Increase in charges after moving out of apartment

Hi all,

Myself and my german girlfriend moved out of apartment 5.5 months ago. Have been waiting for our deposit since.

A letter came the other day saying that we must pay approximately 400 euro before we get our deposit back (500ish).

The breakdown is for insurance for the flat, a gardener, clearing snow from the driveway, cleaning the house/building and one light outside (on a timer). The building consisted of 7 apartments - 4 owned by our landlord (3 of our landlord's apartments occupied when we moved in).

We moved in at the start of august. In October one tenant moved out and another in December. We moved out at the end of January.

Now it seems the landlord is trying to charge the costs between the 2 tenants left instead of by apartment.

We paid 73 euro a month for clearing the roads, a gardener and parking space (15 euro). Nobody ever cleaned the building.

Is that legal? Can they increase the charges to whatever they like and split them only with the tenants and not by apartment?

Thanks for any help/advice.

There should be a bill for the whole building for one full year, you pay a certain fixed percentage according to the size of your apartment or by number of apartments in the building and all of that should be on the bill you get (Nebenkostenabrechnung). It should also be broken down by the time you actually lived there.

So it looks quite dodgy to me, go to a Mieterverein and show them your bill, they'll give you better advise

No they can't. The charges must be backed up by bills which you are entitled to see. The costs are then divided amongst all the appartments. Most commonly the costs are divided according to the area of the apartment. In most relatively modern, or renovated appartments water and heating are usually metered and the charge here will be split between a flat rate and according to consumption. In older flats, typically 50% will be flat rate and 50% consumption. In relatively modern buildings consumption may account for up to 80% of the bill. If the utilities are not metered, then heating costs will probably be based on the size of the apartment, but water is then often charged according to the number of occupants.

One thing to watch out for, if one (or more) appartments are standing empty it's quite common for unscrupulous landlords to try to divide all the costs among the remaining, occupied, appartments. This is illegal, but that doesn't stop them trying it on, unfortunately. Each item on your bill should include the following:

The total costs for the whole building
The "Gesamt Einheiten" or total units for the charge - either the square meter size of the whole building or the total number of appartments*
Your "Einheiten" - either the size of your apartment or "1" if it's a cost / apartment
Your costs, obtained by dividing the Total costs by the total units and then multiplying by your units

*While most charges are split according to the size of the apartment, sometimes (if you're lucky) cost that are not related to the size of the apartment, such as costs for cable TV, or the upkeep of the garden, may occasionally be split on a per flat basis.

One problem if people have been moving in and out of the flat is that whover signed the lease is responsible for paying the bills. If only one person signed, then it's his (or her) responsibility. Unfortunately, even if everybody has signed a rental contract, each individual is jointly resposnible for all of the costs. This means that if your fellow tenats move out the landlord can require you to pay the full bill. It is then your problem to try and find the other ex-tenants and get the money back from them.

I was "Verwalter" for 48 appartments for five years back in the late 90s, so I know my way around this stuff fairly well, although I may have missed some changes of the law in recent years. So if you have any further questions, come back and we'll see if we can get them sorted out.

Thank you guys sooo much.

These landlords are dodgy and that is why many people left the flats. We only stayed there for 6 months. We were in the flat for 3 nights in the whole of January but they want to charge us an extra 80 euro for that month even though we already paid 101 for heating and warm water (we paid the electricity and TV ourselves direct) and we also paid 73 euro for the other things like gardener, maintenance and clearing the road of snow (plus an extra 15 euro a month for the parking space separate). So even though we were only there the 3 nights they want to charge us 254 euro (not including rent and parking)! If anything we should be getting back most of the 101 euro for heating and warm water since we used very little.

The landlords are trying to split the costs between the tenants. One of the other tenants told us this just before we left. Unfortunately my German girlfriend is not the best when it comes to legal rights etc.

I guess we are better off joining the Mieterverein so that they can advise us. Pity these assholes are going to cost us the 60 euro or whatever it is to join.

What is the situation with insurance on the building? Do we have to pay that and again is that split between all the apartments?

It sounds very much like you do need help from somebody and the Mieterverein is probably your cheapest source of assistance.

Just a few points:


If you, or somebody else, rented the flat for the whole of January, then the landlord is quite within his rights to charge the flat's share of the total costs for January. If you signed a rental agreement and moved in on the 29th of January, then that's a whole new ball game - in your favour.


Unfortunately, that's not the way it works! Is your water use and heating metered? If so, a part of the cost should be related to this and should be clearly visible on the bill.


It is perfectly acceptable for the landlord to charge the cost of the building insurance and split the cost across all the flats. Once again, this should be clearly itemised in your bill, as a rule the insurance is split according to the relative area of the flat as a proportion of the total area of the building.


This is definitely not on. However, exactly what sort of a rental agreement do you have? It is possible to rent flats on a per day basis, typically for 20€ - 50€ per day (dependant on quality), but that is then an all in charge. From what you say, you have a normal flat rental and then the charges are for the flat, for the period of the rental, as defined in the rental agreement.

Who signed the rental agreement, you, your German girlfriend, both of you, or somebody else completely, who is now no longer in the flat? This is a very important point, so it would help to get it clear!

If you've got a scanner available, I'd be interested if you could PM me a copy of the bill. There are very strict regulations about how the bill has to be layed out and from what your're saying, it wouldn't surprise me to discover that these are not being adhered to.

Yes, I will joining them asap.


Couldn't agree more. My point was that there is no way that we went near the 101 euro for water and heat thus if anything we should be getting back money for that month. They have 163 euro of water and heat in their bill (I have yet to calculate the figures myself) which could not be right for 3 nights usage.


Yes the water and heating is metered. We will have to calculate those costs ourselves.


Yes, I thought that might be the case.


Yes, we had an normal open ended rental agreement with a minimum 3 months notice for leaving (which we followed).


Only myself and my german girlfriend. We were the only two living in the flat.


I have a scan of all the pages. They are in my girlfriends email account. I will send them to you as soon as she gets home (an hour or two).

Thanks a million for all your help and advice.

RMA has got it right in one.If your landlords appartments are stood empty then they have to cover the charges out of their own pocket.Do not stand for it.If you get legal advice on this then he would have to pay for the lawyers bills too.

I think I misunderstood this the first time round, I thought you had been sharing the flat with the other tenants who then moved out.

Do you mean that these other tenants were renting one (or two) of the four flats which your landlord owns and he is now trying to spread the costs generated by four flats entirely onto your flat, or perhaps onto two flats, if another of the flats which was empty had been occupied in the meantime?

If any of the landlord's flats remain empty then he alone is responsible for the costs incurred during that period. Obviously the proportion of the costs for consumption of water and heating would be low, but all the rest of the charges remain unchanged.

I think I'll have a better idea what's going on when you send me the copy of the bill.

By the way, it's not impossible, but it's a bit unusual for the financial year for the "Nebenkosten" not to be the same as the calendar year, so normally you wouldn't get the final reckoning of your January bill until the middle of next year (not an encouraging thought, I agree!) - once again, the period for the calculation of the costs should be clearly shown on the bill.

All in all, the more I hear about this set-up, the less I like it!

I believe 4 flats were occupied and then 2 left.


Thats exactly what I need to know.


My girlfriend doesnt have it in her email anymore she thought she wouldn't need it. Women


It seems they have charged the average of the 3 months for january but if you look at the meter figures the heating did not go up, only the water went up a tiny bit. I guess we either have to accept the average or wait til next year?

There is a building cleaning fee of 876.72 for the full year (charged at 75 euro to us) even though we never once saw someone come into the building to clean it. There were cobwebs and we ended up sweeping the stairs and hallway ourselves etc.

Do we pay the ground (land?) tax too?

Get the bill in writing. Never do anything legally important via email.

Yes, for reasons totally beyond my comprehension, they can charge you the "Grundsteuer B".

As kato says, if they only sent you the bill by e-mail, write to them (preferably by recorded delivery) and tell them you want a copy on paper. Set a "Frist" of two weeks or so, so that the sod doesn't just ignore you. By the way, the Mieterverein will also want to see the bill and probably your rental agreement as well, without them they'll feel their hands are a bit tied - and it definitely sounds like you need to speak to them about this!


If you think the difference is small enough to be worth avoiding the hastle of having to remember to chase things up next year, then fair enough, otherwise I'd tell him to bill you for January next year.

Just remembered, from what you said at the start about January, he reckons you owe him money, then it's up to him to come chasing you next year, if he wants his money back!


You are entitled to see all the bills, have a look and see who has done the cleaning (supposedly). A common trick is to set up your own company for things like this and then set the charges far too high (or in your case, simply not do the work). As you might expect in over-regulated, Mieter-friendly Germany, this is also illegal. Mention to the Mieterverein that no cleaning was actually done and see what they think.