Your landlord hasn't returned the deposit. Here's what actually works.

Getting a rental deposit back is the most common legal problem English speakers hit in Germany, and the one where silence from the other side does the most damage — people assume a landlord who has stopped answering has won. They haven't. The rules on deposits are tenant-friendly, the amounts are small enough to pursue without a lawyer, and there is a cheap, standardised route for exactly this situation.

1. What the landlord was allowed to do with it

A residential deposit (Kaution) is capped at three months' cold rent (§ 551 BGB) — rent excluding utilities. You were entitled to pay it in three instalments. The landlord must hold it separately from their own money, in an interest-bearing account, and the interest is yours.

Two practical consequences: if you were charged more than three months, the excess was never owed. And if the landlord mixed your deposit with their own funds, that is a breach in itself — it does not change what you are owed, but it tells you something about who you are dealing with.

2. When it has to be returned

The law does not fix a number of days. Courts give landlords a reasonable period after the tenancy ends to inspect, work out any claims, and settle up — commonly understood as up to three to six months, longer only where there is a genuine reason such as an outstanding utility reconciliation, in which case they may hold back a proportionate part, not the whole amount.

What a landlord may not do is simply keep it without explanation. Six months of silence after you handed back the keys is not "still checking". It is a debt.

3. What can be deducted — and what can't

A landlord can set off against the deposit only what you actually owe:

• unpaid rent;
• damage beyond normal wear and tear, which they must be able to evidence;
• a utility balance once reconciled;
• cleaning or repairs you were contractually obliged to do and didn't — and only where that clause was valid, which many are not.

Routinely deducted, routinely not owed:

• Normal wear — faded paint, small nail holes, worn flooring — is the landlord's cost, not yours.
• Renovation on moving out based on a rigid schedule ("paint every three years") — clauses like that have repeatedly been held invalid.
• Unitemised "cleaning" or "repair" sums with no receipts, no photos, no handover record.
• Costs for things that were already worn or damaged when you moved in.

This is why your own move-in and move-out photos, and a signed handover protocol (Übergabeprotokoll), are worth more than any argument. If you have them, you are in a strong position. If you don't, it becomes their word against yours — and the burden of proving damage is on the landlord.

4. The written demand

Before anything formal, send a written demand with a deadline — by email is fine, by registered post is better if you expect a fight. It needs only:

• the address, the tenancy dates, and the date you returned the keys;
• the deposit amount and your bank details;
• a clear deadline, two weeks is standard;
• a sentence that you will pursue it formally if unpaid.

This matters for two reasons. It puts the landlord formally in default (Verzug), from which point interest runs and your costs of enforcement become claimable from them. And it is the step everything afterwards refers back to.

5. The Mahnverfahren: a court order without a trial

For an undisputed sum of money — and a landlord who simply isn't paying is usually not disputing anything, just not answering — Germany has a fast track that most people have never heard of: the Mahnverfahren.

You apply online to the central Mahngericht for a Mahnbescheid — a court payment order. No hearing, no lawyer required, and the court fee is modest (it scales with the amount; for a typical deposit it is in the low tens of euros and is added to what the landlord owes you). The landlord then has two weeks to object.

• If they do nothing, you apply for an enforcement order (Vollstreckungsbescheid), and you can have it enforced — against their bank account, for instance.
• If they object, the matter moves to an ordinary court, which is where you reassess. For sums up to 5,000 EUR the local Amtsgericht hears it and you do not need a lawyer to appear, though one helps.

The Mahnbescheid does most of its work by arriving. A landlord who has ignored three emails rarely ignores a court document with a two-week window printed on it.

6. If the landlord has vanished, or isn't who you think

The Mahnverfahren needs a name and a serviceable address. If your landlord was a company, that is whoever is on your lease — and if the property has since changed hands, the deposit obligation does not automatically travel with it. A new owner or manager telling you they are "not responsible for the deposit" may be correct: the claim is against the person you paid, and your contract shows who that is.

A company that has gone quiet can still be served at its registered address, which is public (Handelsregister). A private landlord who has moved can be traced through the registration office (Einwohnermeldeamt) — a paid but routine enquiry. What you cannot do is serve a Mahnbescheid on a WhatsApp number.

7. Co-living and sublets

Co-living operators, furnished-rental platforms and chains of sublets produce the most confusion, because the person collecting the rent, the person on your contract and the person who owns the flat can all be different. Your claim is against whoever your contract is with — not the owner, and not whoever took over the building.

These operators also tend to use "service fee", "membership" or "reservation" labels for what is functionally a deposit. The label is not decisive; what the money was for is. And if you were told you could not get it back because the flat was handed to a new manager, see the section above — that is usually the operator's problem to solve, not yours to absorb.

8. Chasing it from abroad

You do not have to be in Germany. The written demand, the Mahnverfahren and an enforcement order can all be run from outside the country, though a German address for service makes things easier and some stages are paper-based. A lawyer acting for you removes that friction entirely, and where the landlord is clearly in default, their fees are generally recoverable on top of the deposit.

The order that works