Using your home address as your business address in Germany

Can you use your home address as your business address?

Yes. No law stops you running a business from home or giving your home as its address. The address has to be a ladungsfähige Anschrift – a street address where you can be reached and documents can be handed to you. A home usually is one, as long as your name is on the letterbox and post reaches you there. It isn’t one if your name isn’t on the bell or letterbox – common when you sublet or share a flat – because post and court documents won’t reach you. Using your home as your business address has three consequences:

• It is public. The Impressum, the Handelsregister and your invoices exist so that anyone can find you. Your home address is what they find.
• Moving means changing it everywhere. When you move, you update your website, invoices and registrations – for a GmbH or UG, through a notary.
• If you rent, you may need your landlord’s permission. Quiet work at a desk is fine. If clients visit, staff work in the flat or a company sign goes on the door, the landlord has to agree.

For what makes an address valid in the first place, see what a ladungsfähige Anschrift is; for the jobs a business address does beyond the law, see the Geschäftsadresse guide.

Where does your home address become public?

The table shows each place your business address is published, who has to give one and whether a separate business address can take your home’s place.

Search engines and data aggregators copy what the Impressum and the register publish, so an address used once tends to stay findable long after you move.

What it means for sole traders, freelancers and GmbHs

• Sole trader or Freiberufler without a register entry. Your name and address are the business. With a website, your home address is in the Impressum beside your full name, and it is on every invoice.
• Eingetragener Kaufmann (e.K.). Your Geschäftsanschrift is entered in the Handelsregister (§ 40 HRV) next to your name.
• GmbH or UG. The company’s inländische Geschäftsanschrift is in the register (§ 10 GmbHG). The register entry lists managing directors by name, date of birth and town of residence – not their street (§ 43 HRV). But the documents filed with the register – the founding deed and the shareholder list – can be downloaded free by anyone (§ 9 HGB), and they show whatever was written into them. The law asks only for each shareholder’s town (§ 40 GmbHG), yet these documents can include full home addresses, and once filed they stay in the register. Ask your notary before signing what the filed documents will show.

Moving costs more once a register is involved. A sole trader updates the website, invoices and Gewerbeanmeldung. A GmbH or UG whose address is your home files every move with the register through a notary – see changing your GmbH or UG’s address for the steps and fees.

Do you need your landlord’s permission to run a business from a rented flat?

It depends on whether people outside your household notice the business.

• No permission needed: work that looks like living there – a laptop, phone calls, writing, programming.
• Permission needed: work that others notice – customers or clients coming to the flat, employees working there, a company sign on the door.

Without permission, the landlord can send a formal warning (Abmahnung) and, if you carry on, end the lease. If you plan any of the second list, tell your landlord briefly what you will do and ask for permission in writing before you start. If you own the flat, check your owners’ association rules (Teilungserklärung), which can limit business use.

A business address that is somewhere else changes nothing about how you work at home, but it keeps your flat out of the Impressum and the register – and with it, the visitors and post that follow them.

How do you keep your home address private?

Your home stays out of the Impressum and the register only if you give a different street address where post is accepted for you. The options differ mainly in cost and commitment:

How Olea fits

Olea sells business addresses at staffed business centres and coworking spaces in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Hanover and Potsdam. Each one is a ladungsfähige Anschrift, and it answers the three problems of a home address:

• Your home off the public record. The Olea address goes in your Impressum, on your invoices, in the Handelsregister and on your marketplace profiles – your flat appears in none of them.
• An address that stays put when you move. Move house as often as you like: your website, invoices and register entry stay the same, and a GmbH or UG needs no notarised filing.
• Clients meet you at the centre, not at home. Meeting rooms, desks and private offices can be booked at the addresses, so the business stays out of your flat – and out of your landlord’s way.
• Post received in your name. Your business name goes on the mailbox, and letters are scanned to your digital mailbox, with pickup or forwarding where the address offers it.
• Bought online, month to month. Each address shows its price and terms before you buy. There is no setup fee, deposit or minimum term, and the compliance check is done online, usually within one business day.

Compare addresses in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt, or see all locations.

FAQs

• Can I put a business address in my Impressum if I work from home?

  Yes, if it is a ladungsfähige Anschrift. § 5 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 DDG asks for the address under which you are established, so that visitors and authorities can reach you and serve documents on you. A staffed business address where post is accepted in your name meets that test; a Postfach does not.

• Does the Handelsregister show a GmbH managing director’s home address?

  Not in the register entry: it lists each managing director by name, date of birth and town of residence (§ 43 Nr. 4 HRV) – not the street. But the founding deed and shareholder list filed with the register can include full home addresses, and anyone can download them (§ 9 HGB), so ask your notary before signing what they will show. Your street is also in the entry itself if your home is the company’s inländische Geschäftsanschrift (§ 10 GmbHG).

• Can my home be my GmbH’s Firmensitz?

  Yes. A GmbH’s Sitz is the town named in its articles (§ 4a GmbHG); the street address entered in the register is its inländische Geschäftsanschrift (§ 10 GmbHG). Both can be where you live – but then your street is in the register. A business address can be entered as the Geschäftsanschrift instead, which also saves a notarised filing every time you move house.

• Can I hide my home address by blocking the residents’ register (Auskunftssperre)?

  Only from the residents’ register. An Auskunftssperre (§ 51 BMG) stops the registration office giving your address out where you are at risk of threats or harassment. Whatever you publish yourself – the Impressum, the Handelsregister entry, your invoices – stays public.

• Which address goes on my Gewerbeanmeldung?

  The Gewerbeanmeldung records your Betriebsstätte – the address where the business is actually carried on (§ 14 GewO) – so give the address that reflects how your business operates. A separate business address is for your Handelsregister entry and Impressum.

• Is a Postfach enough to keep my home address private?

  No. A Postfach has no street address, so it can’t stand in for one in the Impressum or the register. Deutsche Post only opens one for someone with a deliverable home address in Germany, and formal service is delivered to that house address, not to the box (Deutsche Post).

• Do invoices have to show my home address?

  They have to show your full address (§ 14 Abs. 4 Nr. 1 UStG) – but that can be your business address. Use the same one as in your Impressum and register entry, so customers and the Finanzamt see one address everywhere.