I got a huge nebenkostenabrechnung for last year, and when I asked questions to the landlord company, I got these answers. Still no clear answer on how is the heating cost measured. Does this makes sense? Or something I’m not getting right?

by picsnapr

6 comments

  1. they explained you that the meters are often not accessible by the tennants so that the MVV does the readings.

    the landlord has a company that does the Nebenkostenabrechnung. They distribute the heting costs onto every seperate apartment.

    what you can do now is ask for the detailed bills for your heating consumption but it’s likely that you already have them, these companies usually provide everything including the distribution of these costs. have you checked that part of your Nebenkostenabrechnung?

  2. It’s pretty clear. Individual costs are based on the individual measuring devices installed in the apartment. They are read once or twice a year

  3. I was in a similar situation some time ago.

    Landlord was asking me to pay 1k more.

    To me it was weird because I was barely using it as i am more than comfortable with 17 or 18 degrees.

    While we were checking the abrechning my wife noticed that the person who did the readings added an additional 0 at the end.

    After I I formed the landlord about the mistake they corrected it and I had to pay nothing.

    So really ask for the individual readings and go to the meter and check it yourself.

    These things can get really messed up by typos.

  4. Yes, the answer is not what you wanted to know. It is still correct, because you asked where the bills for the entire building (“Haus”) come from. What you actually want to know is how the total sum is distributed among the tentans. Usually, the Nebenkostenabrechnung explains that. Sadly, it’s highly different for the differnt Nebenkosten.

    1. Building-specific costs (taxes, garbage, cleaning, greenkeeping) usually are distributed according to the appartment sizes: The larger your pod, the larger your share.
    2. Electricity is usually on a individual contract with the tenants in the first place: Billed separately.
    3. Water: Usually, appartments have individual meters.
    4. Wastewater: Either as with #1 or using your consumption from 3.
    5. Heating: Many forms and formulas exist. Might be the same approach as with #1, might be measures per appartment, might be hybrid forms (50% of the total costs + costs of upkeep + costs for shared rooms (basement, staircase) are distributed via appartment-size, 50 % are billed per consumption). Might very well be your individual heaters have remote meters.

    Anyway: You should’ve gotten a multi-paged document with your Abrechnung. Since you landlord seems to be a company that should definitely exist.

    TLDR: It’s important to know that the the cost distribution does not necessarily follow the actual consumption, but neither the size of your appartment!

    EDIT: Things get even more complicated when you tenancy doesn’t equal the billing period.

  6. What is unclear? IMO he explained it good, I don’t get what’s not clear.

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