How much notice do I have to give on a flat in Berlin?

Three months, and no contract can make that worse for you. The useful part is how the three months are counted. § 573c Absatz 1 BGB says the notice is admissible at the latest on the third working day of a calendar month, to the end of the month after next. So a letter arriving by the third working day of October ends the tenancy on 31 December, and a letter arriving on the fourth working day of October ends it on 31 January instead. Your landlord’s notice period grows to six and then nine months as the tenancy gets older, but yours never changes.

Does Saturday count as a working day for the deadline?

Yes. A Werktag is every day except Sunday and a public holiday, and the Federal Court of Justice confirmed on 27 April 2005 in case VIII ZR 206/04 that Saturday belongs in that count for § 573c. What the court did not settle is what happens when the third working day itself falls on a Saturday, and whether § 193 BGB then pushes it to the Monday. That question is still open, so the safe move is to have the letter there by the Friday before.

Which Berlin public holidays change the deadline?

All ten of them, because a public holiday is not a working day. Berlin keeps New Year’s Day, 8 March for International Women’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 1 May, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, 3 October, and both Christmas days. The 8 March holiday exists only in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, so a calculator built for the rest of Germany will get a March deadline wrong here. In practice the shift always gives you more time, never less: October 2026 moves to Monday 5 October because 3 October is a Saturday holiday, and January 2027 moves to Tuesday 5 January.

Can I send the notice by email or WhatsApp?

No. § 568 BGB requires written form, which means a signed paper letter. An email, a PDF scan of a signature and a chat message all fail. Every person named as a tenant on the contract has to sign, even if only one of you is moving out. Keep a copy of what you sent and note the day it was delivered.

What is the safest way to deliver the letter?

Hand delivery into the landlord’s letterbox with somebody standing next to you who is willing to confirm it later is the strongest. After that, an Einwurf-Einschreiben, which the postman simply posts and logs. Avoid a Rückschein registered letter for this: it needs a person to sign for it, and if nobody is home the postman leaves a collection card, which does not count as delivery. Whatever you choose, allow several working days, because the deadline measures arrival and not posting.

My contract has a Mindestmietdauer. Can I still leave?

Not while it runs, unless the clause itself is defective. A Kündigungsverzicht in a standard form contract is valid for four years at most, counted from the day the contract was signed rather than the day you moved in, and it has to bind both sides. Anything longer is void under § 307 BGB. If you break it anyway you keep paying rent until the flat is let again.

Can I find a Nachmieter and leave early?

Usually not as a right. Your landlord is under no general obligation to accept a replacement tenant, and outside narrow hardship cases there is no legal claim to substitute one. Offering three serious, solvent candidates often works in practice in Berlin, because an empty flat helps nobody, but treat it as goodwill rather than leverage and do not plan your move around it.

How much deposit can a Berlin landlord ask for?

Three months of cold rent at most, under § 551 BGB, with the Nebenkosten prepayment left out of the calculation. You have the right to pay it in three equal monthly instalments, the first due at the start of the tenancy. The money must be held separately from the landlord’s own assets at a bank, at the usual savings rate, and the interest belongs to you.

How long can my landlord keep the deposit after I move out?

There is no fixed statutory deadline, which is why this drags. The clock that does bind is § 548 BGB: claims for damage to the flat time-bar six months after the flat is returned, so a handover on 31 December makes 30 June the last day for such a claim. A landlord may hold back a reasonable amount against the final Nebenkosten settlement, and that bill can legitimately arrive up to a year later. Holding the entire sum for a year is a different matter and worth a written demand.

Do I have to repaint before I hand the flat back?

Check the clause before you buy a roller. Rigid decorating schedules in form contracts have been struck down repeatedly, and a flat handed over unrenovated at the start generally cannot carry an unrenovated-out obligation. What always helps is a written handover protocol with meter readings, existing damage and the key count in it, plus your own dated photographs taken on the day.

Do I need to deregister when I move within Berlin?

No Abmeldung is needed as long as you are moving to another address in Germany. You register the new address instead, within two weeks of moving in, under § 17 Bundesmeldegesetz. Your new landlord has the same two weeks to give you the Wohnungsgeberbestätigung you need for the appointment. Set up a Nachsendeauftrag with Deutsche Post for at least six months, because the Nebenkosten settlement will be sent to the old letterbox.

What does missing the deadline actually cost?

One full month of rent, warm. At the median cold rent in the Berliner Mietspiegel 2026, 7.71 euro per square metre, a 70 square metre flat is about 540 euro of Kaltmiete, and the amount that leaves your account each month is higher once the Nebenkosten prepayment is added. That is the price of posting a letter on the wrong day, and it is the reason to work out the date before anything else.

Berlin Flat Notice Period: The Three Days That Decide Your Last Month

Yusuf Ucuz

Sep 15

7 min read

A friend of mine decided on a Sunday evening in October that she had finished with her flat in Friedrichshain. She wrote the letter on the Monday, walked it to the post box on the Tuesday, and felt organised. She had just bought herself an extra month of rent on a flat she had already mentally left, and she did not find out for another week.

German law does not count your notice from the day you decide, or the day you write, or the day you post. It counts from a single day at the start of a month, and once that day is gone the whole thing slides. In Berlin that day moves around, because Saturdays count as working days here and public holidays do not, and Berlin keeps one public holiday almost nobody outside the city remembers.

A corner block on Weidenweg in Berlin-Friedrichshain under a clear blue sky, five storeys of pale render above an arcade of ground-floor openings, bare trees along the pavement and cars parked in front

Weidenweg in Friedrichshain. Nothing about a building tells you which three days of the month decide what leaving it costs.

The Berlin flat notice period is three months, and that is the least useful part

Everyone can recite this one. § 573c Absatz 1 BGB gives a tenant three months, and no contract may make it worse for you. Your landlord's period stretches to six and then nine months as the tenancy gets older. Yours never moves.

Read the sentence properly, though, because the three months are not the rule. The rule is this: notice is admissible at the latest on the third working day of a calendar month, to the end of the month after next.

So the date you actually need is not three months from today. It is the third working day of some month, and everything else follows from it:

Letter arrives by the third working day of October and the tenancy ends 31 December.
Letter arrives on the fourth working day of October and the tenancy ends 31 January.

One day of slippage, one whole month of rent. At the median Berlin cold rent in the Mietspiegel 2026, 7.71 euro per square metre, a 70 square metre flat is about 540 euro of cold rent, and the warm figure with the Nebenkosten prepayment on top is the one that actually leaves your account. That same median is the number a rent increase letter has to argue against, which is why it is worth knowing either way.

The third working day is usually not the 3rd

This is where Berlin gets specific, and it is the reason I built a tool for it instead of writing a sentence.

A Werktag is every day except Sunday and a public holiday. Saturday is in. The Federal Court of Justice settled that on 27 April 2005 in case VIII ZR 206/04, and the reasoning was blunt: nothing in the law, the legislative history or ordinary German usage supports treating Saturday like a Sunday.

Berlin then adds its own calendar. The city keeps ten public holidays, including 8 March, International Women's Day, which only Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have. Every one of those days is subtracted before you start counting.

Run it forward from this autumn and the deadline wanders:

October 2026: the 1st is a Thursday, the 2nd a Friday, and the 3rd is German Unity Day on a Saturday. The third working day is Monday 5 October.
January 2027: New Year's Day is a Friday, Saturday the 2nd counts, Sunday does not. The third working day is Tuesday 5 January.
April 2027 and July 2027: the third working day lands on a Saturday, and the courts have never settled whether that pushes the deadline to the Monday. Deliver by the Friday and the argument never starts.

In every case the real deadline is later than the 3rd, never earlier. That is the one direction this rule ever moves in your favour, and it is not much of a favour if you were planning to post on the 2nd anyway.

Check your own month before you write anything

The Berlin notice deadline tool above holds the Berlin holiday calendar and counts the working days for you. Pick the month you want to be out, and it gives you the exact day the letter has to be in the landlord's hands, the rent still running until then, and what the deposit ceiling is on your rent. Three stages, one date each.

Two things it will tell you that people get wrong. September's window has already closed, so the earliest end date open to you now is 31 December. And a month that looks generous on the calendar, like January, is generous by exactly two days.

A yellow Deutsche Post letter box in Berlin, its Leerungszeiten panel listing the daily collection times and the plate above reading Postleitzahlen 10000 to 16999, Region Berlin Brandenburg

The small panel on every Berlin post box is the collection timetable. Posting before the last collection is not the same as arriving, and only one of the two is what the law measures.

Posting it is not the same as it arriving

A notice is a declaration that has to reach the other side. Until it lands in the landlord's letterbox or hands, legally nothing has happened.

That produces the mistake I see most often. Somebody drops the letter in the box on the third working day, satisfied, and the letter turns up on the fifth. The tenancy runs a month longer and there is nothing to argue about.

Three more traps worth naming:

It has to be on paper. § 568 BGB requires written form. An email is not notice. A WhatsApp message is not notice. A scan of a signed letter is not notice either.
Everyone on the contract signs. If two names are on the lease, two signatures end it, even if only one of you is leaving.
The wrong kind of registered post can fail. A Rückschein registered letter needs somebody to be there to sign for it. If nobody is, the postman leaves a card, and a card in the box is not delivery. An Einwurf-Einschreiben, which the postman simply posts and logs, is the safer form. Better still, put it in the letterbox yourself with somebody standing next to you who is willing to say so later.

My own move: allow a working week. If the deadline is Monday 5 October, the letter goes in on the Wednesday before. It costs nothing and it removes the only variable you cannot control.

A quiet green courtyard garden behind an apartment house on Apostel-Paulus-Strasse in Berlin-Schoeneberg, mature trees over a planted bed, a bicycle leaning at the edge of the paving

A courtyard on Apostel-Paulus-Strasse in Schöneberg. The part of a Berlin flat you notice you have lost is rarely the part written into the contract.

The clause that quietly cancels all of it

A corner apartment building on Baenschstrasse in Berlin-Friedrichshain in summer, five storeys of pale stucco with balconies, a small restaurant with a red awning on the ground floor and street trees in full leaf

Baenschstrasse in Friedrichshain. The clause that decides whether you can leave at all is usually on page two of a contract signed years ago.

Before any of the above matters, look for a Kündigungsverzicht or a Mindestmietdauer in your contract. It is a waiver of your right to give ordinary notice, and Berlin landlords put one in constantly, usually for twelve or twenty-four months.

While it runs, the third working day does nothing for you. What you need to know about it:

In a standard form contract it may last four years at most, counted from the day the contract was signed and not from the day you moved in. Longer than that and it is void.
It has to bind both sides, not only you.
If you leave early anyway, you keep paying until the flat is let again.

And then the myth. Almost every Berliner will tell you that you can hand over a Nachmieter and walk away. Normally you cannot. Your landlord is under no obligation to take the person you found, and outside narrow hardship cases there is no right to substitute a tenant. Offering three solid candidates is good practice and often works in the real world. It is not leverage.

What actually happens to your deposit

§ 551 BGB is shorter than most people expect and more generous than most people use:

The ceiling is three months of cold rent, with the Nebenkosten prepayment excluded from the calculation.
You were always entitled to pay it in three monthly instalments, the first at the start of the tenancy.
It must be held separately from the landlord's own money, at a bank, at the normal savings rate, and the interest belongs to you.

On the way out, the clock that matters is § 548 BGB: the landlord's claims for damage to the flat time-bar six months after the flat comes back. Hand the keys over on 31 December and the last day for a damage claim is 30 June.

There is no statutory deadline for returning the deposit itself, which is why this drags. In practice a landlord may hold a reasonable amount against the final Nebenkosten settlement, and that bill can legitimately arrive up to a year later. Holding the whole sum for a year because the bill has not come is a different thing, and worth a letter.

Tucholskystrasse in Berlin-Mitte on a flat grey day, a cycle lane painted along an empty carriageway, cars and a white van parked along both kerbs under nineteenth century facades

Tucholskystrasse in Mitte. The van outside is the easy part of leaving. The letter three months earlier was the part that decided the price.

The last fortnight

The handover is where the deposit is really won or lost, and none of it is complicated:

Ask for a written handover protocol and make sure meter readings, existing damage and the number of keys are all in it. Take your own photographs on the day, with the date on them.
Do not repaint on reflex. A rigid schedule of decorating obligations in a form contract has been struck down repeatedly, so check what your clause actually says before you spend a weekend on it.
You have two weeks from moving in to register the new address under § 17 Bundesmeldegesetz, and your new landlord has the same two weeks to give you the Wohnungsgeberbestätigung you need to do it. Moving within Germany means no Abmeldung at the old address, only an Anmeldung at the new one.
Leave a Nachsendeauftrag with Deutsche Post running for at least six months, because the Nebenkosten settlement will chase your old letterbox. The rest of the free Berlin tools sit in one place if you need another one this month.

A tall white residential tower on Raoul-Wallenberg-Strasse in Berlin-Marzahn seen against a deep blue sky, bare birch trees in front and a strip of grass at its foot

Raoul-Wallenberg-Strasse in Marzahn. The deposit ceiling is three cold rents wherever you live, which is why the same rule feels very different across the city.

My move

If you think you might leave, work out the deadline before you work out the feelings. Open a calendar, find the third working day of the month you would need, subtract a week, and put that day in your phone now. You can change your mind right up until the letter goes in. What you cannot do is buy the month back afterwards.

And if you are staying, the number worth carrying around is the deposit ceiling: three cold rents, held apart from your landlord's money, earning interest that is yours. A surprising number of people in this city are owed a small sum they have never asked for.

Image credits

Source and licence details for the 4 photographs used in this article.

A corner block on Weidenweg in Berlin-Friedrichshain: Kvikk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Deutsche Post letter box in Berlin with its collection timetable: Rüdiger Wölk, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

A corner apartment building on Bänschstrasse in Berlin-Friedrichshain: Kvikk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tucholskystrasse in Berlin-Mitte, 25 January 2026: Lukas Beck, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.