Which rights are acknowledged to tenants? And which rights are assigned to landlords? And how do you terminate a residential lease agreement?

The day this agreement is finalized and signed, tenant is expected to pay a security deposit to landlord who may ask up to three regular monthly rents. Landlord is supposed to return this deposit back to tenant upon vacation of the leased premises but may keep this money if the property was damaged or the regular monthly rent was not paid as per the provisions of the agreement the parties had entered into.

In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg tenants are mostly foreign people as per the figures provided by an ad-hoc study. Only 10% of Luxembourg citizens are paying a monthly rent for the premises where they live, while this figure moves up to 29% among foreigners, even though this percentage has been also decreasing in recent times as it originally stood at 36% back in 2003.

Residential lease agreements may differ in terms of their duration, i.e. indefinite or definite. If the duration of that agreement is determined, tenant is supposed to leave the leased premises once the contract expires or, if tenant wants to vacate the premises even before that term, he/she is supposed to notify landlord via a written three-month notice to be dropped via registered mail.

If no expiry date is foreseen by the residential lease agreement, tenant may vacate the premises by notifying landlord three months before he/she eventually leaves the premises. When it comes to indefinite residential agreements, it is very difficult for landlord to put tenant at the door unless one of these three conditions are fulfilled: tenant does not comply with the contractual obligations – which results into an immediate termination of the contract -; landlord needs the premises (with a six-month notice) for personal use; major repairs/works have to be carried out in the leased premises (in this case the relevant notice will be dispatched by landlord to tenant three months before he/she has to vacate the premises).