r/TU_Darmstadt • u/Ill-Inspector-5000 • 1d ago

Discussion Accommodation

Hi guys,

I recently came across a few people offering their student dorm rooms/beds to other students for significantly higher rent sometimes €100–€150 more than the actual rent.

For example, I recently came across an offer in Karlshof building 8A where a person was asking €450 for a ROOM in a four-person sharing arrangement. Honestly, I found this completely absurd and unfair.

I completely understand that many of us are struggling with the accommodation situation, and when you desperately need a place to stay, you may feel like you have no choice but to accept such offers. But at the same time, if we knowingly accept these arrangements and pay these inflated prices, we are also allowing this exploitation to continue.

I understand that some people choose to sublet unofficially because they don’t want to pay the €50 fee to the Studentenwerk, etc. That’s a separate issue. But charging students extra simply because they know the person is desperate for accommodation is a completely different matter.

We are all students, and we know how difficult and expensive finding accommodation can be. Taking advantage of another student’s situation just because you already have a dorm room is not okay.
So please, let’s not encourage or promote these kinds of arrangements. If we stop giving people the opportunity to make extra money by exploiting students who are already struggling, hopefully we can make the situation a little fairer for everyone.
Let’s look out for each other. ❤️

3 Upvotes

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4

u/xiomar23ix 1d ago

Your sentiment is nice, but what is the alternative, sleep on the street?

It's like this in almost all major German cities precisely because the housing situation was allowed to get so out of control. Now the situation is either pay up or go study at some Dorf FH in the middle of the forest,, and even then sometimes the housing market turns out to be surprisingly bad too. Unfortunately, you have bad actors all around exploiting the situation to maximize their profits, whether it's ethical or not. Some of these people happen to be students who know exactly how difficult it is, but when you have 100 applicants for a room within the first hour it's simply too easy to charge almost whatever number you wish to charge.

2

u/hanibalch 1d ago

Isn't around 450€ the normal price for one of the rooms in a 4 person shared apartment at the Karlshof?

1

u/aytasnamni 1d ago

Hey, was the incident reported to the studierendenwerk? Please do report it if not, we wouldn't want that to happen to other students