The état des lieux: the hour that decides whether you get your deposit back

Two months' rent now sits in a blocked account with your name on it. The document that determines how much of it returns is not the lease. It is the inventory taken on the day you arrive, and it is almost always rushed.

What the document is, legally

The état des lieux d'entrée is the contradictory record of the property's condition at the start of the tenancy. Its function is comparative: at the end of the lease, an état des lieux de sortie is drawn up and the two are set against each other. Anything that has deteriorated beyond normal wear and tear between the two documents is chargeable to you.

This is why an empty or generic entry inventory is dangerous rather than convenient. If the entry document says the walls were in good condition and does not mention the existing scuff behind the sofa, that scuff becomes yours. The absence of a record is not neutral; in practice it favours whoever has better documentation, which is usually the landlord.

The 2024 reform also made the written lease mandatory, with prescribed content: the full identity of the parties, the designation of every room and part of the building covered, the address and the cadastral reference, and an explicit statement that either party may refer a rent dispute to the rent commission. An inventory that does not match the rooms designated in the lease is a problem worth catching on day one.

How the deposit now comes back

The reform introduced a defined return procedure with deadlines and a penalty for delay, which changed the balance considerably.

• Where the exit inventory matches the entry inventory and all rent has been paid, half the guarantee must be returned within one month of the handover of keys.
• The remaining half is returned within one month of the annual charges being approved by the general assembly of co-owners, or of the charges statements being received.
• Where damage is recorded, the landlord may withhold the disputed portion. The undisputed portion must still be returned within the deadline. Withholding the entire deposit over a partial dispute is one of the most frequent and most costly landlord errors in Luxembourg.

On the valuation of damage, the standard is objectively verifiable evidence. Estimates written by the landlord on a spreadsheet, without invoices or a third-party assessment, generally carry no probative value.

Doing the entry inventory properly

Allow ninety minutes and do not accept a fifteen-minute walkthrough. Room by room:

• Surfaces. Walls, ceilings, skirting, doors and door frames. Photograph every mark you find and describe it in words on the document. "Scratch, 8 cm, left of window, bedroom 2" is evidence. "Some marks" is not.
• Floors. Parquet in particular. Note existing scratches, gaps at the edges and any lifting. Parquet refinishing is one of the largest single deductions landlords claim.
• Windows and shutters. Open and close each one, including every roller shutter. A shutter that jams was either broken before you arrived or it was not.
• Sanitary. Silicone joints, grout condition, the seal around the shower tray, whether the toilet runs on.
• Appliances. In a furnished letting, run each one. Serial numbers and photographs of the model plates. An oven that does not heat is a repair; an oven that does not heat and is not documented is a replacement charged to you.
• Keys and meters. The exact number of keys, badges and remote controls, and the reading and serial number of every meter.

The furniture list in a furnished letting

In a furnished letting, the inventory has a second job: it establishes what furniture exists and in what condition, which matters because a landlord may charge a legitimate rent supplement for furniture on top of the capped rent. If you are paying that supplement, the list of what you are paying for should be specific.

Record the item, its condition, and any existing damage: "Sofa, three-seat, grey fabric, stain approx. 5 cm right cushion". Photograph each piece. At the end of the tenancy, a generic entry list of "sofa, table, four chairs" gives you nothing to argue with when the exit inspection describes the sofa as worn.

Wear and tear against damage

Normal wear and tear is not chargeable. The difficulty is that Luxembourg law does not publish a depreciation table for interiors, so the line is argued case by case. In practice:

Paint that has faded over four years, carpet flattened along a circulation route, silicone that has yellowed, minor marks at socket height behind furniture: these read as wear. A cracked worktop, a burnt hob, a hole in plasterboard, a stained parquet panel under a plant pot, missing keys: these read as damage.

The way to keep the argument short is to make the entry document long. Where the two of you disagree at the exit inspection, either party may involve a commissaire de justice, with the cost shared, to produce a record neither side drafted.

Three questions we are asked

The landlord wants to do the inventory after I move my furniture in. Is that acceptable? No. Once boxes are against the walls, half the surfaces cannot be inspected, and the document becomes unusable as a comparison. Insist on an empty property.

Nobody offered me an entry inventory. What now? Write your own within the first days, with dated photographs, and send it to the landlord or agent by registered letter or at minimum by email, asking them to confirm or contest it. A unilateral record that was sent and not disputed is considerably better than nothing.

How long should I keep the documents? Until the second half of the guarantee has been returned and the final charges reconciliation is settled, which can be well over a year after you hand back the keys.

The exit inspection, planned six weeks out

The exit inventory is not the moment to discover what the entry inventory said. Read both documents together six weeks before your notice expires, with the entry photographs open beside you, and make a list of the differences you can still resolve yourself.

Most of that list is small and cheap when handled in advance and expensive when handled by a landlord's contractor. Filling and touching in picture hooks, replacing a cracked toilet seat, re-siliconing a shower joint, replacing a blown oven bulb, cleaning limescale from taps: each of these can appear as a line item at contractor rates if you leave it.

Two structural points. First, the deadline for the return of the first half of the guarantee runs from a concrete event, the signature of the exit inventory and the handover of keys, so do not let the inspection drift past your last day of occupancy. Second, hand over every key, badge and remote listed on the entry document, counted in front of the other party, and have the number written on the exit record. Missing access devices frequently require reprogramming the whole building's system, which is one of the few genuinely large deductions a landlord can justify with an invoice.

Where you are leaving a shared lease before the others, an intermediate inventory must be drawn up to document the condition of the property on the day you go. Under a single joint lease the guarantee is not paid out on an individual departure: it stays lodged until the lease ends for everyone and is divided at the final exit. That is worth settling in writing between flatmates at the start, not at the end.