Germany's Census 2022 released the most detailed housing data in over a decade, rent, vacancy, ownership and living space for all 10,990 municipalities. Mapped in full, one line keeps reappearing: the border that officially vanished in 1990. Scroll to read the country, municipality by municipality.
For the first time in more than a decade, Census 2022 published net cold rent (Nettokaltmiete) for every municipality in the country. Rendered in full, the map needs no caption: a warm, expensive south and west; a paler, cheaper east.
Canvas + D3 · Statistisches Bundesamt Zensus 2022 · geometry via GeoBasis-DE/BKG
Thirty-five years after reunification, the outline of the former GDR is still legible in the rent data. Across Saxony, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, rents cluster far below the western average, with Berlin the one bright island in the east.
€5.40average in Chemnitz, the cheapest major city in Germany.
For the same 75m² flat, enough for a small family, the monthly difference between Munich and Chemnitz is €585. That is not just a housing-cost gap. It decides where a young family can afford to build a life.
€12.60average in Munich, nearly triple the Chemnitz figure.
Switch the map to vacancy rate and it almost inverts. The expensive south and west run near zero, every flat is spoken for, while parts of the east and the old industrial fringes carry double-digit vacancy. Scarcity and surplus, side by side in one country.
Germany owns less of its own housing than almost any rich country. Ownership rates collapse in the big cities, deep blue in Berlin, Hamburg and the Ruhr, and rise across the rural south. Renting isn't a life stage here; for most city households it's permanent.
The rent map, the vacancy map and the ownership map all trace the same fault line. It is no longer a legacy being slowly erased, dynamic western cities keep pulling away, reproducing the divide with every year of faster rent growth. The census is a snapshot; the gap is a trajectory.
Data: Statistisches Bundesamt, Zensus 2022 (dl-de/by-2-0) · geometry © GeoBasis-DE/BKG 2022 via Esri DE Living Atlas
Data & method. All 10,990 German municipalities from Census 2022, loaded live from the official Esri DE Living Atlas feature service. Rent is the average net cold rent per m², estimated from the published rent-class distribution and anchored to the reported average. Vacancy (Leerstandsquote), ownership (Eigentümerquote) and living space (Wohnfläche) are taken directly. Map rendered on HTML canvas with D3.
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