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Checking ownership of an apartment?
subrenting a flat
organizing a viewing
choosing them as tenants and giving out the keys
receiving the depo… I have heard of people getting scammed when looking for a flat in Berlin due to scammers:
subrenting a flat
organizing a viewing
choosing them as tenants and giving out the keys
receiving the deposit and disappearing
having the real owner come back after a month or so the flat and finding a real mess of a situation
Do you have any tips on how to prevent this from happening?
E.g. Is there a way to check who is the real owner of the apartment in some sort of online Grundbuch?
Thanks!
honestly the grundbuch check is the gold standard but it's a pain, you gotta go to the amtsgericht in schöneberg or wherever your district's one is. costs like 10-15 euros per page too.
a simpler thing i do is reverse image search the apartment photos on google. scammers often steal pics from real listings or furnished holiday apartments. if the same photo shows up on a swiss vacation rental site, run.
also pay attention if they're pushy about the deposit before you even see the place, or if the rent is suspiciously cheap for the area. like a 2-room in neukölln for 400 warm? that's a scam 9 times out of 10.
You can also ask the property management company or Hausverwaltung directly if the person you're dealing with is actually the owner. Most legit landlords won't mind you calling to confirm, and scammers definitely won't give you that info.
yeah you can check the grundbuch but it's not online, you gotta go to the amtsgericht in person and pay a fee. also ask for their ausweis and compare it to the name on the property tax bill or any utility bill they show u, scammers usually avoid that
What is the correct spelling for a street name that appears differently on multiple signs in Charlottenburg?
Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.
if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point
honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.
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