Renting an apartment in Mainz - possible for 1?

Hi,

I will be moving to Mainz (unfortunately with extraordinarily short notice) and am wondering if there are lots of 1 person apartments with furniture available. I can manage bed and all that if I have to but I hear many apartments come without things like fridges, stoves, etc. and I can't manage that. Does anybody know some good websites to search? I know of websites for ones with roommates or a room in somebody's house but I'm considering the no roommates route if possible. I'm not looking to spend a ton but I am willing to pay a bit more, of course, than if I had roommates. Is this realistic or should I just look for roommates?

Thanks!

Matt

On Immoscout24 , there are currently 70 1-room apartments listed. If link is broken, under "Mieten" enter city, "Wohnungen", number of rooms etc. and then narrow it down by clicking on "Einbauküche" (short EBK, fitted kitchen) in the list that appears on the left side. For fully furnished apartments , click on "weitere" under "Mieten", then on "möbliertes Wohnen/Wohnen auf Zeit".

Cool, thanks. I can read enough German to search and write enough to contact people but one thing I am not totally clear about with this site (I've seen it before) is.. is there some kind of commission that I have to pay them just for them having an apartment listed? That seems rather silly, if so!

Edit: Maybe I haven't seen this site or I saw some other listings on it. Now that I look, I don't see anything about commission, so far. This is great - thanks.

The immoscout24 website is free, but the majority of the offers is from real estate agents (Immobilienmakler), which means you would have to pay the agent a fee of 2 months' rent + tax. You can see in the details of the offer if the contact is an Immobilienmakler office and if a "Provision" (fee) is due. Some offers say "von privat" or "provisionsfrei", which means no fee.

Here's the classified ads section of the local newspaper, filtered "nur private Anzeigen", but not all offers are for Mainz proper: Allgemeine Zeitung

Ah, I am looking more closely at a bunch of the ones I left open to recheck and I see this now that a bunch of them have Immobilien in the name. It seems quite mad to pay 2 months' rent + tax just for a rental listing. In fact, it seems like highway robbery. I'm surprised anybody actually pays it at all. I guess my options are going to be much more limited, since I don't have money to throw out the window like that! Thanks, I'll check the other link as well.

Is this 2x+tax fee negotiable or would the real estate person laugh in your face? I honestly can't believe it's not illegal. Why would the renter pay for the marketing of the owner? It's mind boggling. Is there just a big housing shortage in Germany that allows people to rip others off?

I'm afraid the Makler fee is hardly negotiable, but hey, you can always try. It's something many people are annoyed about, and it sucks especially when you rent for relatively short periods and without a relocation package to cover it. See this thread Annoyed by estate-agent fees. The fact that these fees exist indicates that in many regions (like the Rhein-Main area) there is indeed a shortage of housing and renters accept those fees because a) they don't have much time, and a real estate agent can help them find something more quickly; b) although the renter is paying for the landlord's convenience, who doesn't have to take care of the search for renters personally, this is just the way the cookie crumbles. If the landlord were to pay the agent's fee, these costs would surely be hidden in a higher rent.

In your case, I'd keep trying to find a privately offered apartment. Best of luck!