Technical Maintenance (Facility Management) in Commercial Leasing in Ukraine

The issue of technical maintenance (Facility and Property Management) in Ukraine's commercial real estate is drastically more complex than in residential apartments. It involves servicing complex industrial ventilation systems, central chiller-fan coil air conditioning, fire hydrants, heavy-duty electrical infrastructure (transformer substations), and cleaning gigantic common areas (corridors, parking lots) of Class A business centers.

Therefore, the basic and somewhat naive legal norms regarding "current/capital repair" are superseded by a rigid, detailed, and uncompromising corporate contract.

1. Legislative Framework: Capital and Current Repairs (Art. 776 CC)

If one imagines that lawyers forgot to detail repair algorithms in a commercial contract, the base Civil Code of Ukraine (which also governs commercial relations via subsidiarity) would step in:

• Current repairs to the property are performed by the Tenant (Company) at their own expense (unless otherwise stipulated in the contract). Meaning, changing lightbulbs, fixing broken office doors, or plunging the plumbing inside the leased warehouse lies exclusively on the user business.
• Capital repairs to the thing (Commercial building or object) are performed by the Landlord (Building Owner).

The B2B Practice Problem: Where exactly lies the line between "current" and "capital"? What is the replacement of a compressor in the building's massive central air conditioning system that failed after 5 years: a scheduled capital repair by the landlord, or routine maintenance parts replacement on a specific floor? It is precisely because of this legal "gray area" that multi-million dollar conflicts erupt in Commercial court.

2. Modern Corporate Practice (OPEX and Service Fees)

In new and high-class Business or Logistics Centers in Ukraine, conflicts surrounding repairs are eliminated through a systemic approach. The Landlord assumes full and unquestioned technical maintenance of all infrastructural lifelines (outside the leased offices or tenant warehouses).

But they do not do this for "free." Instead, they levy a separate Operational Expense Payment (OPEX - Operating Expenses or Management Fee) on all commercial tenants, which is added monthly to the base rental rate (sometimes adding from $3 to $10 or more per square meter extra).

The Landlord's zone of responsibility (funded via tenants' OPEX payments) typically includes:

1. Payment of the commercial real estate tax and land tax beneath the building.

2. Round-the-clock physical and cyber security of the overall building, video surveillance, and access barriers.
3. Clearing snow from the roof, cleaning and repairing common halls, restroom zones (if shared), lobbies, and parking facilities.
4. Servicing (service contracts) of industrial elevators, fire suppression systems (sprinklers), and water booster pumps.
5. Removal of industrial waste (within baseline norms) and the maintenance of building generators and fuel tanks (critically relevant since 2022).

Tenant Space Responsibility: As soon as you, as a business client, step into the leased area "behind your glass or metal doors," the entire internal ecosystem—broken windows, smashed outlets, a torn-off fire sensor, or changing the carpeting (fit-out)—becomes 100% exclusively your financial and legal burden of current repair.

3. "Improvements" (Fit-out) and Inseparable Changes (Art. 778 CCU)

A particular catastrophe for the B2B sector involves "Inseparable improvements" (the tenant's investments into the building). Retail chains (like restaurants) physically cannot operate in bare concrete walls ("shell and core"); they invest up to $2,000 per sq.m. creating floors, ducting ventilation systems, and altering components (Capital Fit-out).

• The Risk for the Tenant: According to the law, all improvements (a bolted-down toilet, a poured screed, a new drop ceiling) that the tenant company "cannot magically remove without damaging the Landlord's building walls," on the final day of the lease completely and gratuitously remain the property of the Landlord and become their asset. The tenant "gifts" the owner a $100k renovation.
• Compensation? The law dryly states: "The Tenant has the right to demand compensation for the cost of the repair if the Landlord gave written permission for these improvements." But in practice—no professional mall contract anywhere allows "compensating" renovation costs upon moving out. The text contains a "massive waiver of claims regarding compensation for improvements." Therefore, commercial law firms demand so-called "Rent Holidays" (Rent-free periods) from Landlords. The tenant enters a concrete object, builds it out for 3 or 6 months, and pays zero base rent during this time, thereby "recouping" their investments.

The Landager digital property management platform is specifically tuned for aggressive and complex B2B facilities (Business Parks or Warehouses). The control panel allows the company owner to flexibly split a corporate client's monthly invoice into the "pure base rental rate," transparent "OPEX (operational) fees," and variable custom invoices based on industrial hot water and electricity meter readings (Service Charges). Furthermore, the "Maintenance Triage" module enables tenants to instantly dispatch photo work orders, which the system automatically identities and routs to the corresponding zone of responsibility: "burnt-out bulb in lobby" (dispatch to in-house duty electrician for OPEX-covered fix) versus "shattered lock on tenant’s glass door" (issue the tenant a Bill Back for repair or reject it due to their own liability for internal current maintenance).

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