Renting Guide

The rental viewing questions people wish they had asked

Almost every regret in a Luxembourg tenancy traces back to a question that was easy to ask at the viewing and awkward to raise afterwards. These are the ones that recur.

What exactly is included

Unfurnished in Luxembourg is frequently genuinely empty. Ask, item by item and in writing: oven, hob, extractor, fridge, dishwasher, washing machine and its connection, wardrobes, light fittings, curtain poles.

Each is several hundred euros and a delivery slot, and a list agreed verbally at a viewing is not a list you can rely on in October. Have it recorded in the lease or in an annexe.

What the charges advance actually covers

The monthly figure is an avance sur charges, an estimate. Once a year the syndic produces the accounts, the general assembly approves them, and the difference is billed or refunded.

Ask what the advance includes, and ask for the reconciled statements for a completed year rather than the provision. A low advance against high reconciled costs is a deferred bill rather than a saving.

Ask separately whether heating is collective or individual. Where it is collective, allocation is usually by heat-cost allocators on each radiator and appears months later through the charges.

Who is responsible for what

Small maintenance and annual servicing are commonly allocated to the tenant in Luxembourg leases, and the boiler service is the item that catches people. Ask which clause covers it and read it before signing.

Ask who the syndic is and how to contact them for an emergency. In an apartment a surprising share of what goes wrong is a common-part matter rather than a landlord one: the lift, the entrance, the cellar corridors, the roof, the heating plant.

The building rules

Ask for the règlement de copropriété and any règlement d'ordre intérieur. Most leases bind the tenant to respect them, which means agreeing to documents many tenants are never shown.

They govern the things people later discover: animals, bicycles, what may be stored in the cellars and the parking, what may be fixed to a balcony railing, and whether anything may be kept on a landing.

Permitted hours for noisy activity are set separately by each commune's règlement général de police and vary between communes.

The cave and the parking

Ask to be taken to the cave rather than told it exists. Measure the floor area and the height separately, check the base of the walls for salt bloom, confirm which one belongs to the apartment and that it will be empty at handover.

For parking, ask whether a space is included in the rent or charged separately, whether it is an assigned lot or shared, and what the building rules permit inside it. Storing tyres, bicycles or boxes in an underground space is prohibited in many buildings for fire-safety reasons.

The questions about the lease itself

Since 1 August 2024, under the law of 23 July 2024, the guarantee cannot exceed two months' rent calculated on the base rent excluding charges. Check the arithmetic yourself, since calculating it on rent plus charges is a common and material error.

Agency commission on a new lease is shared equally between landlord and tenant. A written lease is mandatory.

Ask how the guarantee is returned. The statutory procedure is half within one month of the handover of keys where the exit inventory matches the entry one and rent is paid, and the remainder within one month of the annual charges being approved.

The questions that are really about the building

Three checks that take a minute each and are the ones nobody thinks to make at a viewing.

Stand in the main bedroom with the window closed and stay silent for thirty seconds. That measures transmission through the structure, which in converted stock with timber floors is far more consequential than street noise and cannot be changed by an occupant.

Count the ceiling points and the position of every socket. A room with one central fitting and no lamp socket is expensive to light for the five months it needs it, with the sun setting before half past four in late December.

Check the corners of external walls and the window reveals for any dark bloom, which indicates a ventilation problem rather than a decorating one.

The question about the exit

Ask to see the template entry inventory, and plan to do it properly with the property empty before furniture arrives.

Record every existing mark in words as well as photographs. "Scratch, 8 cm, left of door frame, hallway" is evidence; "some marks" is not. It is the comparator against which the guarantee is judged, and an hour spent on it at the start is the cheapest insurance in a tenancy.

Three questions we are asked

Is it rude to ask all of this? No, and an agent who answers precisely is telling you something useful about how the property is managed.

What if the answers come only verbally? Send a short email summarising what you were told and asking for confirmation. It costs nothing and it creates a record.

Which question matters most? The reconciled charges, because it is the largest number nobody quotes, and the thirty seconds of silence, because it is the one thing that cannot be fixed later.

The message to send afterwards

The single highest-return habit in a Luxembourg rental search is a short email the same evening, summarising what you were told and asking for confirmation.

What is included item by item. What the charges advance covers and the reconciled figure for a completed year. Who services the boiler. Which cave belongs to the apartment and whether it will be empty. What the building rules say about the things you care about.

It costs five minutes, it creates a record, and the speed and precision of the reply tells you how the property is managed, which is information you cannot get any other way before signing.

The five-minute test outside

Before leaving the address, stand at the building entrance, set a timer for five minutes and walk in three directions, noting what you reach and the gradient.

Five things should be inside that radius on level ground: a supermarket you would genuinely use, the stop that serves your commute, a pharmacy, a bakery and green space you would actually walk to. Then check their real opening hours for the days you are free, since permitted opening under the framework in force from 19 June 2026 is not the same as open.

Those five minutes tell you more about how a week will run than the apartment does, and almost nobody spends them.