Moving out of an apartment without renovating - Germany

As I understand it is not(no longer) necessary to renovate when one moves out. Just wanted to know what your experiences have been.

Thanks

Is that true? I just got a whole list of renovations served by the rental agent of the house I quit last month...a few hundred Euros at least!

as far as i know its no longer necessary to paint every 2-5 years but you still gotta renovate when you move out, except if you had to renovate when you moved in

Potentially helpful hints can be found here ... in German

Dont know how good your german is but this is an article about a ruling in weltonline.

basically it says you dont have to renovate if you used the place in a "normal" way. You do have to renovate if you broke a window for instance or had a marijuana joint running and everything smell "funny".

This is not true at all you have to paint the place but only if it was freshly painted when you moved in

sounds to me like you dont have to renovate if the place looks ok and not as stated in the rental contract that one must renovate automatically when one moves out (even if you only lived there a short time).

@miwild is that link from 2000?

It depends on the wording in the contract. If the contract says, for example, the heaters have to be painted every 3 years etc. as a lot of the older contracts had then this is invalid and the tenant does not need to renovate at all. Renovation is also clearly defined in German law. I'm in the middle of a court case to try and get my deposit back from a house we left in November 2006 !! so have learned a few of the rules...

Edit: I expect newer contracts will have this loophole covered so it depends what the contract says. Anyone renting should really join their local mieterverein (munich costs €60/year) as they will cover all these questions and really provide support. They are all lawyers and basically use the verein to get business for their practice but for simple problems/queries the verin can deal with them. When my case moved to court I still had to pay the verein an extra €180 yo-yos which covers the complete process... still it's worth it.

The old Germans don't like or don't know about the new laws. You no longer have to do what they should have to do themselves. Get the law printed out, it is posted several times here on TT and one of the links is from me, and have it ready to do battle. They will insist until you stuff this in their faces and tell them to fuck off. Unfortunately, the law only changed after I had my problem with a really good landlord. That is to say he was good until we moved out!

I'm excited already about taking my landlord to court for 1,500€ just cause hes a money thieving bugger

even if I win the lawyer will take it all(at least)

They are all mostly good until you move out... My guy try to claim I should feel "morally obliged" to renovate his house on moving out as that used to be the case and because the law changed during our tenancy... F/&% him and his bunch of soldiers... We're talking about 5000+ here...

Don´t think so ... looks like the website was copyrighted in 2000

The law as such didn´t change ... afaik

The BGH jurisdiction defined the duties of landlord and tenant more precisely though ... rendering a number of clauses in older (2003 - 2006) "standard" rental agreements invalid

Is it possible to simply forfeit your deposit and let your hausverwaltung deal w/all the renos themselves or would you be setting yourself up for potential legal trouble? Assuming that the flat in question has a lot of "issues" that would take a fair amount of time, money and bother to correct...then again, the flat and building were in pretty dire condition to begin with, not sure how much difference that makes.

My bad, it was indeed a court case that more properly defined the law that effectively "altered" it to a more just interpretation.

Fruitbowl, it makes a lot of difference if you caused it!

I had a look at a house I'm interested in and it was in a "not so great" condition(tenants been there for 22 years) to put it mildly. The Houseverwaltung made it very clear that they weren't gonna do *squat* since I wasen't liable for renovating when I move out.

I guess that makes it simple enough cause I have always gotten nice "white" places until now! So I don't understand why I should renovate the place I'm leaving if I have to stuff (5000€) money into the place I'm moving into?

Someone got the link eurovol was talking about?

"Comb the dessert" "we aint found shit"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtkK3eijBso&NR=1

Changing flats in Germany really sucks. I don't know what it is like in the UK or Scandinavia or such, but renting here is a big pain. I have 2 kids and have to paint every room in the house. The living room floor is parkett and with my kids rolling their toy cars across it, you can imagine what it looks like now. Then the whole thing with kitchen and bathroom cabinets that we had installed is just proving to be one big headache.
In our last flat, we also had an agent come by to do the protocol. Turns out I also had to clean the windows! There was also a fairly deep scratch in the floor from the movers disassembling my ikea wardrobe. I couldn't prove it was them and I sure was not going to hire someone to sand and reseal the entire room. After much discussion with the landlady who had new tenants willing to overlook the scratch, we got out and got our deposit in full.
If I knew we would settle in one place for a significant amount of time, I would consider buying. But we had to paint the entire flat; fill in all the holes from the EBK, lighting, and shelves; and have the pale blue carpet cleaned. €€€€€.