Creating a Floor Plan for Your Rental Listing: A Guide for Landlords & Agents

A good listing lives on good images – and the floor plan is one of the most important. It answers at a glance what ten sentences of description can't: How are the rooms laid out? Will my desk fit in the study? Does the bedroom face the back? People who see this upfront apply more selectively – and you save yourself viewings with applicants the apartment doesn't suit anyway.

This guide shows landlords and agents what a listing floor plan should look like, how to state the living area safely under the law – and how to create a clean plan for free in a few minutes.

Why (almost) no listing works without a floor plan#

The floor plan is one of the standard documents of an exposé – for letting as well as for saleQuelle. It works in two directions: it makes the listing more professional and pre-filters at the same time. Anyone who sees on the plan that the second room is a walk-through room, or the kitchen has no window, simply won't get in touch – and in a tight market that pre-filtering saves you the most time. Which criteria then decide the choice of the right tenant is a topic of its own – the floor plan first makes sure the right enquiries come in at all.

Is a floor plan mandatory?#

No. Unlike the energy certificate, whose key figures must appear in every commercial property ad under the German Building Energy Act, there is no legal requirement for the floor plan. It's a strong recommendation, not a must. Which details are genuinely mandatory is covered in detail in our guide to the good rental listing.

What a good listing floor plan contains#

A plan for a listing doesn't have to look like an architect's drawing – but it should be complete and honest:

• To scale, with recognisable proportions between the rooms.
• Room names and square metres per room (living, sleeping, kitchen, bath …).
• Doors and windows in the right position – important for furniture planning.
• A north arrow, so prospects can judge the orientation and therefore the sunlight.
• Total living area, calculated correctly (more on that below).

For data-protection reasons, personal details of previous tenants (name plates, private photos) don't belong on a published plan – a neutral, clean floor plan is all you need.

Stating the living area correctly – the costliest mistake in a listing#

This is where it gets serious: the living area is the reference figure for the rent level, rent increases and the apportionment of operating costs. For residential space it is usually determined under the living-area ordinance (WoFlV) – for non-price-controlled housing the German Federal Court of Justice also interprets the term "living area" under the WoFlV in case of doubtQuelle.

The decisive point: floor space under sloped ceilings does not count in full.

How sloped ceilings count toward living area (§ 4 WoFlV)

100 %

from 2.00 m height

50 %

1.00 – 2.00 m height

0 %

below 1.00 m height

Balconies, loggias & terraces: usually 25 %, at most 50 %.

Specifically, under § 4 WoFlV:

• Parts of a room with a height of 2.00 m or more count 100 %.
• Parts between 1.00 m and 2.00 m count 50 %.
• Parts below 1.00 m do not count at all.
• Balconies, loggias and terraces usually count 25 %, at most half.

In addition, cellars, laundry rooms, boiler rooms, attics and garages do not count toward the living areaQuelle.

How to measure a sloped ceiling correctly: Mark on the wall the points where the slope is 1.00 m and 2.00 m above the floor. The floor area up to the 1 m line is left out, the strip between 1 m and 2 m counts half, everything from 2 m up counts in full. A folding ruler plus the room width is enough for the area – no laser device needed.

Because: if the actual living area deviates by more than 10 % from the figure stated in the tenancy agreement, that counts as a defect and entitles the tenant to a rent reductionQuelle. For rent increases, the Federal Court of Justice even dropped the 10 % tolerance in 2015 – there, the actual area always countsQuelle. A carefully calculated living area in the listing is therefore not a detail, but your own protection.

What "up to 10 %" means in euros#

A worked example makes it tangible: the tenancy agreement states 80 m² at €12/m², i.e. €960 base rent. In reality it's only 70 m² – a deviation of 12.5 %, above the 10 % threshold. The tenant may reduce the rent by that share: €120 per month, around €1,440 a year – and often retroactively from the start of the tenancy. That's exactly the sum at stake when a floor area "prettified" under DIN 277 ends up in the listing.

Calculating attic living area – step by step (§ 4 WoFlV)

Example attic room

Height zone

Floor area

Factor

counts as

from 2.00 m

12 m²

100 %

12.00 m²

1.00 – 2.00 m

8 m²

50 %

4.00 m²

below 1.00 m

4 m²

0 %

0.00 m²

Room total

24 m²

16.00 m²

Balcony (partial)12 m² × 25 %3.00 m²

Living area per WoFlV19.00 m²

Careful: WoFlV is not DIN 277

Counted in full (DIN 277)24 m²

Per WoFlV16 m²

If you put the larger DIN-277 number into the listing as “living area”, the real area can be more than 10 % below it – which lets your tenant reduce the rent.

Three ways to get a floor plan – and what they cost#

1. Draw it yourself (free). If you have the measurements or an old plan, you'll draw the floor plan yourself in a few minutes – with a free online tool, no sign-up. For most rental listings that's entirely sufficient.
2. Digitise an existing plan. If you have a hand sketch or an old paper plan, redraw it cleanly on screen – using your measured dimensions as the basis. That turns the sketch into a to-scale, exportable plan.
3. Hire a professional. For high-end sale properties or 3D visualisations, a service provider can be worth it. Costs range from around €150 to several thousand euros depending on the effort.

For a normal rental listing, option 1 is almost always the right one – fast, free and good enough.

If you manage whole portfolios in agency software, you usually don't handle floor plans one by one but carry them along with the property: in an OpenImmo import, floor plans stored as <anhaenge> travel into the portal automatically.

A listing-ready floor plan in a few steps#

1. 1

   Gather the measurements

   From your survey or an existing plan: room dimensions, wall thickness, doors and windows. Tip: measure the diagonal to detect crooked walls.

2. 2

   Draw walls, doors and windows

   In the online editor, set the outer and interior walls, then doors and windows. The detailed how-to is in the guide Draw a floor plan online.

3. 3

   Name the rooms and check the area

   Label the rooms and reconcile the automatically calculated square metres with your WoFlV calculation – especially for sloped ceilings and balconies.

4. 4

   Export and embed

   Export as PDF or PNG and upload it to your listing – on WOHNO with one click straight into your listing.

Export and embed in the listing#

For a listing, PDF or a high-resolution PNG is ideal. A good editor exports without a watermark – someone else's logo across your floor plan looks unprofessional in an exposé. If you list on WOHNO, you carry the floor plan into your listing with one click so it appears alongside the photos in the gallery.

Create a listing with a floor plan

Draw your floor plan for free, add it straight to the listing and reach the right applicants with clear information instead of anonymous mass enquiries.

List now

FAQ – floor plan for a rental listing#