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Comment by dreen | Hacker News Reader

Developer here looking to possibly relocate from London to Berlin or other German (or Dutch) place, I have a question for anyone filling out this poll:

I spend on avarage about £700 a month excluding rent, which allows for relatively comfortable life in London. What spending can I expect in Berlin? What about rent? (I pay £425 which is pretty cheap for London)

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I've just made the same move, feel free to get in touch if you have any more questions! I've only been here for about 3 weeks so far, so don't have much data, but €500/month for living costs seems easy.

Rent, depending on what you want, is probably about 80% of what you pay for a comparable flat in London. You can probably get 2 bedrooms (+living room) with all the bills included for about €800. Just be prepared for seriously unfurnished flats: sometimes you need to get your own kitchen! Also it apparently takes a lot more time and paperwork than in London to find something - people say 3-4 months is normal and I'm still looking.

Good luck!

One tip about finding an apartment from another foreigner in Germany... Just find some local friend that speaks local dialect and ask him to call landlords for you. It can make your "time to apartment" much shorter (and cheaper).

That's so true. I'm lucky to have a German-speaking girlfriend and it makes a huge difference.

I've been in Germany a number of years now. If you are freelancing then get a good accountant is the one tip I would give. The Germans take tax matters very seriously.

I assume you got the freelancer's visa? How hard was that process? Were you able to get it in your first 3 months to avoid making a visa run?

If (s)he's not from the EU/Schengen area, in which case no visa is needed...

Correct. I'm lucky to be an EU citizen. No visa required.

When people say that it will take 3-4 months to find an apartment, what are they doing in the meantime? Renting short-term apartments such as sublets?

..living your way up, stay in a shitty flat and search from there for a better one.

It depends of course where you are, but we (WG) searched for a new flat five months.

Yes. It took me 2 months to find a place in a WG. In the mean time I was hopping around AirBNB and friends.

rent varies drastically throughout Germany.

To get a feeling, use the well frequented http://www.immonet.de/ http://www.immobilienscout24.de/de/finden/wohnen/index.jsp;j...

..and it is true, unfurnished is standard

You can find extremely nice places for around 500-700 Euros per Month depending on where you want to live. Demand for flats is extremely high so it's really a matter of luck. Another 700 Euros to live very comfortably in Berlin (Lunch, occasional dinner, going out on weekends). Standards of living are extremely high in Berlin. I can only recommend this city!

Lived one year in London and 5 years in Berlin. In general rent is much cheaper in Berlin. So with £425 you can find a good apartment. It depends a bit on the area, how much space and what kind of extras you need. Check out immobilienscout24.de, immonet.de or immowelt.de

Living costs are in general also cheaper. Take a look for Aldi or Lidl for cheap grocery. You can safe there up to 50%. With £700 a month you won't have any problems.

In which part of London do you get an apartment for £425? I had the impression that you have to pay at least 3x that amount to get a reasonable apartment in a somewhat central place.

There's plenty of low cost housing in London, it's just that you won't be living anywhere near the bits of London that you're thinking of ;) I used to live in an old edwardian house in Greenwich, it's a nice area and doesn't take too long to get into the centre.

Greenwich/Lewisham area in Zone 2. It depends, my house is pretty low standard though.

I pay a similar amount sharing with two friends in Clapham/Balham. It helps that we've been in the same place for 4 years so the rent hasn't gone up too much over that period.

I pay ~£1000 mortgage in a reasonable area within 15 minutes of centre. Renting is more expensive.

Cost of living (comparing London to Berlin): http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

Cost of living (as of Jan2014): http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/berlin

Map of rent prices: http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/wohnen/mietspiegel/de/...

Eindhoven is cool as well!

..and booming, there are a lot of very interesting companies and jobs there.

Shame that it's 90 mins drive from here :(

For the rent in Berlin calculate circa. 10 euro per square meter. Generally life in Berlin is cheap (For around 1200 Euros you can have a nice life).

Whoa, where are you living on that kinda rent? I pay almost double.

> excluding rent

edit: Ok, so I should have read to the end. Yeah, £425 is ridiculously cheap for London.

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