Germany Property Tax (Grundsteuer) Calculator 2026

How Grundsteuer is calculated after the 2025 reform

Germany rebuilt its property tax from scratch for 2025, after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in April 2018 that the old system was unconstitutional. The Einheitswerte (unit values) it relied on were last updated in 1964 in the old West German states and 1935 in the former East German states, and freezing them for six to eight decades while real property values kept moving meant two near-identical houses a street apart could end up taxed very differently, since the frozen valuation no longer reflected what either one was actually worth. The court gave lawmakers until the end of 2019 to pass a replacement and until the end of 2024 to apply it. Around 36 million properties across Germany had to be freshly declared and valued as of 1 January 2022, the new main assessment date, and the reformed tax only became payable from 1 January 2025. Every model, however different, ends with the same three-step chain:

The assessment base is where the models diverge. The federal Bundesmodell (11 states) values the property from statistical rent and land value. Bavaria ignores value entirely and taxes floor area. Baden-Württemberg taxes only the land value. Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Hesse tax floor area but adjust it for location. The municipal Hebesatz is set by your town and varies widely, which is why the same property can cost very different amounts a few kilometres apart.

Take two flats with an identical 300,200 EUR Grundsteuerwert, both valued under the federal model. In Cologne, where the 2025 Hebesatz is 475 %, the model's 0.31 ‰ Steuermesszahl gives a Grundsteuermessbetrag of 93.06 EUR, so the annual bill is about 442 EUR. Give the same flat Berlin's 470 % Hebesatz instead and the bill becomes about 437 EUR, purely because the town sets a different multiplier. The Grundsteuerwert and the Steuermesszahl mostly change only when the property itself changes or the law does, though a periodic revaluation or a correction can update them too; the Hebesatz can change every year when the town council sets its budget, so it is worth checking your municipality's current rate even if nothing about your property has changed.

The six Grundsteuer models, by state

Eleven states use the federal valuation; five legislated their own. That split exists because the 2019 reform law survived only as a political compromise: several states, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg loudest among them, argued a rent- and value-based federal model was too complex and too likely to be challenged in court again, and threatened to block the whole reform unless states could opt out. The Grundgesetz was amended specifically for this tax to let a state legislate its own model instead, and five did: Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Hesse. Two more, Saxony and Saarland, kept the federal valuation method but set their own Steuermesszahlen.

A few details do not fit neatly into the table above. Berlin and Bremen also legislated their own Steuermesszahlen, but only for non-residential and undeveloped property, 0.45 ‰ in Berlin and 0.75 ‰ in Bremen; their residential rate stays at the federal 0.31 ‰ shown here. Hamburg taxes non-residential floor area at 87 %, not the 70 % residential rate, and gives a listed building (Baudenkmal) there a 25 % reduction on every building area, residential and non-residential alike, a larger cut than the 10 % the federal model and Baden-Württemberg allow for the same thing. Baden-Württemberg's 30 % residential discount only applies to a plot genuinely used for housing: undeveloped land, or a commercial building on the same land-value basis, pays the full 1.30 ‰.

Why the same-looking house can cost so differently

The Hebesatz is the one figure town halls set themselves, and it varies far more than most people expect. Among the state capitals and largest cities, Düsseldorf's 2025 Grundsteuer B Hebesatz of 374 % and Stuttgart's 160 % sit at the low end, while Duisburg (886 %), Wuppertal (947 %) and Offenbach am Main (1,230 %) sit near the top, a more than sevenfold spread for what can otherwise be an identical Grundsteuermessbetrag. A rising Hebesatz is not itself connected to the 2025 reform: individual towns have always been free to raise or lower it to balance their own budget, and many did so around the reform anyway, since the reform on its own was only meant to be revenue-neutral overall, not for every individual property. If your own bill changed sharply from before 2025, it is worth separating the two causes: how much came from the new Grundsteuerwert and Steuermesszahl, which only your Finanzamt controls, and how much came from your town simply setting a new Hebesatz that year, which only your Stadt or Gemeinde controls.

Finding your Bodenrichtwert

Four of the six models, the federal Bundesmodell, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Hesse, need your plot's Bodenrichtwert: the average land value per square metre for your immediate area, set every one to two years by an independent Gutachterausschuss (valuation committee) from actual recorded sale prices nearby. It is not what you paid for your land and it is not your property's market value; it is a standardised zone figure used in this tax calculation. Every state publishes its own figures free of charge, exactly as of the 1 January 2022 valuation date, through a portal usually called BORIS (Bodenrichtwertinformationssystem):

• Baden-Württemberg
• Bavaria
• Berlin
• Brandenburg
• Bremen
• Hamburg
• Hesse
• Lower Saxony
• Lower Saxony (Grundsteuer viewer)
• North Rhine-Westphalia
• Saxony

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia do not have a portal confirmed here; use the joint federal gateway at bodenrichtwerte-boris.de.

Your Grundsteuerwertbescheid also states the Bodenrichtwert the tax office actually used, so if you already have that notice you do not need to look it up yourself; the portals matter most for checking a figure before your notice arrives, or for comparing plots before you buy.

What you need before you start

For the federal model, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony or Hesse, have your plot size and your Bodenrichtwert ready before you begin, both are on your Grundsteuerwertbescheid if you already received one, or from your state's BORIS portal above if not. For the federal model specifically you also need your living area, the property's year of construction and, for a Mehrfamilienhaus, its number of flats, all of which are on that same notice. For Bavaria, Hamburg and the two location-factor models you need plot and floor areas rather than a value. Whatever your state, you will also need your municipality's current Hebesatz, which this calculator prefills from its own municipal-rate table but which you should still confirm against your town's own Grundsteuerbescheid or website, since a Hebesatz can change from one budget year to the next.

Do you still need to do anything?

If you own property in Germany, you should already have filed a one-time Feststellungserklärung (declaration of the property's key facts) with your Finanzamt between July 2022 and early 2023, and by now you should hold two notices: a Grundsteuerwertbescheid (or, for the area models, an Äquivalenzbetragsbescheid) setting the assessed value, and a Grundsteuermessbescheid applying the Steuermesszahl to it. Both were meant to arrive well before 2025 so your municipality could issue the actual Grundsteuerbescheid in time. If you never received either notice, or you bought the property after the 2022 wave and are not sure whether a declaration was ever filed for it, contact your Finanzamt directly rather than guess; a missing declaration does not go away on its own and can eventually draw a Verspätungszuschlag (late-filing surcharge). If your details later change, the rules differ by what changed: a change of ownership is often picked up without you doing anything, since notaries and the Grundbuchamt routinely notify the Finanzamt when a property is sold, though the exact process varies by state, while a physical change you make yourself, a demolished building, a converted attic, a new extension, a subdivided plot, generally does require you to file an updated declaration (Fortschreibungserklärung) yourself, since the Finanzamt has no automatic way to learn about it.

Appeals, and what tenants pay

If your Grundsteuerwertbescheid or Grundsteuermessbescheid looks wrong, an input was mistyped, or the wrong Grundstücksart was used, you generally have one month from the day the notice is delivered to file a free Einspruch (objection) with the Finanzamt that issued it; missing that window normally forfeits the ordinary right to challenge that specific valuation, though separate correction provisions can sometimes still apply afterwards depending on the circumstances, so it is worth contacting the Finanzamt rather than assuming nothing more can be done. The municipality's own Grundsteuerbescheid, which applies the Hebesatz and states what you actually owe, can also be challenged, but the correct procedure varies by state and municipality, some use an internal Widerspruch, others require going straight to the Verwaltungsgericht, so follow the Rechtsbehelfsbelehrung (appeal instructions) printed on your own notice rather than assuming one procedure applies everywhere. Grundsteuer is also one of the running costs a landlord is allowed to pass on to tenants in Germany: it is listed explicitly among the umlagefähige Betriebskosten in the Betriebskostenverordnung, so most tenants already carry a share of it through their monthly Nebenkosten. What the reform changes is only how the landlord's own bill is worked out, not whether that cost can be passed on.

Grundsteuer questions