Genossenschaften
The co-op market is a queue, not a listings page.
We audited 63 Berlin housing co-ops. Forty-seven of them permit automated access, and not one published a single live, priced vacancy. That is not a data problem — it is how the market works.
What we actually found
| What the vacancy page was | Co-ops |
|---|---|
| Explicitly said there were no offers right now | 11 |
| A registration form only — "tell us what you want" | 9 |
| No vacancy page at all | 15 |
| Floor-plan marketing, or members-only | 7 |
| Reserved automated access in their terms | 15 |
| A live, priced vacancy | 0 |
Möckernkiez puts its vacancies in a Dropbox visible only to members. That is the clearest statement of how the whole segment works.
A Genossenschaft lets its flats to its members. You buy Geschäftsanteile — often between about EUR 500 and EUR 4,000 depending on the co-op and the flat — plus a small non-refundable joining fee. The shares are returned when you leave. The important part is timing: most Berlin co-ops allocate from a members’ waiting list and publish no public vacancies at all, so joining is a bet placed one to three years before you need the flat.
GenG §15, §65
So what should you actually do
- Join now, for a flat later. One to three years ahead is normal. A membership you no longer need costs you nothing permanent — the shares come back when you leave.
- Join several. Share capital is typically a few hundred to a few thousand euros and is refundable; the joining fee is usually under €50 and is not. Spreading across three or four co-ops is the whole strategy.
- Register the Wohnungsgesuch and keep it alive. Several co-ops expire a dormant search silently. Diarise a yearly refresh.
- Read the Vergabegrundsätze. Many allocate by membership seniority, some by household fit, some give existing tenants first refusal. That tells you whether joining is worth it at all.
Co-ops we hold data on
Only the ones whose terms permit us to read them, and whose vacancies arrive through a documented interface. The share figures are taken from their own Exposé datasheets.
| Co-op | Share capital seen | Joining fee | Supply | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bewohnergenossenschaft FriedrichsHeim eG | — | — | members only · 11 on record | site |
| Gemeinnützige Baugenossenschaft Steglitz eG | 320,00 €–800,00 € | 30,00 € | members only · 45 on record | site · how they allocate |
The permission audit, in the open
We fetch each source's robots.txt and its terms, record the clause that
decided the verdict, and never ingest from one that said no. This is the current
state, re-derived from the live documents.
reserved 6 sources
stadtundland.de · www.degewo.de · www.gesobau.de · www.gewobag.de · www.inberlinwohnen.de · www.wbm.de
permitted 3 sources
gbst.de · www.berlinovo.de · www.friedrichsheim-eg.de
prohibited 1 source
www.howoge.de
“permitted” means no reservation was found, which under §44b UrhG leaves mining of lawfully accessible content permissible. It is not a licence to republish, so we store facts and a deep link — never an advert's text or its photographs.