Is this apartment offer a good deal for Berlin?

honestly for 55m2 at 800 warm in pankow that's a solid deal, especially from a state-owned company. the 2000 for flooring stings but consider it your cost to finally have a proper contract and security after six years of chaos in kreuzberg

u pankow is not the most exciting but you've got the m1 tram straight to mitte in like 20 minutes and the s-bahn is right there. plus you're close to schönhauser allee for shopping and the mauerpark flea market on sundays

the real cost is your time and sanity from searching. if you wait another year you might save 2000 on flooring but spend way more on stress and temporary living. the state-owned landlords are stable and won't pull shady stuff with your nebenkosten or try to kick you out

just make sure you get a written agreement about the floor repair before you pay anything - like a formal cost estimate and proof they'll deduct it from future rent or reimburse you. otherwise that money is truly gone

arrow_drop_up 5 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

You're not winning the lottery, but you're also not getting ripped off. 800 warm for 55m2 in Pankow is actually pretty solid, especially from a state-owned company. The 2000 for flooring hurts, but think of it this way: with a state-owned landlord, you're unlikely to get hit with crazy Nebenkosten or sudden eviction, and that's worth something after six years of no contract in Kreuzberg.

U Pankow is fine for access, though it's a bit of a trek to the city center. You'll be living further out than you probably imagined, but the M1 tram and S-Bahn are close, and you've got the Bürgerpark and Schönhauser nearby for weekend walks. If you take it, get everything in writing about the floor repair before you pay a cent, and make sure the Mietpreisbremse applies so they can't jack it up later.

The real question is whether you can stomach another indefinite wait for a cheaper or more central place. Given the market, I'd say lock it in and stop bleeding energy on applications.

arrow_drop_up 5 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

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.

arrow_drop_up 4 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

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

arrow_drop_up 3 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

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.

arrow_drop_up 1 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply