At first, everything seems normal: Ms. Tröger* is looking for a new tenant for her apartment. Mr. Siebach* gets in touch via a newspaper ad. He shows up for the housing inspection – friendly, well-dressed, with impeccable manners. In short: sympathetic. computer specialist of a global company, he says, and he also has a monthly income of 8.000 euros. Mr. Siebach gets the apartment and pays the required deposit.
After that, however, never anything. Countless phone calls initially go back and forth between him and his landlady, promises to pay are made and not kept. At some point, Mrs. Tröger's alarm bells start ringing and she turns the matter over to her lawyer. When she finally enters the apartment, it is almost empty. The sofa, television, dining table, armchairs, dishwasher, bed, crockery, cutlery, coffee maker, kettle, towels, soap are missing. And also the tenant.
More and more landlords are struggling with rent defaults. According to estimates by the owners' protection association Haus& The reason is that arrears in Germany amount to around 2.2 billion euros. In most cases, the triggers for the payment difficulties lie in the personal environment of the tenant. Unemployment, family or health problems often worsen the financial situation to such an extent that there is no money left to pay the rent. In addition, however, there is also a clientele that simply and from the outset has no intention to pay. While you will look in vain for serious projections, estimates from Haus& Reason, however, put their number at around 10.000.
Rent nomads, lawyers also call them rent cheats, move in, don't pay, not infrequently leave behind a completely ruined apartment and then disappear never to be seen again. A nightmare for any landlord. All the more as he counts on the regular rental income for the repayment of his mortgage loan. However: Rent nomads are not a mass phenomenon in Germany. Although statistically they hardly played a role, the owners' protection association Haus& reason to consider, but for the individual landlord they are indeed a disaster. One to five percent of tenants would not think of paying their rent, estimate representatives of Haus& Reason – figures that the German Tenants Association, however, will not confirm.
Caution is advised. What can a landlord do to protect himself from tenants unwilling to pay in his property? There is certainly no such thing as one hundred percent protection, but experience has shown that the presentation of an ID card and a Schufa report are a first hurdle.
Once a rental nomad has taken hold in an apartment, the landlord longs for the time when he can get rid of him again. Often however it lasts up to the judicially ordered compulsory measure many months or also years, because the rent Nomaden refer to alleged lack and prevent so the compulsory execution. When the eviction is finally due, the landlord is now sitting on a tidy mountain of costs: rent defaults, lawyers' fees, court costs and foreclosure costs have piled up. The average damage caused by a rental nomad, according to estimates by Haus& Grund to around 25,000 euros.