Berlin-Steglitz (Albrechtstraße) – rent reduction €1,849 → €1,278, ~€6,857 claimed (pending)
Date Published
Period building in Steglitz — proceedings pending. 153.63 m² at €1,849 net cold rent; about €1,278 is permitted. The tenancy agreement ticks not a single exception to the rent cap.
Sometimes the tenancy agreement supplies the evidence itself. In this case from Berlin-Steglitz our clients rented a 153.63 m² period flat in November 2025 at a net cold rent of €1,849 — €12.04/m².
The standard form used provides tick boxes for all exceptions to the rent cap: higher prior rent (§ 556e para. 1 BGB), modernisation (§ 556e para. 2 BGB), first letting after comprehensive modernisation and new-build (§ 556f BGB). None of those boxes is ticked — the lines are all struck through. The only box ticked is that the prior tenancy began after 1 June 2015. A grandfathered prior rent is therefore excluded on the landlord’s own contractual wording.
That leaves the standard-form statement that the rent demanded does not exceed the permissible rent. That line is empty here. It is not information about facts as § 556g para. 1a BGB requires, but a mere legal assertion — and it is plainly wrong. For a medium residential location, building-age class up to 1918 and living space of 120 m² or more, the Berlin rent index shows a mean of €7.56/m². With the statutory 10% uplift that produces a permissible net cold rent of €1,277.59. Anyone who ticks in the contract that the rent index is being observed and is about 45% above it is not giving information — they are asserting.
Because no exception was backed with facts before the contract, the landlord can only rely on one later if they supply the information and two years have passed (§ 556g para. 1a sentence 2 BGB).
We are claiming a reduction to €1,277.59, €5,142.69 of overpaid rent since the start of the tenancy and €1,714.23 of overpaid deposit — €6,856.92 in total. Proceedings are pending.
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