Rental dispute and settling costs? Get free advice!

Questioner

Good evening, We have been renting a private sector home since December. It was agreed that we would arrange our own connections (gas, water, electricity) as of January. However, the home was divided into a rental section and a kind of shed that would be rented out by the landlord as office space. We had taken gas, water, electricity in our name and separate meters would be installed in the space next door. Now it turned out that this had not been done. The landlord said; we will keep an eye on the meters and then we will settle this. Very vague because we are actually paying for the space next door, this is not yet rented out. There has previously been a conflict about a broken window due to overdue maintenance and a bed that we removed because this was included in the rental contract. Now we have settled the repair costs with the rent (we have already gone through a whole legal process with this). Now the landlord is threatening to settle costs at the end of the rental period. She has made all kinds of her own calculations for the period December/January and according to her these would still be hundreds of euros. We regularly have conflicts with this lady, but now we wonder if she is allowed to come up with costs to be settled at the end of the rental period? We do not trust these calculations.

Lawyer

Hello, What is of course of great importance is a correct calculation of what your energy costs are and what the other energy costs are. I do not quite understand what you mean by 'repair', but if you mean that you have installed separate meters, for your own home and for the shed, then the law offers the possibility to do so, if the landlord does not remedy the 'defect' (lack of a proper energy meter). If you did not mean this by 'repair', then you can consider doing the latter after all. It is also important which costs the landlord wants to charge, this is not clear from your story.