The Mietpreisbremse Explained: How the 10% Rent Cap Works Under § 556d BGB

The Mietpreisbremse, literally the rent brake, limits how much a landlord can charge on a new letting in a municipality that a Land government has formally designated as a tight housing market. It does not limit rent generally and it does not apply to every city. Whether it applies to a given address depends entirely on that designation.

This page works through the 10 percent cap itself, the two main exceptions that let a landlord charge more, the disclosure duty a landlord owes before signing, and how a tenant who has been overcharged actually gets the money back.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

What the cap actually limits

§ 556d Abs. 1 BGB provides that, in an area designated by Landesverordnung, the rent agreed at the start of a new tenancy may not exceed the ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete, the local comparative rent for similar dwellings, by more than 10 percent. The comparative rent itself usually comes from a municipality's Mietspiegel, a published rent index, or from comparable properties where no Mietspiegel exists.

The cap applies only to the rent set at the start of a new tenancy. It does not limit how much an existing tenant's rent can later be raised during an ongoing lease, which is a separate rule under § 558 BGB, the Kappungsgrenze, covered on the page about rent increases. A tenant moving into a new flat and a tenant already living somewhere are protected by two different mechanisms.

Whether it applies to your address at all

The Mietpreisbremse is not a national flat rule. § 556d Abs. 2 BGB requires each Land government to identify, by its own Rechtsverordnung, which municipalities or parts of municipalities count as areas with a tight housing market, and every such Landesverordnung must cease to have effect no later than 31 December 2029, whatever date it was issued on. There is no separate five year cap inside § 556d BGB. The five year designation period that is sometimes quoted here belongs to a different mechanism, the Kappungsgrenze in § 558 Abs. 3 BGB.

This means the honest answer to whether the cap applies to a given flat is that it depends on where the flat is, and that answer changes as Länder renew, narrow or drop designations. A list of currently designated cities published on this page would be out of date within months, so the reliable way to check is the current Landesverordnung for the relevant Land or the municipality's own housing office, not a general list.

The extension to 2029

The Mietpreisbremse itself was originally due to expire, but a law extending it to 31 December 2029 was promulgated on 22 July 2025 and entered into force on 23 July 2025. The 10 percent cap, the Vormiete rule and the 1 October 2014 new-build cutoff were all carried forward unchanged. Nothing about the substance of the rule changed, only its expiry date.

The Vormiete exception

§ 556e BGB is the exception that comes up most often in practice. If the previous tenant of the same dwelling was already paying a rent above the cap, the landlord can charge the new tenant that same higher amount, provided the landlord discloses the previous rent to the new tenant before the lease is signed.

This means the cap does not reset a rent downward once it has legitimately exceeded the comparative rent for a prior tenancy. It only stops a landlord from raising the rent further beyond what the previous tenant paid, absent one of the other exceptions such as a qualifying modernisation carried out between tenancies.

The new-build and modernisation exceptions

§ 556f BGB removes the cap entirely for two categories of dwelling. The first is any dwelling first used and let after 1 October 2014, regardless of when the current tenancy began, on the reasoning that new construction needs an incentive that an artificially depressed rent would undercut. The second is a dwelling let for the first time after comprehensive modernisation, meaning the improvements are substantial enough to be treated as functionally equivalent to new construction, not a routine repair or a single upgraded appliance.

Both exceptions require the landlord to be able to show the qualifying facts if challenged. A landlord asserting the new-build exception needs to be able to demonstrate the 2014 completion date; a landlord asserting the modernisation exception needs to be able to point to the scope of the work actually done.

The disclosure duty before signing

§ 556g BGB requires a landlord who wants to rely on the Vormiete exception, a modernisation carried out shortly before the new tenancy, or the new-build exception to disclose the specific supporting facts to the tenant in text form before the tenant makes their contractual declaration, meaning before the tenant signs.

A landlord who skips this disclosure cannot later invoke the exception to defend a rent above the cap, even if the underlying facts genuinely would have qualified. If the landlord later provides the missing disclosure, the exception still cannot be relied on for two years from when the disclosure was actually given, so a late fix does not immediately restore the higher rent.

How the Rüge and reclaiming overpaid rent works

A rent that breaches § 556d BGB is not automatically refunded. § 556g Abs. 1 BGB makes the excess portion of the agreement void, and the landlord has to return what was overpaid under the ordinary rules on unjust enrichment, but only once the tenant has raised a Rüge, a formal objection identifying that the rent exceeds the cap.

Timing matters a great deal here. If the tenant raises the Rüge within 30 months of the start of the tenancy, the reclaim can reach back to the beginning of the tenancy. If the Rüge comes later than that, or after the tenancy has already ended, the tenant can only recover the excess paid after the landlord actually received the objection, not the amounts paid earlier. A tenant who suspects an overcharge is better off raising it promptly rather than waiting.

Worked example

Suppose a flat is in a municipality currently designated under a Landesverordnung, and the local Mietspiegel puts the ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete for comparable flats at EUR 10.00 per square metre. For an 80 square metre flat, the cap under § 556d BGB is 10 percent above that figure, or EUR 11.00 per square metre, meaning a maximum lawful rent of EUR 880 a month, absent an exception.

The landlord instead charges EUR 950 a month and has not disclosed any Vormiete, modernisation or new-build facts before the lease was signed. The tenant moved in 14 months ago. Because 14 months is inside the 30 month window, a Rüge raised now reaches back to the start of the tenancy: the excess is EUR 70 a month for 14 months, or EUR 980, which the landlord owes back once the objection is properly raised.

If the same tenant instead waited 34 months to raise the Rüge, the calculation changes. The reclaim would only cover the excess paid from the date the landlord received the objection onward, not the first 34 months of overpayment, because that window has closed under § 556g Abs. 1 Satz 2 BGB.

What the Rüge should say

A Rüge does not need to be a lawsuit. It is typically a written notice, ideally sent in a form the tenant can prove was delivered, stating that the rent exceeds the § 556d BGB cap, giving the tenant's own calculation of the ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete and the 10 percent margin, and asking the landlord to confirm the correct rent going forward and to repay the excess already paid. Naming the specific figures, rather than simply asserting the rent is too high, gives the landlord something concrete to respond to or dispute.

A landlord who disagrees may point to one of the exceptions above. Whether that exception genuinely applies, and whether it was disclosed on time, is usually where a real dispute ends up being decided.

If the landlord does not pay back the overcharge

A Rüge is the trigger for the reclaim, not a court order, so a landlord who ignores it or disputes the calculation has not broken any deadline by simply refusing. The next step for the tenant is usually the local Amtsgericht, the district court with jurisdiction over residential tenancy disputes, where the tenant brings a claim for repayment of the specific overpaid amount already calculated in the Rüge.

Because the dispute usually comes down to a factual question, what the correct ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete actually is for that dwelling, a court will often need the local Mietspiegel or an expert valuation to resolve it. A tenant who has kept the lease, the rent payment records and any correspondence about the Vormiete or modernisation exceptions is in a far stronger position than one relying on the rent amount alone.

How this interacts with later rent increases

The Mietpreisbremse only fixes the rent at the start of the tenancy. Once the tenancy is running, the landlord can still raise the rent up to the ortsübliche Vergleichsmiete under § 558 BGB, subject to the Kappungsgrenze that limits how much any single increase can be, a separate set of rules covered on the page about rent increases. A tenant who successfully reclaims an overcharge at the start of a tenancy is not permanently shielded from every later increase, only from an unlawful starting rent.

For what happens when a tenancy ends for other reasons, see owner move-in terminations and ending a tenancy. General background on German tenancy law is at German law explained.