I’ve got the lederhosen and the laptop — but where do I live? Charles Hawley on Bavaria's most burning question.

It was a Wednesday, just before 3pm on one of the busiest streets in Munich, and the cluster of 30-odd 30-somethings standing before Landsbergerstrasse 47 was growing steadily. Each new arrival was examined expectantly until finally, at 3:10pm, the group began edging toward the building entrance. The real-estate agent had arrived. The crowd tromped up the stairs on her heels to the empty, two-room apartment above. By 4 pm, more than 60 people had passed through the apartment, and, despite its location across from the train yards of Munich’s main station, most of them had filled out an application. Then they headed, almost as a group, to the next apartment visit. Scenes such as this one have become a regular occurrence in Munich, where an influx of high-tech companies and an attractive standard of living have made it one of the most popular cities for young people in Germany. Last year alone, Munich’s population rose by 38,000 according to the Statistische Landesamt, with most of the newcomers coming from within Germany. Despite such figures, the number of new apartments built each year has not risen in the last half decade — a situation that show no signs of improving. “It sucks!” says Caroline Moser, newly back in Munich after spending a year in New York. “Seriously. When you call or when you visit, there are just millions of people there. You could hire a bus and just tour the people around because everyone just goes from apartment visit to apartment visit. And it’s always the same people. It seems like nobody ever finds an apartment.” The shortage has forced new arrivals in Munich to answer every advertisement in the newspaper, including those far outside the city centre, or in areas of Munich bordering the busy ring road or the autobahn. Renters also have to pay more than they can afford. Apartment rents have risen almost 15 percent in the past 12 months alone and shows no sign of improving. At DM 19 per square metre per month for new apartments, they are now the highest in Germany and almost 75 percent more than the DM 11 per square metre that a comparable apartment would cost in Berlin, according to Ring Deutsche Makler (RDM), a confederation of Munich real-estate companies. Similarly, an average, two-room apartment in Hamburg, Germany’s second most expensive city, costs almost DM 200 less than the DM 1150 monthly price tag in Munich. “I apply for every apartment I visit,” says Moser. “Even if it isn’t really what I want or it’s a bit too expensive, I don’t think anyone can be picky. I’ll be happy with anything I get.” The situation is especially bad for those with below average incomes or those who need government assistance to afford an apartment, says Hienz-Werner Götz, director of Verband bayerischer Wohnungsunternehmen (VbW), an association of construction companies in Bavaria. The number of rent-controlled apartments in Munich continued its decade-long fall in the year 2000 and is unable to meet the rising demand, according to Götz. “Munich is just at the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “Even if we were able to keep the number of apartments available constant, we would see a shortage situation.” Much of the influx of new residents comes as a direct result of Munich’s healthy economy and its attractive quality of life. With its slogan “Laptops and Lederhosen,” Bavaria’s ruling party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has done much to promote high-tech investment, while solid standbys such as Siemens and BMW have ensured Munich’s position among the most productive cities in Germany. “Full employment, as Munich has, makes the city attractive,” says Monika Konvicka, head of Ring Deutsche Makler, a confederation of Munich real-estate companies. "Plus all of the leisure time activities available speak to a certain amount of attractiveness of the city. People want to live here.” Further worsening the situation is the recent trend in Germany toward smaller households and a desire for more space. Since 1987, the number of households in Munich has risen by almost 100,000, much of that resulting from more people living alone says Götz. For many, this means a long and frustrating apartment search. Monika Sugnaux-Kersten, director of Language Solutions, a Europe-wide language school, recently relocated to Munich from London. Before finally moving into an apartment, she spent six months living in a hotel that was under renovation and in a small student room with no kitchen and no access to the bathroom before 8:15am. “When I got to Munich,” she says, “I went to all the real-estate agents I had contacted before and they all told me the same thing, ‘Each place has 60 people looking for it.’ I think they are exploiting people here. Really exploiting them because of the housing shortage, with higher rents and worse conditions.” The situation is becoming an issue in Munich’s city politics. Already, the CSU, in opposition in Munich’s city politics for the last 17 years, has brought the issue into the public eye by erecting inflammatory signs throughout the city. The advertisements place blame for the “apartment crisis” squarely on the shoulders of Christian Ude, Munich’s mayor from the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD) and a former legal representative of Munich’s renters. The CDU has also proposed increasing the number of apartments built each year and increasing city funding to building programs by DM 100 million per year. The SPD, for their part, began holding meetings in February of this year to determine what emergency measures might need to be taken and how to improve their long-term handling of the shortage, one that has plagued Munich since the end of the World War II. For those in need of an apartment, however, the situation is not likely to improve any time soon. “Buildings don’t build themselves and they can’t be built in one year either,” says Konvicka. “It will probably get better, but those looking for an apartment now don’t really care what the situation will look like in two years.”