Rent reduction due to construction noise from road construction

Road construction causes construction noise. If you want to build on a rent reduction, it depends on the circumstances.

Road construction can be customary for the location

• The most important criterion is local custom. If you have moved to an area in which road construction has been carried out over and over again for years, or it was foreseeable that a road construction project would be imminent, it would be unfaithful if you use it to justify a rent reduction wanted to.
• If you have settled in a new development area, road construction and the associated construction noise are inevitable. This also does not justify a rent reduction.

Landlord is also liable for construction noise

• After all: construction noise from road construction can justify a rent reduction even if the landlord cannot help it. Construction noise is also a defect within the meaning of tenancy law if it comes from outside the apartment and is not caused by the tenant or a contracted construction worker.
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• Do you have the option of the window to close and thereby ward off the construction noise from road construction, your reduction claim is reduced to zero. Only when the construction noise becomes unacceptable or you cannot be expected to take preventive measures in the long term will a reduction be considered.


Rent reduction in the case of construction noise in the house - this is how you can proceed

Is the house in which you live for rent being built? Are you regularly loud and ...

Case law on rent reduction is inconsistent

• You should know that the jurisprudence is very inconsistent and sets reduction rates of 5-30%. These are always individual cases in which the circumstances were decisive. It depends on the strength and duration of the building noise and the associated dust and dirt as well as whether the construction site is operated around the clock, only during the day, at certain times or even on weekends will.
• Examples: When the railway line from Cologne to Aachen was expanded, a tenant was granted a rent reduction of 20%, and when the new ICE line from Cologne to Frankfurt was expanded, a rent reduction of 10% was granted.
• In order to be able to prove your reduction claim, you should keep a construction log and note all the details.
• As a result, you have to ask yourself whether it might be worthwhile to sue the landlord for rent reduction and time, money and having to invest nerves additionally or whether it is better to simply wait until the source of the noise disappears by itself completed.
• If the landlord lives in the same house, you should bear in mind that he is also exposed to construction noise, but has to put up with it without compensation. Did you want him for that rent cut it would be somehow unfair.