Reader question: Which actual allocation practice must be examined for a building described as a student hall of residence?
You live in Germany in a room that was let as a student hall of residence. On being given notice you are now told that the usual social protection against termination therefore does not apply. The designation alone does not answer this question. §549 paragraph 3 BGB excludes certain protective provisions for genuine student or youth hall-of-residence accommodation; first, however, the actual classification must be correct. [BGB549]
Specifically record the claimed special status
Gather the tenancy agreement, allocation rules, information received about the hall and the termination letter. Which exception does the landlord rely on exactly? Is only the building name referred to, or is an actually practised allocation concept explained?
A question about the legal status of the hall is something different from the search for an available student room. Your own student status alone does not determine every tenancy-law consequence. The article concerns the German termination-protection assessment and does not transfer any Austrian hall-year rules.
What the BGH requires of the concept
In judgment VIII ZR 92/11 of 13 June 2012 the BGH based its decision on an allocation concept oriented to student concerns, which is intended to provide accommodation to as many students as possible on an equal basis. For that purpose what matters is an actually practised rotation according to general criteria. Building name, fittings or a low price alone are not sufficient. [BGH9211]
In the case decided, a short contract term with the possibility of extension likewise did not yet prove a correspondingly practised social rotation system. Conversely, the BGH did not exclude every realised profit as such. [BGH9211] Therefore the simple assumptions “private operator, therefore never a hall” and “many students, therefore always a hall” do not help in your concrete assessment.
Describe the actual allocation practice
Ask about the rules that are intended to apply to length of stay and extensions. Are they handled according to comprehensible general criteria, or does further residence depend solely on arbitrary individual decisions? Keep any answers received unchanged.
Our editorial recommendation: Describe your own verifiable events and separate them from suppositions about other residents. You do not need to collect other people's contracts or personal proofs of study. For classification, your own rules and the practice claimed or documented by the operator are the starting point.
A fictitious name without stated rules
A resident is given only the information that the house has been called a student hall of residence for years. Her question about the extension and allocation concept remains unanswered. She submits that answer together with the contract and termination for advice. There it will be examined whether the claimed special status actually applies and which termination rules are to be applied to her contract.
The historical BGH judgment does not automatically determine her present house. It provides a concrete question for examination, which a building name alone does not yet answer.
Examine termination and classification together in good time
If the ordinary protection against termination under §573 is applicable, the landlord generally needs a justified interest and must state its reasons in the termination letter. [BGB573] Whether these or other rules actually come into play depends on the full constellation.
Do not therefore ignore a received termination while the status is being clarified. Your result should be a documented contractual framework with a subsequently examined statement and deadline. The article promises neither an unlimited right to remain nor the general invalidity of every hall-of-residence termination.