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| The kitchen (Lads sold separately) |
[And let me first note my anger at Blogger for making me re-write this as I already did so, saved and posted but to no avail!]
Prior to moving to Germany, I had three apartments in my lifetime -- my Glen Ellyn ghetto, the Wauwatosa wonder and of course Hazzard County (which was located in Kane County, to be clear). The great thing about being a renter was that it was so easy. I found a place, put a deposit down, paid my rent on time, renewed the lease each year, gave the proper notice prior to leaving, ensured the apartment was clean upon departure, and then collected the deposit (usually in total). You can probably deduce from the mere point that I am noting this that this was not the same in German. You would be correct in that deduction, Sherlock (or would that be Dr. Watson?).
Now, I had known in advance that three months notice is required prior to leaving and you have to pay for the apartment during that three month period unless the landlord is able to rent it out before the end of that three month period (assuming, of course, you vacate the premises before the end of said three month period). That seems fair to me. What I hadn't anticipated was that you couldn't actually do the "hand over" of the apartment when you actually vacated it. And you have to do the handover in person. This posed a potential problem as I was leaving German at the end of February (or early March, as it turned out) but the three month notice period ended at the end of April. Fortunately, the relocation consultant provided by the firm (I'll call her Anike) would be able to do this in my place. She was also the one handling all of the matters that follow as they required fluency in German. No idea how I would have been able to do this without her assistance!
A quick note that is relevant to this discussion relates to my landlord. As you may recall, my apartment was new construction and I think when I first moved in, I was actually paying rent to the developer because the entire property development had not yet been completed. Sometime in the first year, it was transferred to the real estate arm of Commerzbank which then became the landlord/property manager. Didn't really seem to matter other than in terms of changing who got the rent each month. Well, actually, it turns out it does matter because no matter how much Mitt Romney claims that corporations are people, too, they have slightly different needs and demands than does a landlord who is just an individual.
Anyway, one of the complications of this handover thing from a timing perspective is that the landlord insisted that the final cleaning be performed not when I moved out, but just prior to the handover but after the painting and should also include window cleaning. Ugh. So I had to hope that my cleaning lady (who is very nice) would be available at some undetermined point near the end of April (or sooner, if the landlord found a new tenant) and would take payment in advance. Which she did. So all good.
Wait. What painting?! I didn't paint any walls while I was there, so what's there to do? Oh, yeah.... There's some requirement that the apartment should be painted every 8-10 years or something. So if you move out before that time, you have to get an estimate of the cost to repaint the entire unit, get that estimate approved by evil corporate landlord, have the repainting done and pay a portion of the painting fee based on the amount of time I have occupied the apartment. Ridiculous. This ended up costing nearly EUR 900.
At some point during my tenancy, I had dropped my iron on the hardwood floor, resulting in a divot in the floor of no more than a centimeter at it's widest point. Evil corporate landlord also demanded that this be repaired. So Anike found a floor repair specialist, got a quote, arranged for him to do the repair, and I paid another EUR 135 for the privilege of having lived in the apartment.
As noted in the last moving post, I hadn't had much time to get rid of my power/voltage dependent items and this included my washer and dryer. Anike noted that we could ask the real estate agent who was listing the apartment to offer this for sale to the new tenant, though of course this wouldn't be a guarantee. I figured that might be a good idea, though the backup plan was to give the items to my amazing neighbors who were in the process of establishing a second residence in Hamburg and might need an extra set of appliances (though admittedly many Germans don't see the need for a dryer). I had paid about EUR 900 for both and they had been used all of once or twice a week, so nearly new.
Anike then asked what I wanted to do about the kitchen and closet system. Um, what do you mean? She explained that the evil corporate landlord wouldn't buy the kitchen because, essentially, they didn't want to deal with the appliances or something breaking down and being responsible. So I could either offer these for sale to the new renter or PAY TO HAVE THE KITCHEN DISASSEMBLED AND PUT ON THE STREET AS TRASH (which I'd have to do if the new renters didn't want to buy it)! Excuse me?! I paid about EUR 7,000 for this kitchen and it was still perfectly fine. This just boggled my mind.
The same applied to the rather nice, custom-ordered closet system that was the topic of an early blog in Germany. I think I paid about EUR 2,500. Had I known that this would be an issue, I would have had the movers pack it up and move it to the US as I would love to have it as an off-season storage unit for clothes in the basement or garage or something. Alas, I didn't know about this until the movers were actually gone. Grrr....
The prospect of paying to have the kitchen and closet system disassembled became a real one as, just one week before the handover, there still wasn't a new tenant. So I had to either get the stuff out and if I didn't, then the evil corporate landlord would arrange to have it done and would bill me for their efforts. Fortunately, just in the nick of time they found a renter. The renter agreed to buy the kitchen and the appliances for a total of EUR 1,500 but they didn't want the closet system, so I had to pay EUR 215 to have someone disassemble it, though fortunately I didn't have to pay for the cost of arranging for trash removal because the painter (!) saw it and said he'd like it. Unbelievable.
Oh, and evil corporate landlord also hit me up for an additional EUR 560 for some Grundsteuer (tax) that I thought they should have brought up a long time ago, but clearly I will never understand real estate transactions in Germany.
Remind me again why I am paying for the "privilege" of paying to move to Russia on short notice and being ripped out of my nice life in Germany? Let's just hope that some of these costs and losses can be deductible as moving costs!
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