Maybe you know what it's like: you're sitting in your office and freezing because the heating is acting up; the wall is covered in gray stains because the facade is poorly insulated; or you can't concentrate since a music teacher has taken up residence in the room next door. Such conditions can be quite annoying for tenants. Or - as the lawyers put it - they restrict them in their contractual use of the rented property. These are deficiencies under tenancy law that the landlord has to remedy. So in the most extreme case: replace the heating, insulate the facade, put the music teacher on the street. Even if milder measures often lead to a solution, landlords sometimes do not have an open ear for problems of this kind. As a tenant, your only option is to deposit the rent in a blocked account, which will be made known to you by the competent arbitration authority in rental matters. Simply paying less rent is not advisable - this can result in debt collection or even premature termination! Therefore, set the landlord a deadline by registered mail to remedy the deficiency and threaten him that you will otherwise deposit the future rent. If he lets the deadline pass unused, inform him - again in writing - that you will now deposit the rent. Then file a request for arbitration within 30 days of the due date of the deposited rent. The arbitration proceedings will deal with the remedying of defects, but also with how much of the deposited rent will be paid to you in the form of a retroactive rent reduction and how much the landlord will receive. The conciliation procedure is free of charge. If it ends without a settlement, the authority can submit a proposal for judgment to you, which becomes a legally binding decision if neither party rejects it. Otherwise, the rejecting party will be granted the right to sue. However, the authority can also issue the authorization to sue directly to you as the complaining tenant. From the time the action is filed with the court, procedural costs are incurred, which must ultimately be borne by the losing party.
But be careful: A landlord does not have to remove every defect, no matter how minor. As a tenant, you are responsible for the so-called minor maintenance. This does not just include replacing a light bulb. However, the tenant does not have to carry out a lot of work that is passed on to him in the rental agreement: In recent years, various court rulings have made it clear that only minor maintenance can be what an average tenant without specialist knowledge is capable of doing himself. If a specialist is needed, the landlord must pay. The fact that these decisions concerned apartments does not change anything - the legal provisions for renting commercial premises are largely the same. A special case is, of course, the rent for unfinished buildings: Here, as a rule, you as the tenant must pay for all defects in the parts you install.
Patrick Strub is a consultant in the Observer Consulting Center
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