Ruland said that she had to show one Indian client, who had a job at the industrial conglomerate Siemens and wore a turban, 52 apartments before calling in a favour from another agent to find him a place to live. She’s also recently struggled to find housing for clients from the Middle East, including a Syrian IT specialist and an Iranian business school professor. With refugees pouring into Germany from Syria and other countries, she said that landlords have become even more resistant to renting to foreigners.

Staying put

The quickly-tightening rental market is a shock to the system for many Berliners.

“It used to be a sport, or at least part of the culture here, to move around,” said Baumunk. Berliners used to find a new apartment when they moved in with a partner or even just for fun. Now more are staying put and holding on to their leases. Baumunk has already noticed that fewer people are moving house, with the turnover rate now at 6% compared with about 10% a few years ago.

Rent controls are now being rolled out nationally, but many experts complain that they just aren’t working out as planned in Berlin. Reiner Wild, head of the Berliner Mieterverein or Berlin tenants association, estimates about a third of the city’s apartments don’t fall under the new rules. And even those that do are so highly-prized that landlords get away with price hikes because tenants don’t want to rock the boat by reporting the rent control law break, he said.