The Berlin Tenants’ Association speaks of a “small ray of hope”. The so-called waiver agreements signed by buyers of apartment buildings remain legally binding. That was the decision of the Berlin administrative court. According to the tenants’ association, around 376 contracts that were concluded between 2017 and 2021 are affected.
Avoidance agreements were concluded between private buyers and district offices in order to avert the municipality’s right of first refusal in milieu protection areas. The buyer of a house undertakes to comply with the provisions of environmental protection. He has to do that even without this agreement, but the contractual obligation is a more concrete protection for the tenants against expensive modernization or the division of the houses into condominiums.
In November 2021, the Federal Administrative Court declared the practice of some districts, particularly in Berlin, of buying houses with a right of first refusal in order to protect tenants from being evicted, to be inadmissible. This also called into question the waiver agreements. Many owners had then terminated the agreements and had been strengthened by a subsequent decision by the administrative court.
The Pankow urban development office went before the administrative court again. This has now established in several cases that the waiver agreements are still valid. An appeal against the judgments was not admitted.
“This is an important decision for tenants,” explained Wibke Werner from the tenants’ association. However, the federal government must now act and correct the building law so that “the right of first refusal in social conservation areas can be enforced again”.
