Renting
Service charges
Once a year a Nebenkostenabrechnung arrives and asks for money. Only seventeen categories of cost may be passed on at all, the landlord must bill within twelve months, and the apportionment has to follow an agreed key. This works through all three.
Balance for your flat
—- Chargeable in total
- —
- Your share
- —
- Advance payments
- —
- Per m² per month
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Item by item
| Cost | Key | Building | Your share |
|---|
What this means for you
Where the money goes
Your share by category, largest first.
What may not be charged to you
Your rights
The three questions worth asking
Did it arrive in time? The landlord has twelve months after the end of the billing period. A statement for the 2025 calendar year must reach you by 31 December 2026. Miss that and the claim for arrears is gone — section 556(3) of the Civil Code says so plainly, with one exception for delays the landlord could not have avoided. A credit in your favour is not affected and stays payable however late it comes.
Is every item allowed to be there? Only the seventeen categories listed in section 2 of the Operating Costs Ordinance may be passed on, and only if the tenancy agreement says so. Management costs and repairs are not among them. Neither are the costs of empty flats, bank charges, or a new boiler — however the item is worded on the statement.
Is the apportionment key the agreed one? Without an agreement the default is floor area. Heating is different: the Heating Costs Ordinance requires between 50 and 70 per cent of it to be split by metered consumption, and a statement that ignores that lets you cut the heating share by 15 per cent.
How to object
In writing, within twelve months of receiving the statement, saying what you dispute. Ask to inspect the original invoices — you are entitled to see them, and until that is granted you may withhold the balance. If the landlord will not engage, a tenants' association (Mieterverein) will check the statement for you; membership is typically 60 to 120 euros a year and includes legal advice, which is less than an hour of a lawyer's time.