Regarding Heating: Landlord Responsibilities 

What are the landlord responsibilities when it comes to heating?* We´ll explain what matters during the heating seasons.

Cold Weather Requires Functioning Heating

The new heating season is here, and it´s getting steadily colder. This increases the pressure on property owners to ensure the heating works smoothly. Here, we outline the landlord´s responsibilities.

Heating Season from October 1 to April 30

Although the heating season is not legally defined, court rulings indicate it runs from October 1 to April 30. During this period, landlords are responsible for ensuring that living spaces can be adequately heated. This means maintaining a temperature of at least 20 to 22 degrees Celsius (68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit). At night, between midnight and 6:00 am, a room temperature of 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit) must be ensured. By the way, landlords are never allowed to completely turn off the heating, even during sleeping hours.

Possible Rent Reduction

If the heating breaks down and you don´t promptly address the repair, provide a replacement, or arrange for emergency heating, your tenants might be entitled to a rent reduction or, depending on the response time, even a termination without notice. Therefore, as a landlord, you should ensure that the heating system is quickly repaired in the event of a defect or provide emergency heating.

Landlord Responsibilities Do Not Imply Tenant Heating Obligations

Important: Tenants are not obligated to heat their apartments. Just because you have to ensure the heating works doesn´t mean your tenants have to use it. However, tenants are required to avoid damage to the rental property (for example, from excessive humidity). This inevitably means that living spaced need to be adequately heated.

Hot Water as a Basic Requirement

By the way, since hot water is also a basic requirement for a detect-free apartment and is often linked to the heating systems, many landlords need to ensure the heating system runs smoothly even in summer.

Whether you need a replacement heater or want to ensure hot water supply in your property – we provide the right replacement heating and mobile fresh water stations for any application.

*The information provided on this page does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to address individual legal issues or problems. The information provided is of a general nature and is for information purposes only.