# Clean air barely shows up in the rent

> Do you pay more rent for cleaner air? Across 392 German housing markets the link is weak — Spearman −0.12 — and 31 districts sit below the median on both.

Published 2026-08-04 · Maksim Streltcov · https://immigrationdb.com/research/clean-air-rent-premium/

Question: in places with cleaner air, do people pay more rent? Answer: slightly, and far too weakly to plan a move around. Across 392 German housing-market districts, Spearman's correlation between the average advertised rent and the annual PM2.5 mean is −0.12 . Lower PM2.5 means cleaner air, so the negative sign points towards marginally higher rents where the air is better. The coefficient is small enough that air quality explains almost nothing about what a place costs. The more useful result is the other one: 31 districts , containing 143 cities with a published air reading, sit below the German median on both measures — cheaper than typical and cleaner than typical at the same time.

## What we measured
## What the data shows
## Why a city page may show a different rent
## Where it breaks down
## What this means if you are moving
## Limits
## Method
## Sources

## Questions

**Does cleaner air cost more in rent?**

Only slightly. Across 392 German housing-market districts, Spearman's correlation between the average advertised rent and annual PM2.5 is −0.12. Because lower PM2.5 means cleaner air, the direction points to a small premium, but the relationship is far too weak to predict what any individual place will cost.

**Which German places combine cheaper rent with cleaner air?**

Thirty-one of 392 districts sit below the German median on both measures, and those districts contain 143 cities with a published air reading. They include the areas around Eschwege, Sangerhausen, Holzminden, Salzwedel and Sondershausen, where advertised rents are €6/m² per month against a national district median of €9.

**Why does this article show a different rent for Berlin than the Berlin city page?**

They measure different things. This article uses BBSR advertised re-letting rents, which give Berlin €17/m² per month for 2024. The Berlin city page shows the official Mietspiegel reference rent of €7.71/m² per month, which covers existing tenancies rather than new listings. Advertised rents are what a mover is quoted; the Mietspiegel describes the standing stock.

**Is this a European comparison?**

No. Germany contributes 1,798 of the 1,836 paired cities, and it is the only country with enough coverage to report a coefficient. The 38 cities from seven other countries provide context and come from different national systems, so no cross-country rent comparison is made.

**Why is the analysis reported for districts rather than cities?**

Because that is the grain the rent data is published at. The BBSR advertised-rent series is compiled to district level, so the 1,797 German city rows carry only 399 distinct values — a median of four cities share each one. Correlating at city level counts the same rent up to 27 times and overstates the sample.