Record Rent Reduction: Why My Landlord Had to Pay Me Back €11,000
DER SPIEGEL was the first to report on this remarkable case: a shared flat in Berlin-Kreuzberg used CONNY to win a rent reduction of €700 per month. Because the proceedings dragged on for a year and a half, the refund claim added up to more than €11,000 in total. We spoke to the main tenant, Maha A.*, about why the case took so long and what the flatshare now plans to do with the money.
An apartment up for re-letting in Berlin-Kreuzberg. A typical late-19th-century period building (Gründerzeit Altbau) – the area is very popular with young people, newcomers to the city and the multicultural community.
The catch: the apartment was to cost €1,400 a month in basic rent (excluding heating and service charges) for around 100 m². Maha A. was surprised by the price, but she was glad to have been invited to a viewing at all.
“We were living in a temporary sublet and had to move out. So we were under pressure and had contacted more than 100 listings by email or phone. Often we didn’t even get a reply. Of course we thought the price was too high, but we had no choice,” Maha recalls. The flat-hunters had already seen the listing on ImmobilienScout many months earlier. It was still available, so it was obviously priced above the market rate. Maha therefore contacted the landlord to ask whether the apartment could be rented for €200 less. “The answer was a clear no,” says Maha.
“I already knew at that point that something like the rent control law (Mietpreisbremse) existed. And I knew about CONNY from Facebook. So we signed anyway and were determined to make use of the law through your portal once we had moved in.”
Before Maha started the process via CONNY, however, she preferred to call customer service one more time. She could hardly believe that all you have to do is fill in the questionnaire and upload your tenancy agreement. Just two months after the flatshare moved into the new apartment, Maha instructed us to reduce her rent: “...and then, for quite a while, nothing happened at all...” she remembers.
The landlord did indeed go silent – he did not respond to the 15-page letter of complaint (Rüge) in which CONNY set out in detail how and why the rent control law had been breached.
Three months later, in October 2017, one of CONNY’s partner lawyers filed a claim with the Tempelhof-Kreuzberg Local Court (Amtsgericht). At the hearing, the landlord’s lawyer had little to offer against the claims and evidence presented by our partner lawyer. Nevertheless, the local court ruled against us. We appealed and the case went up to the next instance, the Regional Court (Landgericht). Since the wheels of justice often turn slowly at Berlin courts, not least because of chronic staff shortages, the case ended up in a holding pattern for months. “The landlord tried to exploit this and probably hoped he could drag the case out long enough, or that we would give in,” says Daniel Halmer, CEO and founder of CONNY, adding: “Unfortunately, it still happens now and then that landlords use every trick in the book to draw out proceedings unnecessarily.”
Almost two years after the case was launched, there was finally a binding outcome. The other side agreed to almost all of our demands.
The regional court confirmed that CONNY is entitled to enforce tenants’ rights. The landlord and Maha’s flatshare then reached what is known as a settlement (Vergleich). We had demanded a rent reduction of €818, from €1,404 to €586. The landlord agreed to cut the rent by more than half: from €1,404 to €700. Because the rent was reduced retroactively from the receipt of our letter of complaint, covering the period between September 2017 and February 2019, this resulted in a refund claim of almost €12,000. On top of that, the lower basic rent also reduced the deposit. Since the deposit amounts to three months’ net basic rent, a further three times €704 was added. Altogether that came to more than €14,000. CONNY’s success fee was then deducted from this: four times the monthly saving. In the end, €11,000 landed in Maha’s account. For the landlord, the case was particularly painful: not only did he have to pay back €14,000, he also had to bear 90 per cent of the legal costs.
And what is the flatshare doing with the money now?
“At first we wanted to go on holiday together to a Greek island. But since we are all pretty busy, we have now decided on new furniture for our big, bright courtyard balcony.” And what does Maha hope for the future of the Berlin rental market? “There definitely needs to be more awareness-raising. I am politically active and surrounded by lots of people who keep themselves well informed. Even so, many people around me don’t know that an online portal like yours exists. Rents will only stay affordable if tenants actually make use of their right to a rent reduction.”