I agree with you. There's no comma needed there because the second clause is not an independent clause (i.e. contains at least a subject and a verb).
Commas cause confusion in both German and English all the time.
Slightly OT: What I don't like in the sentence is the placement of "only." It should be placed as closely as possible to that which it modifies, in this case, it should read "and differs only in terms of a higher degree of housing protection." (As it stands, "only" is modifying "differs.")
But I'm one of the very small minority of NESs that thinks that way. I even had a translator change "only" back to the wrong position when they translated an update to a document that they had previously translated and that I had then proofread. The segment had been slightly changed so that they had to rework it -- but they shouldn't have moved "only" in the partial match.
I always had thought that people were just being lazy when they put "only" in the wrong position (usually too early in the sentence). I guess that some people, at least, think that that is correct.
Edit: I find that putting a comma where you would take a breath leads to a great number of incorrectly placed commas -- too many and too few.
However, when I'm preparing a text to be spoken (but not to be shared in written form), I do many tricks to help with my delivery, including putting in superfluous commas where I need/want to insert a pause for whatever reason.
