Germany: where to look for student housing officially

What you need to do

The first thing worth knowing: dormitories are run not by the university but by the student services organisation — the Studentenwerk of your city or state. The application goes to it, not to the admissions office, and the waiting list runs separately from admission. Waiting for an acceptance letter before looking for housing means joining the queue behind everyone else.

Second: nobody is guaranteed a room, so a fallback is needed from the start. The lawful routes are a room in a shared flat or renting directly. What matters is not how you search but that the contract is written and the deposit is paid under that contract, not in cash as a gesture of trust.

Third: once you move in, the address is registered with the city office. Without that registration there is no residence permit, no bank account and no insurance, and the window for it is short — it is named in the country's facts.

Where the official answers live

• The student services organisations' portal for international students — what a Studentenwerk is, what it is responsible for and how to apply for a room.
• Study in Germany — the official portal: the section on accommodation and on what living costs consist of.
• A city registration office — Berlin as the example: how an address registration is actually done and what it requires.

How to check that the requirement has not changed

Timings and amounts — the deposit, the contribution, the cost of a room — are in the country's facts, each with a link and the date it was checked. The terms of the queue itself are published by the Studentenwerk of the particular city, and they differ: there is no single rule for the whole of Germany.

One sign to stop at: prepayment for a room before a contract is signed and without a viewing. The lawful routes do not ask for it, and no student services organisation charges money for a place in the queue.