The overall research aim of the dissertation is to emphasize the importance of a complementary detailed analysis of residential real estate by underlining the significance of the component time on market, in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the German housing market. In this context, the dissertation introduces liquidity indices for the German investment and rental market, followed by a detailled analysis of the determinants of liquidity of rental dwellings in the largest seven German cities. The dissertation not only identifies regionial differences in those determinants but introduces a new estimation method to real estate liquidity research and reveals a weakness in a traditional estimation method for the liquidity of residential dwellings.