Short Answer

You are contractually required to finance the ongoing cleaning, lawn mowing, and garbage management of your building if your lease permits the billing of operating costs.

Tenants must legally fund routine building maintenance services, but they are entirely exempt from paying for the structural repair work performed by those same janitorial companies.

What Most Expats Don't Realize

You reviewed your annual utility balance sheet and accepted a high charge for "Hausmeister" services, assuming the janitor only handled standard cleaning and grass cutting. You did not know the property manager had used the janitor to replace a broken central water pipe and rolled that expensive repair invoice into your communal bill. Because you did not audit the specific tasks performed by the building staff, you funded the landlord's asset repair costs, resulting in a personal loss of €400.

What To Do

  • Ask the property management company for a copy of the janitor's itemized labor logs for the specific billing period.
  • Check the physical property regularly to verify that the garden maintenance and hallway cleaning frequencies match the schedules claimed on the bill.
  • "Sind Reparaturkosten in den Hausmeistergebühren enthalten?" (Are repair costs included in the janitor fees?) — use this precise phrase to challenge high building service fees.

The Truth

Germany’s civil code explicitly separates basic operating maintenance from structural asset preservation. The system forces the tenant to finance the aesthetic preservation of the property while placing the absolute financial liability for broken hardware onto the landlord, provided you can isolate the line items on the invoice.