It's easy to overlook the additional costs you actually have to pay for your own four walls.
But there is a widening gap between a cold and a warm home that needs to be addressed much more with rising energy prices.
Due to the downstream billing for electricity and natural gas, the price jump will only become apparent gradually - and often affect poorer households.
According to a new survey from the Copernicus project Ariadne, people with a net income of less than 1,700 euros per month paid 22 euros per square meter in a high-rise building for heating and hot water per year last year - twice as much as high incomes in a single-family house.
In addition to the size of the apartment, this is probably due to how old and poorly insulated the house is.
Investments promise to reduce current expenses, but they cost money in the first place.
Politicians must ask themselves how well the state subsidy framework can reach poorer households at all, while the building sector continues to miss the climate targets.
The more expensive the ancillary costs become, the greater the pressure to act.
Sooner or later it will be difficult to overlook how much a building's energy consumption contributes to the value of the property.