For anyone relocating to Odenwaldkreis from overseas, here is the data that matters before you commit: income, jobs, housing, connectivity, taxes and who lives here, straight from German Regionalstatistik, the Zensus 2022 and the Breitbandatlas.
Odenwaldkreis is residential commuter country more than a workplace in its own right. It reads as a commuter base: among the lightest on local jobs in Hesse.
How Odenwaldkreis compares
How Odenwaldkreis sits among Germany’s 400 districts (Kreise); building-land prices are recorded for 394 of them. Each bar shows the percentile; hover for the underlying figure.
See how Odenwaldkreis stacks up across Hesse: Cheapest to rent · Safest · Best for families.
Cost of living and housing
15% below DE avg
5% below DE avg
Building plots go for around €114 per m², the 223rd highest of 394 districts with a recorded price, the bare ground before a brick is laid and the floor under every local rent. The median German district is around €132 per m². Rent is gentle here by German standards. The average net cold rent (Nettokaltmiete) is €6.21 per m², about 15% below the German average of €7.28. Sitting tenants pay this 2022 census rate, and newcomers on the open market generally pay a step up. Disposable income per resident runs to €27,113 (240th highest of 400 German districts, 15th in Hesse). That puts it about 5% below Germany’s €28,453 average. On its own that number tells half the story; the local cost of living does the rest. At €6.21/m², a 70 m² flat works out to about €435 a month in cold rent (existing-tenancy 2022 level; a new lease costs more). Against local incomes, that ranks 9th most affordable of Hesse’s 26 districts. By comparison, rent here is roughly 59% of Frankfurt’s (€10.58/m²). The trade-off is the usual one: cheaper to rent than most, but with fewer local jobs.
The local housing market
The 2022 census sketches the local stock: 38.1% of homes are rented rather than owner-occupied; the vacancy rate is 4.9% (a fairly balanced market); the average home measures 110 m². The stock is 47,412 homes in 27,957 buildings, about 1.7 per building, so this is mostly houses rather than flats. In the latest year 75 new dwellings were completed against 57 permits, which hints at how much new housing is actually coming through.
Who lives in Odenwaldkreis
Age profile and household make-up from the 2022 census.
Age distribution
The population here skews older. 22.5% of residents are aged 25 to 45, the bracket most relocations fall into, with 13.4% under 15 and 25.7% at 65 or older. The rest of the 2022 census picture: 23.0% of residents have a migration history (14.3% are foreign nationals); 37.1% of households are single-person; 26.2% of adults hold an Abitur / university-entrance qualification. Enough foreign residents that you would not feel like the only newcomer, though German remains the default. There are 10,068 pupils in local schools. Childcare availability climbs with age: about 1.1% of under-1s, 30.7% of 1 to 2 year olds and 56.0% of 2 to 3 year olds have a place, so finding care for an infant is harder than for a toddler.
Jobs and the economy
25% below DE avg
Odenwaldkreis tends to empty out by day. Its 27,443 local jobs in 2025 come to 292 per 1,000 residents, a sign that many people who live here earn their money a train or motorway ride away. Those jobs are spread across 4,223 registered businesses (2024), a rough measure of how varied the local employers are. Unemployment stands at 4.7% in 2025 (German average 6.3%), roughly one in 21 of the local workforce.
Full-time employees living here take home a median gross wage of €3,950 a month (about the national median), before tax and contributions. This is a different measure from the disposable income per resident above: it is what people in work earn, not what each resident has left to spend. Source: Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2024.
Internet & connectivity
Share of households that can get each speed (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025). Gigabit may run over fibre or upgraded cable; true fibre (FTTB/H) is shown separately.
74% of households can get a fixed line of at least 100 Mbit/s, and 71% can reach gigabit (1,000 Mbit/s) speeds (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025). Of that, 64% of households can get true fibre to the building (FTTB/H); the rest of the gigabit coverage runs over upgraded cable. On mobile, 5G reaches 98% of households. There are still patches with weaker coverage, so verify the specific address before you commit to remote work.
Where Odenwaldkreis is in Germany
Recorded crime
Police-recorded offences in the district, per 100,000 residents.
The local rate is 2,711 recorded offences per 100,000 residents (2025, the Häufigkeitszahl), 47% below the German district median of about 5,096. This counts offences registered by the police, not convictions, and is inflated wherever offenders and victims are not residents: city centres, major stations, motorways and airports all push it up. It reflects recorded activity in the area, not how dangerous the place is for the people who live there. Source: Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik, BKA 2025.
Local taxes
Local tax barely registers for a typical newcomer. The trade-tax multiplier (Gewerbesteuer) is 390%, but it only touches you if you register a business: the tax office sets a base amount, the municipality multiplies it. The property tax (Grundsteuer B) reaches you as a tenant through the service charges (Nebenkosten), and it was reset in the 2025 reform, so there is no settled rate to quote yet.
Moving in and out
growing
The headcount in Odenwaldkreis is rising. In 2024, 6,034 moved in and 5,850 moved out, a net of +184. The inflow tops the outflow, which keeps demand on housing up. 255 people were naturalised here in 2024, a naturalisation rate of 1.9%. Some 1,975 people here hold or are seeking protection status, about 21.0 per 1,000 residents, the combined asylum, refugee and humanitarian total, with Ukrainians counted here since 2022. Turnout at the most recent election was 82.7%.
Just arrived in Odenwaldkreis? Sort these first
Expect to drive in Odenwaldkreis, a more rural district, at about 150 people per km², so car insurance and a bank account are worth sorting early.
FAQ: relocating to Odenwaldkreis
How expensive is Odenwaldkreis to live in?
The average net cold rent is €6.21 per m² (15% below the €7.28 German average), from existing 2022 tenancies, so a new lease runs higher. Disposable income per resident is €27,113 (240th highest of 400 German districts, 15th in Hesse). That puts it about 5% below Germany’s €28,453 average. Building land is around €114 per m², which feeds into local rents. It is not adjusted for local prices, so treat it as a headline only.
What is the job market like in Odenwaldkreis?
Odenwaldkreis has 27,443 jobs (292 per 1,000 residents, including commuters) and 4.7% unemployment, roughly one in 21 of the local workforce, against 6.3% across Germany.
Can I work remotely from Odenwaldkreis?
74% of households can get a fixed line of at least 100 Mbit/s, 71% gigabit of which 64% true fibre (FTTB/H); 5G mobile reaches 98% (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025), though coverage still has gaps, so check the exact address.
Is a car necessary in Odenwaldkreis?
Odenwaldkreis has about 150 residents per km². At that spread, most people need a car day to day.
Is land cheap to build on in Odenwaldkreis?
Building land costs around €114 per m² here. The median German district is around €132 per m². That covers the land alone, before any construction.
Other places in Hessen
Source: Regionaldatenbank Deutschland (regionalstatistik.de), Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder; supplementary data via Destatis GENESIS-Online. Housing, household, education and migration figures from the Zensus 2022. Broadband coverage from the Breitbandatlas (© MIG, BMDV). Recorded crime from the Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (BKA, 2025). Median full-time gross wages from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (2024). Years per field: population 2024, jobs and unemployment 2025, income 2023, businesses, building activity and land 2024, naturalisations 2024, childcare 2025; rent, vacancy, ownership, dwelling size, single-person households, education and migration 2022 (Zensus); broadband end of 2025 (Breitbandatlas). · How we built this ›