Dear All,

I gave all the required papers to an appartment organization. Now they informed me that they would check Schufa-Auskunft and then they can only decide if I get a wohnung or not.

Do you have any idea about this so called Schufa-Auskunft.

I have never done any thing wrong but a little bit anxious. Once I was denied to get O2 but never knew why? Now I think it could be Schufa-Auskunft related.

Anyone have any idea, experience ?
please share.

Regards-
ASM

Schufa is the organization which keeps your data related to financing, telecommunication bills, (unbelievable: they also record if you have ebay account or not). Purpose is to deny people credit if they have bad credit history (did not pay credit back for example).

You can inform yourself about your data stored at shufa. This will cost you 7,60€

https://www.schufa.de/forms/formular-eigenauskunft.html

Hi ASM

I had the same experience. Somebody asked me the same thing before renting me an appartment.

I googled a little bit and is not a very frequent (but growing) request, also is in the limit of what is permisible or not. Some people thinks that is not legal for a landlord ask for this kind of information.

Schufa information is VERY personal and also very sensitive. Even for you if you ask this information the best way is to go to any Schufa branch in your city and is a 5 minutes stuff and only a form to fill. If you live in one of the "test areas" you can even get this information online in the Schufa website. If you ask this information online and you are not living in the on of the Test Bundesland (Brandenburg, Nordrhein Westfallen and another one I forgot) sometimes Schufa ask for you to send fax copies of your passport and Anmeldebescheinigung before sending you the information per post and charging you the 7,60 Cedomir told you.

Personally I found it very offensive and I did it anyway because I needed to rent an appartment and also because I have nothing to hide, but in another times I would like to reject this request (anyway I did the Schufa thing but shortly after that I found a better appartment and a very nice Landlord and I called this VERY unpollaid lady and I asked her to rent the appartment to another stupid than me).

The rejection of your O2 contract I think is maybe more related to your "temporal" visa (if you don't have a NE the you are considered a temporal foreigner for some handy companies) than for your Schufa thing.

NOTE: after you see this Schufa Auskunft you start thinking twice what you do here because EVERY aspect of your "money life" is known and written!

A funny note: if you go to Schufa branch (I did it) and you want to know "verbally" your status, this is for free!

@Cedomir:

Hey Cedo! Nice to "see" you man! Just for the records in this Schufa Auskunft there is only a history of what you have and what you did (in economic aspect I mean). If you want to know your "score" for any kind of credit, this is extra and you should pay ca. 3 euro for the general score and 1 euro extra for each item you want to know: Sofortkredit Score, Hypotek Score, Kreditkarte Auskunft u.s.w (I don't remember very good the categories).

A landlord is renting his house/appartment to someone he doesnt know and there is no way to find out if the person will pay the rent to him on time or not. Schufa contains the financial behaviour of a person and therefore lanlord is justified to see the Schufa report.

@ M.K.

"A landlord is renting his house/appartment to someone he doesnt know and there is no way to find out if the person will pay the rent to him on time or not"

I agree. But Schufa ddoesn't contain information about your income, only of your financial history.

Would be maybe more clever to ask you for a telephone or a letter of your former landlord to know if you are NOW paying the rent or not.

"Schufa contains the financial behaviour of a person and therefore lanlord is justified to see the Schufa report"

Schufa is only another source of information. Maybe a more clear legislation that simply kicks you off a property if you are not paying be more clever.

Of course landlord have the right of asking you anything. I have also the right to say no. Why a Landlord have to know if I have a handy or two or if I have a Ikea Family Card or not? Does it helps to know if I'll pay the rent? The answer is clear: NO. And if Schufa Auskunft could even 1% help defining if somebody will pay the rent or not ALL the landlords will ask for this thing and I guess only 5% of the landlords ask for this information.

It's a matter of opinions, here you have mine.

I have ordered this "score auskunft". I admit - this was probably the most stupid way to spend money. It is actually nothing there. Only a score and that's it.

I agree - Schufa auskuft does not guarantee that you will pay anything, and especially not rent, but:

Landlords are entitled to ask for anything, it is up to you to accept or not. A story of a colleague from our student days: Landlord (Grandma Lady) offered him 20% discount for the rent if he allows her to watch while he is having a shower :-) :-) :-). This was not in Germany :-) . And, no, he does not look especially good - average I would say :-) .

...he does not look especially good - average I would say..

hmmm....no wonder he got only 20% ;-)

Schufa score and all the information inside Schufa indicates the credit rating of a person. A landlord also ask for your monthly income and with schufa score and all the contracts inside it he is able to judge whether even you have 100K salary are you still able to pay the rent. Is this the case that you have financial contracts that takes most of your monthly salary, leaving you behind with very little money to survive. Schufa also indicates the any late payments and refusal to pay by you at all. It also contains information if you default or any court convictions for financial matters. Its not about looking inside your private information, its about looking about your financial commitments and your past behaviour regarding it, In other words your credit rating.
You still have the right to refuse it and look for any other appartment/house, or lanlord that provides more than 20% discount.

Anybody knows how long it takes till you receive you SCHUFA Auskunft?

I ordered mine on monday afternoon.

@Akshay
that was really good :-D

As of the Schufa website:

"Gegen eine Freischaltgebühr von 15,60 € (inkl. 19% MwSt.) können Sie Ihre bei der SCHUFA gespeicherten Daten unbefristet einsehen."

@YO1, is that worth doing it? If understood correctly, it allows you an unlimited acces to your score or whatever for this price. Or there is something hidden in this offer?

There's something missing in the offer.
I was going to go for this option since I thought it could be quicker and thought it was unlimited, but after googling for a while I found out from another website that this offer will allow you to access your data for a period of 3 months only. After that you'll have to pay again.

Anybody knows how long it takes to get the Schufa the normal way, ordering it online and receving it by post?

Hi AxEnNeSo

it takes two or three working days.

But Schufa has more than one product, for some of them I think you need to "identify" yourself by means of you documents and sometimes you need to send them via fax.

@xadnan

Sorry, no information about it. When I tried to do this more than one year ago, my area was not yet included online so I needed to go to their offices and they did it for me in 5 minutes.