Lilli from Hamburg cut her rent by €150 a month

What brought you to the Hanseatic city of Hamburg?

I was actually born in Hamburg but grew up in Munich. Then I studied media studies in Weimar. In 2018 I came to Hamburg for an internship and found a room in a shared flat. When I started my master's there, I wanted to find a flat of my own.

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Hamburg is notorious when it comes to flat-hunting. How did your search go?

I searched forever – on Immoscout, but also in Facebook groups. For several months I viewed three or four flats a week. At viewings the queue stretched out onto the street. Several times I thought I must have got it, but I always came away empty-handed.

How did you realise the flat was too expensive?

At some point I got talking to a neighbour who had moved in two years before me. It turned out she was paying €200 less – and her flat had been in far better condition than mine from the start.

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Did you decide to do something about it then?

I was completely torn. I had agreed to the flat at that price, after all, but I also found it really unfair that landlords can get away with that.

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And how did CONNY come into it?

Right at that moment I saw a CONNY ad on Facebook and entered my details into the rent calculator. Some of them were estimates, because I hadn't been given an energy certificate by the property management, for example. In any case, the calculator told me I was paying €150 too much rent.

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And then you were determined to lower your rent?

At first I still wrestled with it – for months. I was also a bit afraid of putting at risk the flat I had worked so hard to find. I thought landlords make tenants' lives hell if they rebel. On the other hand, I didn't want to go along with this upward spiral that keeps driving rents higher and higher. In the end my gut won: nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I instructed CONNY.

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And did your fears come true?

No, that was the crazy thing. It took less than a week and the property management lowered the rent by €150, along with an apology. I found that unbelievable and thought: I should have done this sooner. CONNY has given me €150 every month – that sounds like something out of a spam email (laughs).

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When a reduction succeeds, CONNY receives five times one month's saving – how do you rate that fee?

I think the fee is entirely fair. After all, CONNY handled the whole process for me and advised me over the phone several times beforehand. When I told my father, he said with a half-smile that you had earned very easy money with me – but there are more complex cases and less complex ones.

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What could CONNY do better?

For me it simply went perfectly; it was a great feeling not having to deal with anything. And the support before and during the process was excellent and gave me a good feeling throughout.

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What are you doing with the money you save?

My parents are still supporting me financially during my studies. Thanks to CONNY they now need to transfer €150 less a month. That makes me really happy.