SCHUFA questions / strategy

The subject of student housing has often been mentioned here. Most Universities have some student apartment facilities but they are usually limited. But foreigners are generally given priority since they know it is easier for locals to look on their own. Foreigners won't know the local market and will be at particular disadvantage in a housing market that is very tight in most of Germany - although I don't know about Duisberg in particular.

The majority of students will find rooms in a shared flat with other students or young people, known as Wohngemeindschafts or WGs. This is by far the cheapest and easiest way. One often needs no Schufa score. They will generally make a rental contract out as a sub-renter with the main renter. And since students come and go there is a constant turnover of places available. The thing is usually to find the matching place with people with similar life-styles. Not sensible to be a neat, quiet, studious post-graduate student of 35 living with a bunch of chaotic,  loud, partying 20 year olds.

Usually such rooms get found through word of mouth or ads stuck on pin-boards at the Universities. Problem is that most University buildings are presently closed or have very restricted access because of Covid and the pin-boards are not being used. In Stuttgart at least, I think most courses are still being taught online. Maybe through a university one can find some website, chat-rooms or what-ever where one can find such things online.

But unless one gets really lucky, they might have to arrange an air-bnb, hostel or cheap hotel until they can find a room.

I'm by no means an expert o the subject but as far as Schufa goes, one doesn't do anything themselves but will have a schufa created for them by a financial institute upon getting a loan of any kind; not sure about just having a bank account. One builds up the score by borrowing and repaying loans and mortgages or using credit cards. Contradictory, one who never borrows or uses credit will not have a positive schufa score. So it is not a grading of ones actual financial situation as a billionaire could have no schufa score. It is a rating of one one's record of paying money back on time that was borrowed. I have personally never needed to even know such a thing while living in Germany for over 20 years. I bought my own apartment and took a medium sized mortgage for 10 years that was paid back on schedule. Otherwise, I never took loans or credit. There is a kind of freedom of information act that one can apply and find out for free what their schufa rating is but I have never bothered.

First and foremost: Don't use "Rentberry" or similarly websites!
I had a look at it and found that it is merely a consolidator of ads from other sources, some of them dubious. Better search on Ebay Kleinanzeigen (without realtor), Immoscout (mostly with realtor -> you pay a fee!) or WG-gesucht (for rooms and shared housing). Or follow Tom's advice above. You cannot start your search before arrival in Germany, and most places are advertised and taken months before move-in, so it is prudent to have initial temporary accommodation to cover this period - but two weeks might not suffice.
The SCHUFA is a law unto itself (some say a "Mafia") and there is very little you can do to establish or improve your listing there, other than having a (financially) clean record as Tom stated above. As student, without fixed income, you are anyway at the bottom of their (and most landlords') ranking, so look for places that don't require it (it is by no means compulsory!).
I have also never needed my SCHUFA record, but got one once a couple of years ago out of personal interest. I found that it contains most (but not all) of my bank accounts, most (but not all) of my mobile phone contracts (even prepaid ones) and my mortgage was curiously missing. It also contained an allegedly non-paid bill (of less than €10), which I never knew about, but no information about my income. It is also their well-guarded secret how all this is calculated into an overall score (I had the second highest possible), but apparently how many and which enquiries about my score they receive is playing a big role here. In my opinion, this is unsuitable to base any decision on, so as a landlord I never ask for it from my tenants.

Thank you for your responses :-)
Much appreciated.
I was wondering one quick question, if you want to purchase home goods, in France they have le bon coin and in the uk we have gumtree, what is the German equivalent?
Best wishes,
Rob

You mean a classified ads site where you can find cheap used goods?
Try Ebay Kleinanzeigen!

A quick heads up, on Schufa, I did a  project involving schufa checks bit from a (b2b ) business to business perspective back in 2008: ie the overall scoring process and the part that Schufa plays.

1) simply put - Schufa gathers “at least” a list of all financial transactions by you for those where defaulted payments were reported. The US equivalent is called FICO. In China it is a government function and UK , Australia, Canada use multiples (even more intransparent scoring methods) like Equifax etc.  You get added automatically "for free " to Schufa for tracking, when any business checks your credit score, or you signed any contract in your life with Schufa clearance. Even billionaires have electricity bills, water, telephone etc. contracts where Schufa checks are standard.
2) If some business “believes” that you defaulted on them, they can report you as individual (using your credentials) and that “misdemeanor” gets added to your list, even if it might be contentious, like a bill not paid due to insufficient services, or a landlord freezing you out in your flat in winter, or you defaulting on your home loan for 3 months, after losing your job and still repaying it afterwards. There is no higher instance to complain than schufa itself. Schufa has a process to contest the listing , but that involves you writing an excuse letter to the business that raised the request and begging for mercy.
3) the Schufa credit score does not only involve your financial history, in fact demographics affects the score , “slightly”: where you live, your income, criminal record, your family members score and financial security, friends scores- relations to dodgy individuals etc.
4) Every business that have your credentials and proof of imminent contract can request a schufa score if you placed a  clearance checkmark in contract, to secure themselves and be sure that you are a model payer.

5)  Even the number of Schufa requests in a short time period lowers your score over time,  so rather request it yourself- you are entitled to a free disclosure on the first time that contains your score. Schufa however formally “prohibits” you from sharing that, because they also want to know who is asking questions about you and persist that forever. A credit scoring report for 29,95€ contains a list of all business that reported you in your lifetime on this planet for some reason.
6 ) next time you sign any contract, even registering with an online business with account details or borrow money from any bank, don’t forget that likely all of that is shared and remembered for “all” future businesses where you have financial dealings later in life.
7 ) government regulation (§ 15 DS-GVO) have tried to mitigate personal individual fates by allowing certain entries to be removed if you can proof “repayment” but only if it was below 2K€. Outside EU there is none such mitigation. There is also a movement in Germany to get transparency called openSCHUFA to try to reverse engineer the logic by having people all share their scores to the platform, but it is Sisyphus task, since the algorithm is modified constantly also using AI and a trade secret, all data sources is not the report ( ie Schufa is buying Your Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter profile scores already a decade ago). And that, that is why Schufa is trusted : because of its high profile accuracy… good luck now on maintaining a good and clean score, keeping good online relations (by unfriending & blocking) and avoiding “hitwords” that reflect bad on your social intelligence. GDPR provides a right to privacy and the right to have some things forgotten, but it still does not apply to your financial paper trail, to date.