The landlord will not repair: damp, mould and no heating in 7 jurisdictions
Mould, rising damp and a dead boiler, and the landlord does nothing. All seven jurisdictions oblige him to keep the home habitable. What differs is what the tenant may do about it: automatic rent reduction in Germany, capped repair-and-deduct in California, a court order in England.
The problem
There is mould on the bedroom wall, damp coming up from the floor and the boiler has not worked for two months. The landlord says repairs are the tenant's problem and does nothing. The tenant is still paying full rent for a home that is only half usable, and wants to know whether the rent can be reduced, whether a plumber can be called and the bill deducted, or whether the only option is to leave.
What they agree on
This is the one everyday problem that all seven published sections answer, and they answer the first half of it identically: the landlord owes a habitable dwelling not only on the day the keys change hands but for the whole term. Italian art. 1575 says the landlord must 'mantenerla in stato da servire all'uso convenuto'; French art. 1719 requires him to 'entretenir cette chose en etat de servir a l'usage pour lequel elle a ete louee'; German § 535 obliges him to hand over the property in a condition fit for the contractual use 'und sie waehrend der Mietzeit in diesem Zustand zu erhalten'; Spanish art. 1554 requires 'todas las reparaciones necesarias'; English LTA 1985 s. 11 implies a covenant to keep the structure, the water, gas, electricity and sanitation installations and the space and water heating in repair; Californian § 1941 requires the landlord to 'repair all subsequent dilapidations'; New York's § 235-b deems every lease to warrant fitness for human habitation. The word doing the work in five of those seven is a word meaning 'keep', not 'deliver'.
The second point of agreement is that this duty cannot simply be signed away. § 536(4) BGB voids any deviation to the tenant's disadvantage in a residential lease. LTA 1985 s. 12 makes void any covenant purporting to exclude or limit s. 11. California's § 1941 says 'in the absence of an agreement to the contrary', but § 1942.1 then voids a tenant's waiver as contrary to public policy. RPL § 235-b(2) makes any waiver void as contrary to public policy in terms. French art. 1719 states that the obligations exist 'par la nature du contrat, et sans qu'il soit besoin d'aucune stipulation particuliere'. A clause putting the boiler on the tenant is worth reading, but in most of these systems it is worth less than it looks.
What none of the seven does is tell the tenant it is safe to stop paying. Every one of them routes the tenant's response through some mechanism — a statutory reduction, a capped deduction, a court order, a claim for damages — and every one of the seven pages this comparison rests on says, in its own language, that simply withholding rent is not what the provision authorises. That is the point on which these systems agree most emphatically and on which tenants most often assume the opposite.
Where they part company
| Jurisdiction | What its law does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Italia | Italy splits the question by timing and then bars the tenant who saw the problem. Art. 1578 covers defects the property had 'al momento della consegna' which appreciably reduce its fitness for the agreed use, and gives termination or a price reduction — but expressly not for defects 'da lui conosciuti o facilmente riconoscibili', unless the landlord concealed them in bad faith. Defects arising later have their own article (1581) and dangerous ones another (1580). Damages are owed unless the landlord proves he was blamelessly unaware of the defect at delivery. | Two things follow that the other systems do not replicate. A tenant who inspected a freshly painted flat, noticed nothing and later found the damp underneath is in a different position from one who saw the crack and signed anyway. And on damages the burden is reversed against the landlord, who must prove not merely that he did not know but that he could not have known without fault. |
| France | France is the only one of the seven whose code writes decency into the duty itself. Art. 1719 obliges the landlord to deliver 'et, s'il s'agit de son habitation principale, un logement decent', and then adds a protective clause the others have no equivalent of: where premises let for residential use are unfit for that use, the landlord may not rely on the nullity or the termination of the lease to have the occupant evicted. | It closes a move that is otherwise available to a landlord in trouble — arguing that a lease of an unfit dwelling was void and that the occupier should therefore leave. In France that argument is shut off by the same sentence that creates the duty. Suspending the rent is a separate question and runs through art. 1219, which requires an inexecution 'suffisamment grave'. |
| Deutschland | The rent reduction under § 536 happens by operation of law. Where a defect removes the fitness of the property for contractual use the tenant 'ist von der Entrichtung der Miete befreit'; where fitness is merely reduced he owes only 'eine angemessen herabgesetzte Miete'. Nothing has to be declared, applied for or granted. § 536(4) then makes any contrary agreement void in residential lettings, and § 536a(2) adds self-remedy at the landlord's cost where the landlord is in default or immediate removal is necessary to preserve the property. | Germany is the only member of the seven where the reduced rent is legally the correct rent from the moment the defect exists, rather than something a court awards afterwards. Two limits sit on it that the statute states and the popular 'Mietminderungstabellen' do not: an 'unerhebliche' impairment is disregarded, and § 536(1a) suspends reduction for three months for work serving an energy modernisation under § 555b Nr. 1. The statute names no percentages at all. |
| España | The Spanish code gives no rent reduction and no repair-and-deduct. Art. 1554 states the three obligations; art. 1556 gives the injured party the choice of rescission of the contract with damages, or damages alone leaving the contract in force. There is nothing in the Civil Code corresponding to § 536 BGB or to § 1942 of the California Civil Code. | A Spanish tenant with a dead boiler has a claim, not a self-executing discount, and the residential lease is further governed by the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, which sits outside this corpus and has its own rules. Reading art. 1554 alongside § 536 BGB is the clearest illustration in this cluster that identical landlord duties can carry completely different tenant remedies. |
| United Kingdom | LTA 1985 s. 11 is a covenant to keep in repair, and 'repair' means putting right deterioration from a previous condition. A home that has always been cold, badly ventilated and mould-prone, and is not getting worse, is not in disrepair however unpleasant it is. That gap is precisely why s. 9A — a separate implied covenant that the dwelling is and will remain fit for human habitation — was enacted for England. The remedy for either is a court order: s. 17 lets the court order specific performance of a repairing covenant. | This is the sharpest structural difference in the cluster. A design-defect damp problem can satisfy the Italian, French, German, Spanish, Californian and New York standards — all of which ask whether the home serves its purpose — and still fall outside the English repairing covenant, which asks whether something has got worse. The English tenant with rising damp in a house that was always damp has to be on s. 9A, not s. 11. |
| England's ban on contracting out has a door in it. LTA 1985 s. 12 voids any agreement excluding or limiting s. 11 'unless the inclusion of the provision was authorised by the county court', and subsection (2) lets the county court, by order made with the consent of the parties, authorise the exclusion or modification of the repairing obligations where it appears reasonable in all the circumstances. | Germany, New York and California make the protection absolute — a waiver is simply void. England makes it absolute against the landlord's drafting but not against a judge with both parties' consent. It is a small clause with a large conceptual difference: one system trusts a court to approve a bargain the others will not permit at all. | |
| California | California is the only one that quantifies self-help and then caps it. Under § 1942 the tenant may repair and deduct, but only where the cost does not exceed one month's rent, and not more than twice in any 12-month period; alternatively the tenant may vacate and be discharged from further rent. Subdivision (b) presumes that acting after the 30th day following notice was reasonable — and says expressly that this shall not prevent repairing and deducting sooner where the circumstances require it. | The cap is the point. A boiler replacement costing more than a month's rent is outside subdivision (a) altogether, which is why the remedy that looks strongest on paper is often unavailable for the defect that matters most. And the 30 days is a presumption, not a waiting period: a burst pipe does not have to wait a month. A deduction that turns out not to have been justified reappears as unpaid rent. |
| California is also the only one with an itemised statutory definition of unfitness. § 1941 does not say what 'untenantable' means; § 1941.1 supplies a list — effective waterproofing of roof and exterior walls with unbroken windows and doors, conforming plumbing and gas in good working order, an approved hot and cold water supply, conforming heating in good working order, conforming electrical lighting and wiring, premises free of debris, filth, rodents and vermin, adequate rubbish receptacles, floors, stairways and railings in good repair, and, for leases entered into, amended or extended from 1 January 2026, a working stove and refrigerator. | Every other member uses an open standard — 'idoneita all'uso convenuto', 'logement decent', 'vertragsgemaesser Gebrauch', 'fit for human habitation'. A checklist is easier to argue from and harder to argue around: a tenant can point at a line, and a landlord cannot answer that the flat is basically fine. | |
| New York | New York's warranty is inserted rather than imposed: § 235-b deems the landlord to 'covenant and warrant' in every written or oral lease that the premises and all areas used in common are fit for human habitation and free of conditions dangerous to life, health or safety. It states no repair deadline, no percentage and no self-help. What it does supply is a litigation rule: subdivision 3(a) says the court 'need not require any expert testimony' to determine the tenant's damages. | That one clause is a deliberate lowering of the cost of proving a habitability case, and no other member of the seven has it. New York's answer to 'what do I do' is: the court decides how much the breach was worth, and you do not have to hire a valuer to get there. Subdivision 3(c) then subtracts any rent reduction the state housing agency has already ordered for the same conditions in a regulated unit. |
The provision in each country
Each card links to the page that reproduces the official text and explains it in that country's own language.
Italia Codice Civile
- Art. 1575 Codice Civile The landlord must deliver the property in good repair, keep it fit for the agreed use, and guarantee peaceful enjoyment throughout.
- Art. 1578 Codice Civile For defects present at delivery the tenant may ask for termination or a reduction of the rent, unless he knew of them or could easily have seen them.
France Code civil
Deutschland BGB
España Código Civil
United Kingdom Landlord and Tenant Act 1985
California California Civil Code
- CIV § 1941 The landlord of a building intended for human occupation must put it into a condition fit to live in and repair all later dilapidations that render it untenantable.
- CIV § 1942 After notice and a reasonable time the tenant may repair and deduct up to one month's rent, twice a year, or vacate and stop owing rent.
That's the law in seven places. Now let's settle your problem.
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This page compares provisions of several legal systems in general terms and links to the official text of each. It is not legal advice, it does not tell you which country's law governs your situation, and it takes no account of the circumstances of your case. For a live dispute, consult a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned.