It's that time of year again: the qualified rent index for the Saarpfalz district is being compiled. All tenants and landlords are invited to take part in the survey.
Rent indices are drawn up to provide tenants, landlords, courts and other interested parties with an overview of the customary local rent. They create transparency, provide "fair" figures for negotiations on rent adjustments and are used by courts to determine appropriate rents in legal disputes. The qualified rent index is compiled by the expert committee of the Saarpfalz district in consultation with the tenants' and landlords' association.
Data collection is expected to begin throughout the district at the beginning of August. Since the rent index reform in 2022, tenants and landlords have been legally obliged to provide information. All tenant households will initially receive a one-page contact questionnaire, which will be used to check the relevance of the tenancies to the rent index. For the first time, it will be possible to take part online. The contact form can either be completed online within two weeks or returned to the Saarpfalz district expert committee in the enclosed postage-paid envelope.
Due to strict legal requirements, personal data may only be transmitted to the expert committee by the cities and municipalities to a limited extent and under strict conditions. These requirements make it difficult to adjust the sample of households to be surveyed. This can lead to several people from one household or owner-occupiers of properties being contacted unintentionally.
If the existing tenancy agreement meets the requirements, there are two options: Online, respondents are automatically forwarded to the main questionnaire. With the paper version, the main questionnaire is sent to them by post by the appraisal committee. This contains questions on the type, size, furnishings, condition and location of the home. Additional information on the year of construction of the rental property, subsequent modernisation measures, energy standards, etc. is required for evaluation. For this purpose, the landlords are consulted in a further wave.
The survey is conducted in coordination with the Independent Data Protection Centre of Saarland and the data protection officers of the Saarpfalz district. The address of the respondents and the data on the existing tenancy agreement always remain separate, so unauthorised persons can never establish a direct link between the answers and the individual households.
District Administrator Frank John is delighted: "I am grateful that our expert committee is working on a new qualified rent index that creates comprehensible guideline values for rents in the Saarpfalz district and provides all tenants and landlords with transparent information on rent pricing. In the current phase, we are now dependent on the support of tenant households and I would therefore ask everyone who receives a contact questionnaire to answer it as soon as possible. Thank you very much in advance."
The expert committee assures that the data will only be analysed anonymously and will not be passed on to third parties. Once the survey has been completed, the names and respective addresses are deleted from the address database. Participation in the preparation of the qualified rent index is mandatory. If you have any questions, please contact the expert committee of the Saarpfalz district on the service number (06841) 104-7208 or by e-mail at [email protected].
The rent index is expected to be available from the district administration, the towns and municipalities of the Saarpfalz district and on their websites from the beginning of 2026.
Background: The expert committee of the Saarpfalz district prepares a new district-wide qualified rent index in cooperation with the towns and municipalities as well as tenants' and landlords' representatives. The German Civil Code stipulates that a new index must be compiled every four years in order to determine market developments.