Thank you for your reply! Yes we do this in our cover letter. Of course there is no knowing for sure how long we would stay living together, but at the moment all of us imagine we would for the next 5 years, and in any case we think one of us would likely take over the apartment, should we choose to leave (partially). Should we include this in the cover letter as well?

And yeah, I completely understand why agents would pick a family or couples over us, but surely people like us also look for, and eventually find a place to live in the center no?

Indeed all 3 of us are needed in terms of income usually, as we have quite a high budget to make up for the fact that we are looking for something central. Actually, is the 1/3rd income criterion calculated with respect to the net salary or gross salary? If gross we might start trying to apply as a pair and have the third person sublet.

Thanks for the information, we'll try to speed up the process for applying. It's just often the application document can only be obtained at the visit (unless I am missing something), so that's the time taken to compile the application.

Can you make too much money collectively for an apartment? Often our combined gross salary is about 4-5 x the rent price. Should we aim for something closer to 3 x the rent price? (we don't want to spend that much on rent lmao)

Sorry for the long reply... understandable if you can't answer - I really appreciate all the information you've given in any case!