. 

In addition to the funding regulations, we have committed ourselves to providing living space to broad sections of the population and we therefore ensure that our lettings are mixed in terms of housing entitlement certificates within the various income limits. Where funding regulations do not apply, we can carry out a so-called self-assessment using the Berlin Senate’s WBS calculator to relieve the burden on the housing office.

As a result of the examination of the room requirement by the Citizens’ Office or Housing Office, the WBS issued confirms authorization to rent a maximum number of rooms. It is therefore still possible to rent a smaller apartment. However, a larger apartment cannot be rented if the WBS is applied. 

Single-person households generally receive a WBS which entitles them to rent a 1-room apartment or 2-room apartment up to 50 square meters. Please note that with such a WBS (2-room up to 50 sqm) no larger apartments can be rented with the WBS.

As a housing company on the Berlin housing market, we have an annual contingent of apartments that we rent exclusively to apartment seekers who are entitled to rent in the “protected market segment” (apartment seekers with the so-called M-Schein). 

The following groups of people may be eligible to enter the “protected market segment”: 

• those who cannot provide themselves with housing on the housing market (in the event of imminent homelessness) without outside help,
• those who have been released from outpatient, inpatient or assisted facilities or from prison and are therefore threatened with homelessness or
• those who have been assigned to an emergency shelter by the state of Berlin or are entitled to accommodation and
• those who have been habitually resident in Berlin for at least one year and meet the WBS eligibility requirements of the state of Berlin.

The application and verification of this eligibility are carried out by the Social Housing Assistance Department (Office for Social Affairs) of the current or last registered place of residence. As a housing provider, we expressly have no influence on this process. 

If you believe that you are eligible, it may be worth visiting the relevant liaison office in your district. In all Berlin districts there are weekly open consultation hours, which you can find out about via the social housing assistance of the relevant district. 

If you have already received confirmation that you are eligible to rent in the “sheltered market segment”, you are welcome to register your interest in such apartments via our apartment application service, selecting the “sheltered market segment” option, so that we have the opportunity to contact you with suitable offers subject to availability.

Further up-to-date information can be found here (German version only): Protected Market Segment — Berlin.de

Since spring 2023, we have an exclusive offer for those of our existing tenants who wish to downsize their living space, namely a choice from up to three housing proposals in accordance with their search preferences and availability.

For us, this is a key element for a needs-based, and thus more socially inclusive, distribution of living space. We want to facilitate downsizing in a targeted manner and in doing so to create offers to help meet the high demand of large households.

These tenants do not to be worse off in terms of their new housing conditions, and they will also have requirements for their new home, such as the flooring or the tiles in the bathroom and kitchen. We examine such requests on a case-by-case basis and work on them together with the neighborhood management team.

Good to know:

Oversized apartments

Number of rooms > number of persons + 1, i.e. 1-person household in 3 and more rooms or 2-person household in 4 and more rooms

Appropriate apartment sizes

Number of rooms = number of persons + 1, i.e. for a 1-person household max. 2 rooms and for a 2-person household max. 3 rooms

KEY DATA AT A GLANCE:

• Own request for significant downsizing (by at least 2 rooms, exceptions possible in individual cases)
• Interested parties receive up to three targeted individual offers
• The apartments are offered renovated or ready for renovation
• The apartments are offered in accordance with the current rent specifications
• The absolute rent charge is no higher than before
• Due to the considerable downsizing, WBM does not require a suitable WBS
• No complaints have been made about the previous tenancy
• The old apartment is returned properly
• The notice period for the old apartment is shortened to one month
• The double rent charge is thus limited to one month

If you are interested in downsizing and the above criteria apply to you, you are welcome to complete the form and send it to: info@wbm.de or WBM, Vermietung, Dircksenstraße 38, 10178 Berlin.