Must we tell the tenants that the owner has died?

There is no express rule requiring it, but it is practically necessary: the tenants need someone to pay rent to, report defects to and address questions to. Name one person who can be reached and an account of the estate — that spares misunderstandings and lost months.

One co-heir wants the rent paid into his account. Is that possible?

Not unilaterally. The claim to rent belongs to the estate; a co-heir may demand performance only to all of them jointly (section 2039 BGB). The clean route is an estate account that everyone knows about — and through which the accounting is later done.

We have missed the operating-cost deadline. Is everything lost?

What is lost is the additional claim, not the statement itself: accounting must still be done, and a credit owed to the tenant remains payable. Whether the delay was exceptionally not attributable to you is a question of the individual case and belongs before a lawyer before anyone makes a claim.

Knowledge · Orientation

An apartment building is not a large family home.

A family home can wait until a family is ready. An apartment building does not: it has tenants, accounts and deadlines that run on from the day of death — without anyone having to set them going.

The answer first. On death the estate passes as a whole (section 1922 BGB) — from the first day the heirs are the landlord, whether they know it or not. Three things therefore continue at once: the tenancies, the duty to keep the building safe, and the operating-cost statement with its one-year deadline (section 556(3) BGB). The third is the costliest, because it is the only one you can lose without doing anything wrong — doing nothing is enough.

The tenancy does not end with the owner’s death. It continues, and the heirs step into her place — jointly, as a community of heirs. For the tenants nothing changes at first; for you everything changes, because you suddenly have duties you did not choose: heating, water, keeping the building safe, clearing snow, repairs.

In practice that means first: tell the tenants, and name one person who can be reached. Not because a rule requires it, but because a house with four flats has four people who do not know where to turn — and because an unreported leak costs more than any statement of account.

The rent itself belongs to the estate. It is owed to the community of heirs jointly, and each co-heir may demand performance only to all of them (section 2039 BGB). That sounds formal but has a very practical consequence: an estate account into which the rents run spares you the argument about who holds the money meanwhile. How to put that in order is set out in a community of heirs and the property.

The advance payments on operating costs must be accounted for annually — where no advance payments were agreed, no statement is owed. The statement must reach the tenant by the end of the twelfth month after the accounting period ends; once that period has expired the landlord can no longer assert an additional claim, unless the delay is not attributable to them (section 556(3) BGB).

Read the last clause twice. Not attributable is a narrow exception, and “we were busy with the estate” will as a rule not carry it. A death in spring, a certificate procedure, a summer in which four siblings cannot agree about the house — and by December a claim nobody ever mentioned is gone.

What that means for you is pleasingly simple: in the first week, find the last operating-cost statement. From it you read the accounting period, and with it you know when your deadline ends. If a managing agent has handled this so far, clarify whether their mandate continues — that too is a question which tends to be left lying because it belongs to nobody.

Note the reverse: the deadline does not apply to a credit owed to the tenant. A credit remains payable even where the statement is late. The deadline protects the tenant, not the estate.

With an apartment building the suggestion sooner or later comes to divide it into flats — one each. That sounds like an elegant solution to the inheritance problem, and it brings two rules that are worth knowing beforehand.

The tenant’s right of first refusal. Where let residential premises are converted into flat ownership after being let to the tenant and are then sold, the tenant has a right of pre-emption (section 577 BGB). She may therefore step into the contract you concluded with a third party.

The restriction on termination. After conversion and sale, a purchaser may rely on own use or economic exploitation only after three years; state governments may extend that period to up to ten years for areas at risk (section 577a BGB).

Neither makes division impossible — they make it slower and dearer than it sounds at the kitchen table. And they change the question to answer first: not “can we divide it” but “do we want to remain landlords together for the next few years”. Because that is the route there.

A family home demands one large decision. An apartment building demands a small one every week: a dripping tap, a deposit, a notice to quit, an increase, a tradesperson who needs an instruction. Communities of heirs are built for large decisions and unsuited to small ones — each would have to be discussed, and nobody wants to telephone about a tap.

The statute helps to a degree. Measures of proper administration are decided by a majority of shares, and a necessary measure of preservation may be taken by any co-heir alone, without asking the others (section 2038 BGB). That saves the burst pipe on a Sunday — but it does not replace an arrangement.

So our recommendation here is plainer than usual: agree early on one person to run day-to-day matters, and on a threshold above which they ask. In writing, even among siblings who get on well. Without that arrangement the imbalance that breaks communities of heirs appears within months: one person does everything, another hears everything last — and the third thinks too much money is being spent.

The three routes, set out soberly

Keep it and let it together. The estate stays undivided, the rents continue, and so does the work. That holds where one person takes on the administration and everyone knows it — and it does not hold where one co-heir needs her money.

Sell with the tenants in place. The tenancy passes to the buyer; sale does not break a lease (section 566 BGB). The circle of interested parties is different from that for an empty house, but the rent continues until completion. What applies in detail is set out in inheriting a let property.

Divide it. The most laborious route, with the right of pre-emption and the blocking period — and the only one at the end of which each person has something of their own. It rarely pays under time pressure and almost never without professional support.

Which route fits is decided not by the building but by the people: by who needs money, who can take on work, and who wants to be tied in for how long. We ask that question first — and the numbers only afterwards.

Must we tell the tenants that the owner has died?: There is no express rule requiring it, but it is practically necessary: the tenants need someone to pay rent to, report defects to and address questions to. Name one person who can be reached and an account of the estate — that spares misunderstandings and lost months.
One co-heir wants the rent paid into his account. Is that possible?: Not unilaterally. The claim to rent belongs to the estate; a co-heir may demand performance only to all of them jointly (section 2039 BGB). The clean route is an estate account that everyone knows about — and through which the accounting is later done.
We have missed the operating-cost deadline. Is everything lost?: What is lost is the additional claim, not the statement itself: accounting must still be done, and a credit owed to the tenant remains payable. Whether the delay was exceptionally not attributable to you is a question of the individual case and belongs before a lawyer before anyone makes a claim.