That’s definitely something complicated to achieve in Germany. I’m gonna tell you my own experience with the process, more specifically in Berlin, which means worked for me, not necessary it’s gonna work for you too, but I think it can help you somehow.
The first thing that we did was, start looking for an apartment that fit out needs and we did all the research on immobilienscout 24.
We have created a standard letter for application, you can find the letter here (in german) and then we start apply for the apartments with this letter. We got a few answers, negative answers and positive with a possible date and time to visit the apartment.
By lucky, we liked the first one that we have visited, and we got a positive answer from the owner, and here there is something important to say, he is an English speaker which made my life easier in terms of communication.
The first and the most important task has been done, find the apartment and be accepted by the owner. I can divide the entire process into two phases, the first is to find the apartment and the second is planning the move and german bureaucracy.
I have created a check-list to mapping all tasks needed.
- Inform your current landlord. Important thing, usually you need to inform your current landlord, via letter that you intend to move out, then your contract will be valid during the next three months, but the landlord must get the letter until the 3rd day of the month to avoid the counting start only in the next month.
- Prepare the apartment to hand back over
- Sign the new contract, if you are not a German speaker I recommend that you ask someone else to review it for you. Victoria from https://www.expatmgmt.com helped me with the review.
- Find someone to take your stuff from your place to the new one, I got a referral from a friend of mine, https://alexanders-umzug-unternehmen.business.site, I cannot prove if it’s a good service because I didn’t use it but I got really good references.
- Update everywhere your new address, Anmeldung, work, electricity company, german broadcasting, internet provider, and a lot of more places. Make your own list of places that you need to change your address and review it because there are many different places to do it.
- Celebrate your new place ????
When I moved to Berlin, Victoria from https://expatmgmt.com helped me with the whole process and I learned a lot from her, that’s helped me to manage this process by my own this time, if you don’t feel confident enough to do this process by yourself and need professional help, I strongly recommend Victoria to help you.
I hope this post can help you in your moving process and I wish happiness at your new home.
If you have any question, please leave a comment below and I’ll be glad to help.