Renovation in a rented flat: who pays and how to settle the costs

Minor repairs versus improvements: where the line runs

Who pays for what in a tenancy? It does not depend on who calls about the problem first, or who is more willing to compromise. The answer comes from the Civil Code and the Tenants’ Rights Protection Act, and those two split the duties fairly precisely. The trouble is that arrangements made on the spot, over the phone, in the middle of a breakdown, usually reproduce that split incorrectly - in favour of whichever side pushes harder at that moment. So it is better to know where the legal line runs before the negotiation starts.

The tenant covers the minor outlays connected with ordinary use of the flat. Maintaining floors and carpets, painting walls, repairing small fittings, light bulbs, fuses, keeping drains clear. Current, predictable expenses that simply follow from someone living there.

The landlord has a task of a different order: keeping the flat fit for the agreed use throughout the tenancy. Water, electrical and gas installations, windows and doors, heating, structural elements of the building, repairs that go beyond day-to-day use. A pipe burst? That is the landlord’s cost, even if the failure showed up at the exact moment the tenant was taking a shower.

And then there is wear and tear, a category of its own. Worn laminate flooring after three years of walking on it, marks left by wardrobe legs, a grubby patch of wall around the light switch. That is not damage, it is the result of using the flat properly. Deducting such items from the deposit has no legal basis and, let us be honest, this is exactly the ground on which most of the arguments at handover break out.

• On the tenant’s side: painting, floor maintenance, small fittings, light bulbs, fuses, clearing drains.
• On the landlord’s side: installations, windows and doors, heating, structure, hidden defects of the flat.
• Nobody’s responsibility: normal wear and tear resulting from the passage of time and ordinary use.

From the reports that reach us from tenanto users, two categories raise the most doubts: breakdowns of appliances that are part of the furnishings, and boiler faults. Because how do you decide whether the device died of old age or whether a defect surfaced that had been sitting there since the flat was handed over? The answer usually comes from the documentation of the initial condition. Not from a discussion.

Renovation started by the tenant: consent, scope and what happens without it

Improvements are works that go beyond restoring the previous condition. A new kitchen, changing the layout of walls, replacing an installation with a better one, a different floor. Each of them requires the landlord’s written consent obtained before the works begin. The order is not a matter of good manners, it is a matter of legal effects. Consent given after the fact tends to be negotiated from a position where the tenant has already paid and has nothing left to play with.

The consent itself has to be more than a sentence saying “fine, go ahead”. A document that really closes the subject describes four things: the scope of works, the deadline, the way they are carried out, and what happens to the improvements once the tenancy ends. That last point is the one most often left out. And it is precisely the one that decides the settlement a year or five years later.

1. Scope: what exactly gets done, in which rooms, using which materials.
2. Deadline: start and finish dates, any periods when the flat cannot be used.
3. Way of carrying out the works: who does them, whether any licences are required, who signs them off.
4. Fate of the improvements: whether they stay in the flat, with or without payment, or whether the tenant has to remove them.

No consent triggers the scenario nobody wants. The landlord can demand restoration of the previous condition at the cost of whoever carried out the works. The outlay turns into a liability and the tenant pays twice: once for the renovation, once for tearing it out. A new kitchen fitted with the best of intentions but without paperwork can be a cost that nobody will ever reimburse.

Verbal consent remains valid. It just does not help much in a dispute. What counts is a trace in the correspondence - a message describing the works with a clear reply from the other side is sometimes enough, though it often ends in an argument about what exactly the parties meant. It is safer to sign an annex to the agreement, because that ties the arrangement to a specific tenancy, its parties and its dates. An email lives its own life somewhere in a mailbox. An annex sits next to the agreement and can still be found years later.

Three settlement models that work in practice

Let us assume the parties agree on the renovation itself. That leaves the question of money. In practice I come across three arrangements, and the choice between them comes down mainly to two things: how much cash each side has and how long the tenancy is meant to last.

Deduction from the rent. The cost of the works is spread over the following settlement periods until the agreed amount is used up. The tenant pays reduced rent for a set number of months, the landlord does not touch their own savings. Convenient for longer agreements, but it requires accounting discipline on both sides.

One-off reimbursement. The landlord pays once the works are signed off, based on invoices and a handover report. The settlement closes immediately, with no balance dragging on for a year. One condition: somebody has to have the money when the renovation ends.

Leaving the improvements without payment. The tenant funds the works and waives reimbursement, and in return gets a lower rent or a guarantee of a longer tenancy. A clear model - provided the tenant’s benefit is written down as precisely as their waiver of the claim.

The first model carries the most risk, because it stretches over time. A clause saying “renovation costs will be deducted from the rent” settles nothing. The agreement has to describe the mechanism: the base amount, the size of the monthly instalment, the date the deductions end, and what happens to the remainder if the agreement is terminated early. Without those four figures, six months later nobody remembers how much is left.

Tip: in tenanto the renovation cost is entered as a settlement item linked to a specific agreement. Every subsequent charge shows the amount still left to deduct on its own, instead of being calculated by hand in a spreadsheet - which usually exists in several versions, only one of which is current. We see this again and again in the reports: a mismatch between the owner’s balance and the tenant’s balance almost always comes from each side counting in a separate file.

The documentation that decides the outcome of a dispute

Disputes over improvements are rarely settled by arguments. They are settled by paper - or rather, by which side has more of it and in better shape. The good news is that the list of documents you need is short and predictable. You can put it together in advance.

• Handover report with photos of the initial condition - the basis for judging what counts as wear and what counts as damage when the flat is returned. Without it, the discussion comes down to memories.
• Invoices and receipts - issued to the person who actually bore the cost. An invoice made out to the contractor or to a family member complicates any claim for reimbursement.
• Photos before, during and after the works - with a visible date, covering the elements that will later be hidden from view.
• Written consent together with the agreed settlement model - kept with the tenancy agreement, not separately.
• Correspondence about the fault report and the other side’s response - with dates, because the response time can matter as much as the response itself.

The most valuable documentation covers the things you can no longer see once the works are finished. A photo of the pipework before it is plastered over, or of the subfloor before the panels go down. A few seconds of effort, and it answers questions that would otherwise require knocking a wall open.

Our observations point to something that sounds obvious yet keeps happening: documentation scattered between the phone gallery, the mailbox and a paper binder falls apart at exactly the moment the tenancy ends. The phone was replaced, the messages are buried in a thread from two years ago, the report is somewhere, only nobody knows where. The material exists. Gathering it in reasonable time does not work, so one side drops the claim or accepts an unfavourable settlement.

Tip: keep everything with the agreement it relates to. Link the handover report, the renovation consent, the invoices and the photos to a specific flat and a specific tenant the moment they come into existence, rather than sorting it all out at move-out.

Settling up after the tenancy ends: deposit, reimbursement and restoration

The deposit secures claims for rent arrears and damage to the flat. It is not a modernisation fund or a reserve for freshening the place up before the next tenant. Repainting the walls after a three-year tenancy so the flat looks better in photos? That is the owner’s investment, not a deduction.

If improvements have been left in the flat, the landlord has a choice - unless the agreement says otherwise. They can keep them by paying their value, or demand restoration of the previous condition. The decision is theirs, which takes more than one tenant by surprise, because many assume that once they have invested, reimbursement follows automatically.

The key difference lies in how the value is calculated. The value of improvements is determined as at the day the tenancy ends, not by the amount on invoices from years ago. A kitchen costing twenty thousand zloty is worth, after five years of use, whatever it is worth then. Not what it cost. An invoice proves that the expense was incurred, not the size of the claim.

The second trap is time. Claims for reimbursement of improvements become time-barred faster than typical claims under a tenancy agreement, so putting the conversation off “until things calm down, in a few months” works purely against the tenant. Whoever delays ends up being right at some point - and getting nothing out of it.

The deposit settlement itself should take the form of an itemised statement, not a single sum transferred with the note “after deductions”. A clear statement contains:

1. the amount of the deposit and the date it was paid,
2. a list of deductions with a description, a basis and an amount for each item,
3. a reference to the report or the photo documenting the damage,
4. the balance to be returned and the transfer date.

A statement like this shortens the discussion, because it moves it from general dissatisfaction to specific items. The parties then argue about one or two of them instead of questioning the whole thing.

Contract clauses that close the subject before a dispute starts

Most renovation conflicts can be cut out at the moment the agreement is signed. The effort involved? Minimal. A few clauses covering the situations that repeat in every tenancy are enough.

Two lists of works. The first sets out the works that require the landlord’s consent, the second the ones allowed in advance. The tenant then knows they can paint the walls without asking, but replacing the bathroom fittings needs to be agreed. Specifics instead of guesswork.

A procedure for reporting faults. The contact channel, the other side’s response time, the amount threshold up to which the tenant acts on their own and presents an invoice for settlement. Without a designated channel, reports dissolve somewhere between a text message and a phone call that nobody can reconstruct afterwards.

The settlement method stated outright. The agreement should name the chosen model and require written form for any change. A clause referring to “separate arrangements” solves nothing. It just moves the problem into the future.

A documentation rule. An invoice, a handover report and photos as a condition of reimbursement. A clause like that keeps both sides disciplined and cuts off later arguments about whether the works were done to the declared extent.

Tip: an amount threshold for minor repairs removes most micro-conflicts. The tenant does not wait for the owner’s decision to replace a seal or buy a trap, and the owner does not get an unexpected invoice for a bathroom renovation they never signed up for. Set the limit realistically, at the level of typical repair costs in that particular flat, and add that any expense above the threshold requires getting in touch first.

These four elements fit on a single page of the agreement. Writing them takes less time than one conversation about who is supposed to pay for a new boiler.

Frequently asked questions

Can a tenant deduct the cost of a renovation from the rent without the landlord’s consent?

Deducting on your own is allowed, but only in narrowly defined situations. These are cases where the flat has defects limiting its suitability for the agreed use, the tenant notified the landlord about them, set an appropriate deadline for removing them, and that deadline passed with nothing done. Only then can the tenant repair the flat at the owner’s cost. Any other deduction - even for an objectively justified expense - creates rent arrears with all the consequences: termination of the agreement and deduction from the deposit included. The safe order is always the same: report the defect in writing, set a deadline, document the lack of response, and only then act. And where the works are not about removing a defect but about improving the flat, this route does not apply at all. There, consent is required.

Summary: a renovation is settled at the start, not at the end

Establishing the scope of responsibility and the settlement model before the works begin takes a quarter of an hour when signing the agreement or an annex. A dispute after the tenancy ends costs many times more - in time, in nerves, sometimes in money for a lawyer, and with larger outlays also in the chance of recovering the amount invested. The proportion is clear enough that it is hard to come up with an argument for putting these arrangements off.

Three things close the subject. Written consent setting out the scope of works and the fate of the improvements once the tenancy ends. Documentation of the condition of the flat before and after the works, with dates and photos. And consistently recording costs with the agreement they relate to, rather than in whatever place happened to be at hand.

That last point tends to be taken lightly, even though it decides how useful the first two are. Settlements kept with the tenancy agreement, rather than alongside it, stay readable a year later, after a change of tenant, and after everyone has forgotten the details of what was agreed. You open a specific agreement and you see how much is left to deduct, who agreed to which works, and which documents confirm the expenses. Collecting the same information from a phone, a mailbox and a binder takes hours. And ends with gaps.

Tenanto in the version for a single flat is free with no time limit, so keeping renovation documentation in order does not require a purchase decision at the outset. You can enter the agreement straight away, link the renovation costs to it and have the balances calculated automatically - instead of coming back to the subject at handover and reconstructing the arrangements from memory.