Refund of the rental deposit for a rental apartment

Hi,

we moved from our apartment in Berlin to our new house in January. The refund of the rental deposit (2,000 EUR) is still outstanding. Our landlord now wants (after repeated urging) to pay out half and the other half only after the operating cost statement for the year 2017. He is doing this in 2018. We would then have to wait until next year before we receive the second half of the deposit. I am now wondering if this is legal? His justification is that additional payments might still arise from the 2017 operating cost statement (it was only for the month of January!) and he needs half the deposit as security for that long. I believe I have read that a refund must be made within 6 months. Does anyone know what to do in my case?

Thanks, regards

The full repayment can only be made once the landlord has received all receipts and invoices from the utility companies. This can also take 12 months. However, he may only retain a reasonable portion of the deposit. For a rental period of one month, this should not be €1000. If you moved out in January, the billing period runs until December 2017. So it may happen that you only receive the final repayment at the end of 2018, depending on how fast the landlord and the billing agents are.

Yes, that is lawful. He may withhold a corresponding portion until the year 2017 has been fully settled, which will only be sometime in 2018 (Betriebskostenabrechnung 2017!). He may withhold the amount as security in case additional payments are expected. What is reasonable and what is not—that is disputed. I assume it is not worth arguing here; you will just receive the money later.

We handed over our apartment in June 2016 (tenancy ended on 31.07.). In January 2017 we became impatient and wrote a letter, excerpt:

We would like to point out that the outstanding service charge statement for the year 2016 does not entitle you to withhold the deposit. Even a security withholding for an expected additional payment is not lawful, since the service charge statements of previous years contained credits in our favor (AG Hamburg, 43b C 367/97, judgment of 15.5.1998).

.

The deposit was returned immediately. We are still waiting for the service charge statement for 2016, but in January 2018 we can calmly demand it ;-).

The withholding must be reasonable and, for example, if repayments were always due or only small additional payments, the four-digit amount here would be absolutely inappropriate. A €1000 withholding for one month would be reasonable if your ancillary costs were otherwise €12000 per year ...

...if the annual additional costs[NebenkostenNACHzahlung] in recent years had averaged 12,000 euros.