What can a landlord charge in a German Nebenkostenabrechnung

Only what the lease passes on

Operating costs are not automatically yours. §556 section 1 BGB says the parties to a lease can agree that the tenant bears them, and defines them as the running costs the owner incurs through owning the property or through the intended use of the building and grounds. Mieterverein Köln, a member association of the Deutscher Mieterbund, puts it plainly: operating costs may only be allocated and billed if this has been stipulated in the tenancy agreement.

The lease also decides how you pay. §556 section 2 allows either a flat rate (Pauschale) or advance payments (Vorauszahlungen), and only advance payments are settled with a yearly statement. Mieterverein Köln lists billing costs that were never agreed, or billing them although a flat rate was agreed, as errors in the content of a statement.

So the first thing to check is not the statement but your lease. Look for the clause on Betriebskosten or Nebenkosten and see whether it refers to the Betriebskostenverordnung as a whole or lists individual items.

The 17 categories in the Betriebskostenverordnung

§2 of the Betriebskostenverordnung (BetrKV), the operating costs ordinance, lists what counts. In order: 1 recurring public charges on the property, mainly property tax (Grundsteuer); 2 water supply; 3 drainage and sewage; 4 heating; 5 hot water; 6 combined heating and hot water systems; 7 lifts; 8 street cleaning and waste collection; 9 building cleaning and pest control; 10 garden care; 11 lighting of outdoor and shared areas; 12 chimney sweeping; 13 property and liability insurance for the building; 14 the caretaker (Hauswart); 15 antenna, cable and in-house network systems; 16 shared laundry facilities; and 17 other operating costs.

Each item comes with its own detail. Water supply, for instance, includes the meter rental and the cost of calculating and dividing the bill. Building cleaning covers shared parts such as entrances, corridors, stairs, cellars and the lift car. Insurance covers the building against fire, storm, water and other natural hazards, plus glass and liability insurance for the building, the oil tank and the lift.

The last item, sonstige Betriebskosten, catches running costs that fit the general definition but none of the first sixteen headings. The Mieterverein zu Hamburg gives the maintenance of smoke alarms as an example. Because this item is open-ended, it matters even more that the lease names what it covers.

What never belongs on the statement

§1 section 2 of the Betriebskostenverordnung excludes two groups outright. The first is administration costs (Verwaltungskosten): the staff and facilities needed to manage the building, supervision, the landlord's own management work, audits of the annual accounts and the cost of business management. The second is maintenance and repair (Instandhaltung and Instandsetzung): the cost of putting right defects caused by wear, ageing and weather.

Mieterverein Köln spells out what that means on paper. Regardless of what the lease says, a statement must not contain administration costs, maintenance or repair costs, maintenance reserves, management surcharges, the landlord's contributions to the owners' association, bank charges, postage, or loss-of-rent and legal expenses insurance. It adds two examples that are easy to miss: repairing a heating pump is the landlord's cost, and replacing lamps and bulbs cannot be billed under general electricity or lighting.

The caretaker item has a built-in limit. Under §2 No. 14 BetrKV, caretaker costs count only as far as the work does not concern maintenance, repairs, renewals, cosmetic repairs or property management. If the caretaker also does the cleaning or garden work, those tasks cannot be billed a second time under their own headings.

Cable TV after June 2024

Item 15 changed recently. The current text of §2 No. 15 BetrKV allows the usage fee for an antenna system outside the building and the copyright fees for cable retransmission only until 30 June 2024, and the same date applies to the monthly basic fees for broadband (cable) connections. What remains is the operating electricity and, for a shared antenna system, its regular checks.

In practice this means a statement for 2024 can include those cable fees for the first half of the year at most, and a statement for 2025 should no longer carry them. The ordinance also says that the cable provisions in letters a and b do not apply at all to systems installed from 1 December 2021.

A newer item covers fibre. Letter c allows the running costs of an in-house fibre network connected to a very high capacity public network, including a provision charge (Glasfaserbereitstellungsentgelt), if you can choose your own provider. §556 section 3a BGB adds that tenants only bear that charge if the work was carried out economically.

How the costs are split

Unless the lease says otherwise, §556a BGB splits operating costs by floor area. Costs that depend on recorded consumption, or that tenants cause in measurable amounts, have to be split in a way that reflects those differences. The statement has to name the allocation key it used, and the Verbraucherzentrale lists the keys, with an explanation where needed, among the minimum contents of a statement.

Heating and hot water follow the Heizkostenverordnung. Under §7 and §8, at least 50 and at most 70 percent of the cost of a central heating or hot water system has to be split by the consumption recorded for each household. The rest is split by floor area, or for heating also by the volume of the rooms. If heating or hot water is billed without regard to consumption in breach of the ordinance, §12 gives the tenant the right to cut their share of those costs by 15 percent.

Every item is also subject to the principle of economic efficiency in §556 section 3 BGB. Mieterverein Köln describes it as the duty to act in an economically reasonable way, for example when hiring a caretaker or taking out insurance.

Common mistakes when reading the statement

Reading the result instead of the lines. The Mieterverein zu Hamburg notes that a statement is not wrong just because it ends in a top-up, and a credit does not prove it is right.

Skipping the deduction of advance payments. The Verbraucherzentrale counts it among the minimum contents of a statement, and Mieterverein Köln gives advance payments that were miscalculated or not taken into account as an example of an error in the content of a statement. Compare the figure with what you actually paid over the year.

Not asking for the receipts. §556 section 4 BGB gives you the right to inspect the documents behind the statement, electronically if the landlord prefers. The Mieterverein zu Hamburg adds that a result clearly different from previous years is at least a sign that a closer look at the individual lines makes sense.

Checking line by line without a list. Nebenklar is built for this step: it asks one question at a time about your own statement, and each answer that matches a type of item tenants can generally object to, such as administration costs or cable TV fees, gets a highlighter mark together with the rule behind it.

This guide summarises the general rules. It is not legal advice and does not tell you whether your own statement is correct. For that, talk to a Mieterverein (tenants' association), a consumer advice centre or a lawyer.

Frequently asked questions