Private or common property in a German WEG: who pays for what?

The window in your living room is not yours.

You clean it, you air the flat through it, you partly bought the place because it faces south. In law, though, it is compulsory common property, because it closes the room off from the outside. That holds even where the declaration of division claims otherwise. This classification is the starting point for every cost question in a German owners' association. Understand it and you will see in thirty seconds why your neighbour pays for her own broken pane while the owner on the ground floor does not, and why both outcomes can be correct.

The basic rule: shared by co-ownership shares

Under section 16(2) of the Condominium Act, costs relating to common property are borne by the community and allocated according to co-ownership shares. Costs relating to private property are borne by the individual owner alone.

The boundary does not run along the front door of the flat.

What matters is the function of the component: the more an element affects structural integrity, safety or the external appearance of the building, the more clearly it is common property, and the declaration of division cannot change that.

According to the case law, these components effectively always belong to the community:

• Windows, including frames and glazing, because they close off the building
• The flat's entrance door, even where the declaration assigns it to private property
• Roller shutters integrated into the façade
• Balconies, as far as the structure, the waterproofing and the parapet are concerned
• Risers, load-bearing walls and the roof skin

Radiators are a finer question: connecting pipework and radiators inside the private area can be private property where the declaration of division says so. Absent such a rule, or where an individual radiator matters to the hydraulic operation of the whole system, common property is the likelier answer, and when in doubt it pays to check the case law for the specific system type before the meeting takes a cost decision that a single owner later challenges in court.

Where the community rules shift the cost

This is where practice really starts. How a component is classified and who pays to maintain it are two different questions. A great many associations have a clause in their community rules under which each owner bears the maintenance and repair costs of those parts of the common property lying within their own private area, typically the windows. The window stays common property, but the invoice lands with the owner of the flat.

First question in any dispute: what do our community rules say?

Legal note: the Federal Court of Justice held on 23 May 2025 (V ZR 36/24) that such a clause, in case of doubt, also covers the cost of remedying defects present from the outset. An owner in a new building with a window that never sealed properly cannot assume the community will pay.

What the owners' meeting can change by itself

Since the reform of condominium law, owners can change the cost allocation for individual measures or particular categories of cost by resolution, by simple majority and no longer only by unanimous agreement.

The courts read that power broadly: a resolution may relieve individual owners of costs or impose them for the first time. The limit is proper administration; arbitrary shifts with no objective justification will not survive a challenge.

For the meeting this cuts two ways. First, an inherited rule everyone finds unfair can be repaired without needing every signature. Second, the resolution needs a reasoned basis in the minutes: which objective ground supports the different allocation. Skimping on the reasoning is a false economy.

What this means for your next meeting

Before voting on any refurbishment, work through the questions in order: is the component common property? Do the community rules shift the cost? And do we want a different allocation for this particular measure?

Those three questions belong in the minutes, not just in the discussion. In a self-managed association the minutes are the entire administrative record anyway, because there is no manager holding the history in their head.

One more detail from practice that saves a lot of trouble: for let flats, classification is not the same question as what can be recharged to the tenant. Maintenance costs are in principle not recoverable: what you carry as an owner through the monthly service charge does not automatically come back to you.

The line between private and common property looks academic until the first window leaks. Take an hour once, read the declaration of division and the community rules together, and write down who pays for the most common components. That single page answers half the disputes of the next decade — and it survives every change of owner.

Information up to date at the time of writing. This article is for information only and does not constitute legal advice.