Required notice period brandenburg, germany

Commercial tenancy law relies on the responsible businessperson. Nevertheless, landlords of commercial real estate in Brandenburg are subject to various duties of clarification and confidentiality (also known as disclosure obligations), which have far-reaching consequences if ignored.

1. Energy Performance Certificate

Just like residential buildings, the Energy Performance Certificate (Energieausweis) is a legally prescribed mandatory disclosure document for commercial properties under the Building Energy Act (GEG). The GEG distinguishes between certificates for residential buildings and certificates for non-residential buildings. In mixed-use properties (e.g., a residential building with a retail store on the ground floor), both types of certificates are often required.

Key Features:

• The Energy Certificate for the office, retail, or logistics property must be presented to the prospective tenant already during the viewing.
• A copy or the original must be handed over to the new tenant as an annex to the contract after renting.
• Mandatory information on energy efficiency (final energy demand and year of construction) must be provided in all commercial real estate advertisements.
• Violations can be penalized with severe fines (up to €10,000).

2. Inherent Competition Protection (Primary Disclosure Duty)

A central area that often leads to legal disputes is the so-called inherent competition protection (immanenter Konkurrenzschutz). This principle states that the landlord is obliged on their own accord to prevent their commercial tenant (e.g., a shoe store) from unexpected competition (a second shoe store) locating in their direct catchment area (often the same building or on the same plot).

Even if the contract is silent on this, landlords may not rent rooms to competitors if this noticeably threatens the first tenant's turnover.

Landlord's Disclosure Obligation: If the landlord nevertheless plans to rent out to a business competing with the tenant, they are subject to a strict duty of disclosure. If the protection is to be circumvented by clauses or if "assortment overlaps" are to be expected (e.g., the clothing store recently adds shoes to its assortment), the landlord is obliged to transparency and drawing contractual boundaries. Without disclosure, a violation drastically entitles the affected tenant to reduce the rent-often leading up to an extraordinary termination.

3. Structural Defects and Environmental Contamination

When concluding a commercial lease agreement, the principle of caveat emptor (buyer beware) generally applies. Nonetheless, the landlord has a pre-contractual duty to disclose significant defects in the rental property of which they know or ought to know, and which are decisive for the prospective tenant's rental decision.

In Brandenburg, this particularly includes:

• Pollutants: Knowledge of toxic building materials, e.g., asbestos, or contaminated soil (Altlasten) in industrial areas.
• Usage Restrictions: Knowledge that building law prohibits the commercial license or certain types of use at the location (lack of concession granting due to regulations such as fire protection or insufficient parking spaces). The mere statement "for commercial purposes" in the lease generates the obligation that the building authority essentially approves this as well.

4. Data Protection Information (GDPR)

Natural persons, including owners of sole proprietorships or GbRs (civil law partnerships), enjoy full data protection under the GDPR. Landlords must transparently inform prospective tenants when requesting and processing operational and credit rating documents (BWA, Schufa reports, tenant self-disclosures):

• Which data is processed for what purpose.
• How and where these are stored.
• When they are routinely deleted again.

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