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Heating cost alarm: Tenants fight against exploding back payments!
Heat pumps and heat contracting burden tenants in North Rhine-Westphalia with skyrocketing heating costs. Gaps in the law must be closed.
Heating cost alarm: Tenants fight against exploding back payments!
A fast-paced discussion is currently underway in Germany, and it's about an explosive topic: heating costs. Tenants in particular are faced with skyrocketing costs due to the permeable legal situation regarding heat contracting. Again Mercury reported, landlords can freely pass on the costs of converting heat pumps to the tenants. Around five million households in Germany are potentially affected, and they may have to expect their heating costs to double if they use gas or night storage heaters.
The German Tenants' Association is sounding the alarm: once again the financial burdens are spreading across the shoulders of tenants - while... yes, while landlords simply outsource the investments. Through heat contracting, owners outsource the operation and maintenance of the heating system to external service providers. The associated costs are integrated into the heating costs via higher basic prices, meaning that tenants are asked to pay twice.
Heating cost explosion in Magdeburg and elsewhere
A look at Magdeburg shows how quickly such costs can explode. Tenants there have to pay thousands of euros in additional payments, even though heating costs have been reduced by 33%. For a specific family, the rent increased from 495 to 690 euros, an increase of a whopping 3,227 euros for 48 m². In other cities such as Bottrop and Berlin, tenants are also defending themselves against unexpected additional payments and demanding receipts for the high amounts. In Bottrop, for example, Vonovia reduced the claims from 1,400 to 49 euros, and in Berlin, an invoicing error was fortunately quickly discovered.
The problem: While landlords are often allowed to use “supposed” assumptions to justify their heating costs, tenants have to bear the actual costs. The daily news highlights that the labor price for district heating in the 4th quarter of 2022 was almost 62 cents per kWh - this can be seen as excessive. And the pricing formula remains opaque. Consumer advocates have therefore long been calling for legal regulation to better protect tenants.
Legal gray areas and required measures
Legal advisor Zakaria Said speaks plainly when he says that tenants must be informed about the contracting agreements and landlords should give three months' notice of any change. But the reality is often different. The German Tenants' Association is therefore calling for the legal loophole that allows landlords to use these practices to be closed without there being a legal basis for it. Discussions with associations and politicians have already been initiated to improve the situation.
It remains to be seen how the legal framework will develop. The IV Tenant protection points out that it is time to clarify these issues so that tenants can no longer be burdened with unnecessary costs.
It's obvious: there's something going on. The debate surrounding heating costs, which are unloaded via heat contracting, is becoming a hot topic in the political arena - and it remains to be hoped that solutions will soon be found that both tenants and landlords can have a good handle on.