Furnished or unfurnished in Luxembourg: the comparison over three years

Furnished looks obviously cheaper on arrival and is usually more expensive by the second year. The question is not which is better but how long you intend to stay, and the crossover point is more predictable than most people expect.

What furnished legally means here

A landlord letting a furnished property may charge a rent supplement for the furniture on top of the amount permitted by the rent cap. That supplement is legitimate, and it is the mechanism by which a furnished flat commands more than the same flat empty.

Two consequences follow. First, you should know what the supplement is and what it covers, which is why the furniture inventory matters as a commercial document and not only as a condition record. Second, where a property is let room by room under separate individual leases, the sum of the rents remains subject to the same annual ceiling, which closed a structure previously used to exceed it.

Note also the distinction the law now draws. A colocation is a single lease signed by the landlord and all the flatmates together. Letting furnished rooms individually is a different arrangement, with a separate contract between the landlord and each tenant, and different rules on liability and on the guarantee.

The arithmetic over three years

Take a two-bedroom apartment in Merl. Unfurnished, €2,300 excluding charges. The same flat furnished, €2,750.

Unfurnished, year one. Rent €27,600. Furnishing an apartment to a decent but unremarkable standard, buying new: bed and mattress, wardrobes, sofa, dining table and chairs, lighting, curtains or blinds, a washing machine if none is fitted, kitchen equipment and linen. Realistically €9,000 to €14,000, and closer to the top of that range if you want it to look like the photographs that persuaded you.

Furnished, year one. Rent €33,000. Nothing to buy.

Year one favours furnished by roughly €4,000 to €9,000. But the furniture premium repeats every year and the furnishing spend does not. By the end of year two the two paths are close. By the end of year three, unfurnished is ahead by around €10,000 to €15,000, and you own the furniture.

The crossover sits somewhere between eighteen and thirty months depending on how much you spend furnishing. That is the number to hold, because it maps directly onto contract length rather than onto taste.

What the arithmetic omits

Three costs sit outside the rent comparison and they matter.

• Moving furniture out. If you leave Luxembourg after three years, an international removal of a furnished apartment runs into thousands. Selling second-hand recovers a fraction. This narrows the unfurnished advantage considerably for people who know they are leaving.
• Time. Furnishing an apartment properly is several weekends, plus delivery windows, plus the assembly. For someone starting a demanding role in a bank or a fund in their first month in the country, that time has a real cost.
• Deposit exposure. A furnished letting means every item on the inventory is something that can be recorded as damaged at the exit inspection. More objects means more surface area for a deduction against your two months' guarantee.

The case for furnished, honestly stated

Furnished wins clearly in three situations. On assignments of two years or less, where the crossover is never reached. On arrivals where the start date is fixed and the family follows later, so that a furnished flat bridges a gap. And where the employer pays the rent directly but not a furnishing allowance, which is common in secondment structures and quietly decides the question.

It also wins on flexibility. A furnished tenant who is transferred at nine months' notice sells nothing and moves with suitcases.

The case for unfurnished

Unfurnished wins on anything over two years, and it wins on quality. Luxembourg's furnished stock is competent rather than considered: the furniture is chosen to survive tenants, not to be lived with. If you are going to spend three winters in a living room, the difference between furniture you selected and furniture selected for durability is not a small one.

The unfurnished market is also substantially larger. Restricting your search to furnished properties in Belair, Limpertsberg or Kirchberg removes most of the available stock in exactly the districts where competition is hardest.

One practical warning: unfurnished in Luxembourg is often genuinely empty. No wardrobes, sometimes no light fittings beyond bare fixtures, and occasionally no kitchen appliances. Confirm at the viewing what is included, and check the longest uninterrupted wall in each bedroom, because a room with three doors and a radiator may not take a wardrobe at all.

The middle option nobody advertises

A partly furnished arrangement is negotiable more often than tenants assume. Where an outgoing tenant is leaving Luxembourg, they frequently want to sell furniture rather than ship it, and a landlord holding a vacant flat has every reason to facilitate the introduction. Ask the agent directly whether the outgoing tenant is selling anything. It costs one question and it regularly saves several thousand euros on a well-furnished apartment.

Where you agree to take over furniture, keep it out of the lease and out of the rent. Buy it privately from the outgoing tenant, so that it becomes yours rather than an inventoried item you can be charged for at the exit inspection.

Three questions we are asked

Is the furniture supplement negotiable? In practice more than the rent is, because the rent is capped and the supplement is a commercial judgement. It is a reasonable subject to raise once you have been selected.

Can I ask to remove furniture I do not want? Frequently yes, if there is somewhere to store it, and it should be recorded in writing along with any adjustment to the supplement. Do not move items into the cave without written agreement.

Does furnished mean a shorter lease? Not automatically. The same rules on duration, notice and conversion to an open-ended contract apply. Where a furnished property is offered on a short fixed term, read the termination clause carefully, because inside an initial fixed period you are held to the term.

How the choice interacts with your lease and your guarantee

The furnished decision is not only a budget question; it changes your exposure on two documents.

The first is the inventory. In an unfurnished letting, the entry inventory records surfaces, fittings and meters. In a furnished letting it also records every item of furniture and every appliance, and each of those becomes a line that can be described as damaged at the exit inspection. With a guarantee capped at two months' rent, and a defined statutory procedure now governing its return, the practical difference is the number of things that can generate a deduction. Photograph every item at entry and describe existing wear specifically, because a generic list of "sofa, table, four chairs" gives you nothing to argue with three years later.

The second is the contract structure. Where a landlord lets furnished rooms individually, each tenant signs a separate lease with the landlord, and that is legally distinct from a colocation, where one lease is signed by the landlord and all the flatmates together. Under a joint lease the tenants are jointly and severally liable, so the landlord may pursue any one of them for the entire rent, and a departing flatmate must give three months' notice to the landlord and the others simultaneously and either find a replacement or show a genuine search. Under separate individual leases none of that applies to you.

Ask which structure is on offer before you decide, because for a furnished room the answer changes your risk far more than the quality of the sofa does.