What Germany does not tell you before you move

Which obligations start on the day you move in?

Registration does, and its clock is shorter than most people expect. § 17 (1) BMG reads: *Wer eine Wohnung bezieht, hat sich innerhalb von zwei Wochen nach dem Einzug bei der Meldebehörde anzumelden.* Two weeks from moving into the dwelling — not from the day you landed, not from the day your visa started.

Missing it is an administrative offence rather than a formality. § 54 (2) BMG lists the failure to register among the Ordnungswidrigkeiten, and § 54 (3) BMG sets the ceiling at 1,000 euro for those cases. Offices do not always impose it, which is exactly why the deadline gets treated as advisory until someone finds out that it is not.

The second obligation is one your landlord owes you, and it is the one that quietly blocks everything else. Under § 19 BMG the Wohnungsgeber must confirm your move-in within that same two-week window, in writing or electronically, stating their own name and address, the move-in date, the address of the dwelling and the names of everyone required to register. No Wohnungsgeberbestätigung, no registration — and no registration means no tax ID by the usual route, no bank account at most banks, no residence permit appointment that goes anywhere.

One thing worth knowing before somebody offers you a shortcut: § 19 (6) BMG expressly prohibits offering or providing an address for a registration when nobody actually moves in or intends to. Under § 54 (1) and (3) BMG that carries up to 50,000 euro. A registration address bought online is not a grey area in German law; it is the most expensive item on this page. The procedure itself, step by step, is in [Anmeldung: registering your address](/en/guides/arrival-residence/anmeldung-address-registration).

Why does a broadcasting bill arrive when you own no television?

Because the contribution is attached to the dwelling, not to a device. § 2 (1) of the Rundfunkbeitragsstaatsvertrag says it plainly: *Im privaten Bereich ist für jede Wohnung von deren Inhaber (Beitragsschuldner) ein Rundfunkbeitrag zu entrichten.* There is no clause about owning a receiver, and none about using one.

The amount is 18.36 euro a month per dwelling, stated on the official Rundfunkbeitrag information page as of August 2026, and it does not change with the number of people living there. Over a year that is twelve times 18.36 euro — a figure worth putting into your budget as rent-adjacent rather than as a subscription you might cancel, because it is neither optional nor per person. Shared flats pay once for the flat.

The mechanism that surprises people is the link back to the previous section. § 2 (2) RBStV presumes the occupant to be whoever is registered at that address under Melderecht, or named as tenant in the lease. Your Anmeldung is therefore the event that produces the letter, usually a few weeks later. Nobody signed you up; the registration did it.

If several adults share one flat, only one contribution is owed for that flat — sort out among yourselves who is registered as payer, because the office will otherwise pursue whoever it has on file.

What happens if you name a religion on the registration form?

Church tax starts coming out of your salary, without any further step by you. The registration form asks for religious affiliation because § 3 (1) no. 11 BMG requires the authority to store the *rechtliche Zugehörigkeit zu einer öffentlich-rechtlichen Religionsgesellschaft* — and that entry does not stay with the registration office.

§ 39e (2) EStG closes the loop. The Bundeszentralamt für Steuern forms your electronic wage-tax features from, among other data, the legal affiliation to a tax-collecting religious community together with the dates of joining and leaving, and the registration authorities are obliged to transmit that data and any changes to it. Your employer then reads those features and deducts accordingly.

The rate is 8 percent in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria and 9 percent in the other federal states, according to the Hebesatz overview published by the German churches' finance information service. Read that carefully: it is a percentage of your income tax, not of your income. On a mid-range salary it is a two-digit monthly amount rather than a three-digit one — which is why it goes unnoticed on the first payslip and then stays.

This is a declaration about your own affiliation, not a question you are obliged to answer in the affirmative, and the entry can be corrected. Whether and how you leave a religious community is a matter of state law with its own procedure and fee, so treat the form entry as a decision rather than as biography. What the deduction does to your net pay belongs with the rest of the arithmetic in [what salary do you actually keep](/en/guides/finance/what-salary-do-i-actually-keep).

What does signing a German lease actually commit you to?

Up to three months of cold rent as a deposit — and, less well known, the right to pay it in three parts. § 551 (1) BGB caps the security at three times the monthly rent excluding operating costs shown as a flat rate or advance payment. § 551 (2) BGB then gives the tenant the right to three equal monthly instalments, the first due at the start of the tenancy.

That second sentence is worth using. Landlords routinely ask for the full deposit before handover, and tenants routinely pay it because they do not know the instalment right exists. It is not a favour to be negotiated; it is in the statute, and it cannot be contracted away to your disadvantage.

Getting out again is slower than getting in. Under § 573c (1) BGB notice must reach the landlord by the third working day of a calendar month to take effect at the end of the month after next. Miss the third working day and the whole notice slides a month — one extra month of rent decided by a postal delay. The landlord's period lengthens by three months after five and after eight years of the tenancy; yours does not.

The last item arrives long after you have stopped thinking about it. § 556 (3) BGB gives the landlord until the end of the twelfth month after the accounting period to present the operating-cost statement, and a back-payment claimed after that is barred — unless the landlord is not responsible for the delay. In practice: a bill for heating you used last winter can legitimately land next autumn, so do not treat the first year's rent as your final figure. What to check before signing at all is in [apartment search and Schufa](/en/guides/housing/apartment-search-schufa).

How much notice does anyone owe you in the first six months of a job?

Two weeks, if a probation period was agreed. § 622 (3) BGB allows termination on two weeks' notice *während einer vereinbarten Probezeit, längstens für die Dauer von sechs Monaten* — and it runs in both directions, for you as well as for the employer.

The word *vereinbart* matters. A probation period is not automatic; it exists because your contract says so. Check whether yours contains one and how long it runs, because it is the difference between two weeks and the ordinary period.

After it ends, § 622 (1) BGB sets the basic period at four weeks to the fifteenth or to the end of a calendar month. The employer's obligation then grows with your service — one month after two years, two months after five, three months after eight, and further steps up to seven months after twenty years, each effective at the end of a calendar month. Yours does not grow with it unless the contract says so.

Why this belongs on a page about things nobody mentions: a relocation is usually financed on the assumption that the job holds. For the first six months, German law lets it end with fourteen days' notice. That is not a reason to stay away — it is a reason to keep the first months' reserve intact rather than spending it on furniture.

Which of these decisions are hard to reverse?

Two of them, and both look harmless at the moment you make them.

• Health cover you leave to later. § 193 (3) VVG obliges every person resident in Germany to take out and maintain health-cost insurance, with exceptions for those insured in the statutory scheme and a few other groups. The duty attaches to residence, not to your start date or your paperwork, so a gap is a gap in law rather than a grace period. Which scheme you belong to is a separate question, worked through in [public or private health insurance](/en/guides/insurance/health-insurance-public-or-private).
• Leaving the statutory scheme late in a career. Under § 6 (3a) SGB V, someone who becomes subject to compulsory insurance after the age of 55 is versicherungsfrei if they were not in the statutory scheme in the preceding five years, subject to the further conditions set out there. Read as a door: after 55, the way back into the statutory system can be closed. That makes an early choice between the schemes a long-horizon decision, not an annual one.
• Contract terms you accept without reading the term length. § 309 Nr. 9 BGB makes standard terms ineffective if they bind you for more than two years, if they extend the contract tacitly other than for an indefinite period cancellable on at most one month's notice, or if they demand more than one month's notice before the end of the initial term. Insurance contracts are excluded from that rule. Gyms, phone plans and internet contracts are not — so the two-year mobile plan you sign in week one is at the outer legal limit, not in the middle of the range.

So what is the one thing to do first?

Ask for the Wohnungsgeberbestätigung in writing before the deposit leaves your account.

The reason is leverage rather than suspicion. Once the deposit and the first rent are paid and the keys are handed over, nothing in your relationship with the landlord depends on their signature any more — but your registration, and everything that hangs on it, still does. § 19 BMG obliges them to confirm within the two weeks of § 17 (1) BMG. Asking at the moment you still hold the money makes that obligation easy to meet and awkward to postpone.

Everything else on this page follows from the registration or from the lease, and both are settled in the same week. The broadcasting contribution will find you through the register. The church tax entry is a box on the same form, so decide before you fill it in rather than after the first payslip. The deposit is capped and payable in three parts, which is worth saying out loud at the signing table.

What this page cannot do is assess your individual contract or your individual tax position — that is not legal advice and we do not give any; for a contract dispute the tenants' associations and the officially recognised advice services are the right address, and for tax questions a Steuerberater. Our own placement work, which is free for you because employers pay for it, does not change any of these duties either. They attach to the flat and to the register, not to how you found the job.

The honest summary is that none of this is hidden. It is written down, in statutes anyone can read, in a language most arrivals cannot yet read — and no single office is responsible for handing you the list. That is the gap this page exists to close.