Hausgeld too high? How to read a German condo's monthly charge

Two flats, same street, same size. One asks 280 euros a month in Hausgeld, the other 460. The listing calls the second one expensive. The law calls it a question you cannot answer without three documents.

Hausgeld is the advance every owner in a German Wohnungseigentümergemeinschaft, a community of condominium owners, pays towards the community's costs and reserves. The Condominium Act, the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz, sets who pays what share and obliges the community to build an adequate maintenance reserve, but no statute says what a normal Hausgeld is. The only official yardstick is a per square metre allowance for maintenance.

What does the law put into the Hausgeld?

Section 16 of the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz makes each owner bear the community's costs, in particular administration and the shared use of common property, in proportion to the co-ownership share entered in the land register. The owners may resolve a different distribution for individual costs or types of cost, which is why two flats of the same size in one building can pay different amounts.

Section 19 lists what proper administration must include: house rules, proper maintenance of the common property, insurance at replacement value and third party liability cover, the accumulation of an adequate maintenance reserve, the Erhaltungsrücklage, the setting of advances under section 28, and, in most communities, a certified manager. The reserve is the line that separates a cheap Hausgeld from a healthy one: a low monthly figure with no contribution to the reserve is a repair bill deferred to the next owner.

Which costs are operating costs, and which are not?

The Hausgeld mixes two kinds of money. The first is operating costs, which the Betriebskostenverordnung lists in section 2: property tax, water and sewage, the running of the central heating and hot water system, the lift, street cleaning and refuse, building cleaning, garden, lighting, chimney sweeping, insurance, caretaker, antenna or cable, and similar items. A landlord can pass those on to a tenant. The second kind, administration fees, the reserve contribution and repairs, cannot be passed on and stays with the owner whether the flat is let or lived in.

Heating costs inside the first group follow their own rule. Section 7 of the Heizkostenverordnung requires at least 50 and at most 70 percent of the central heating costs to be allocated by measured consumption, so a flat's heating share moves with the meter, not only with the co-ownership share.

Is there an official yardstick for the reserve?

One, and it was written for a different purpose. Section 28 of the Zweite Berechnungsverordnung, the ordinance for cost calculations in publicly subsidised housing, caps the maintenance costs that may be assumed per square metre of living space per year: 7.10 euros for flats completed less than 22 years ago, 9 euros from 22 years, and 11.50 euros from 32 years, plus 1 euro where the building has a lift, with the amounts subject to the indexation in section 26 of the same ordinance. Nothing obliges a condominium community to use these figures, but they are the only per square metre maintenance numbers in a German statute, which is why managers and courts reach for them when the adequacy of a reserve is disputed.

Maintenance cost allowance per square metre of living space per year, by age of the flat

Age of the flat	Allowance (€)
Under 22 years		+7.10€
22 years and older		+9.00€
32 years and older		+11.50€

A 1970s flat of 80 square metres therefore carries a yardstick of about 920 euros a year, or roughly 77 euros a month, before the lift supplement. A Hausgeld that includes that much for the reserve is doing its job; one that includes nothing is cheaper only on paper.

Which three documents explain the figure?

Section 28 of the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz names them. The manager draws up a Wirtschaftsplan for each calendar year, and the owners resolve the advances on it; that plan is where the Hausgeld is born, line by line. After the year ends the manager prepares the Jahresabrechnung, the annual statement, on which the owners resolve additional payments or an adjustment of the advances. The manager must also prepare a Vermögensbericht, an asset report, showing the state of the reserves and the essential community assets, and make it available to every owner.

Read them in that order. The plan tells you what the Hausgeld buys, the statement tells you whether last year's plan held, and the asset report tells you how much of the building's future is already saved. The declaration of division that fixes the co-ownership shares and any special cost rules is decoded in our guide to the Teilungserklärung, and the retrofit duties that can hit a building's reserve are set out in our guide to the Sanierungspflicht.

Ask for the Wirtschaftsplan, the last Jahresabrechnung and the Vermögensbericht before you ask whether the Hausgeld is high. AiMYNDi reads the three together and shows how much of the monthly figure is reserve, how much is operating cost, and what the yardstick says for a building of that age.