Good advice

Losses from the rental of properties with a living space of more than 250 square meters cannot be automatically offset against other income of the taxpayer. This applies in particular to luxury properties whose market rent does not adequately reflect the high residential value and the associated costs, which often makes it impossible to cover the costs of letting. The Federal Fiscal Court (BFH) has...

A buyer cannot always demand a refund of the purchase price from the seller if it later transpires that there is no building permit for the property (AZ: 6 U 210/22). This was recently decided by the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main (OLG). The buyer had purchased an apartment in Frankfurt's Nordend district for 330,000 euros. However, the purchase contract contained an exclusion of liability for material defects...

A Porsche Coupé 911 driver wants to drive out of the underground parking garage of a residential complex. She opens the door with a sensor key and drives off. The garage door closes unexpectedly, crashes onto the roof of her car and damages it. Because the garage door was open and hit her car as she was driving out, she believes that the company breached its duty to maintain road safety.

A homeowner must dismantle the photovoltaic system on his listed building in Goslar. This was decided by the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony (AZ: 1 ME 15/23). In doing so, the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony has also overturned the decision of the Braunschweig Administrative Court and upheld the complaint lodged by the town of Goslar against the house owner. The homeowner had applied for a...

Criticism of the diversity of programs and opinions of public broadcasters does not justify an exemption from the obligation to pay the broadcasting fee. This was declared by the Bavarian Administrative Court (BayVGH, AZ: 7 BV 22.2642). In this case, a plaintiff from the district of Rosenheim had previously challenged the obligation to pay the broadcasting contribution on the basis of an alleged "structural failure of the public...

The phone rings and an unknown voice asks, for example: "Guess who it is?". The victim, often an elderly person, makes a guess and the perpetrator slips into the appropriate role, often as a grandson. Using this basis of trust, the supposed grandson tells the victim about a planned house purchase for which a deposit is urgently needed and asks the grandmother or grandfather to...

The placement of an ATM on a public sidewalk does not have to be approved. This was decided by the Berlin Administrative Court (VG 1 K 342.18 and VG 1 K 98.19). A company that operates ATMs throughout Germany had installed an ATM in front of an apartment building in Prenzlauer Berg. This was prohibited by the Pankow district authority due to the lack of a special...

Munich Regional Court I has ruled that the film operator GmbH (defendant) must vacate and surrender a cinema in the center of Munich (case no. 34 O 7322/20). The decision is based on the lease agreement from 1956, which was transferred to the defendant in 2006. The cinema in question is part of a property owned by a fractional community. The plaintiff owns 80...

Customers of the insolvent energy supplier BEV are still entitled to the promised new customer bonus. This was decided by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) (IX ZR 267/20). In this case, the insolvency administrator no longer wanted to grant the new customer bonus in full after the company filed for insolvency in 2019. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv) filed a model declaratory action against this...

A review mechanism for foreign investments that prohibits the acquisition of regional companies classified as strategic by foreign groups is not compatible with European Union law. The European Court of Justice recently came to this conclusion (ECJ, C-106/22). In the case at hand, the Hungarian concrete element manufacturer Xella...