I’m sorry if this question doesn’t belong here, but couldn’t figure out where else to write and this community doesn’t have a rule against english posts so decided to ask here:
Are landlords in Austria required to pay back the rent deposit with interest ? And if so, is the interest rate tied to something specific? Or are all of these things contract specific and the landlord by default is not required to pay back the deposit with interest to the tenant (if the tenant hasn’t caused any damage that would allow the landlord to keep the deposit obviously)?
I tried googling and translating some pages without success, and my German skills are limited to oida gemma zu billa so I thought maybe someone here could help.
IANAL but this page says yes. There are no fixed rules for how much interest, but the common understanding from previous court cases is that it should be roughly equivalent to the interest you’d get in a savings account.
Danke sehr! This was really useful, checking the translated word for deposit interest rate led me to check on AT National bank what is considered “industry standard” interest rate (Sparzinsen Entwicklung) and seems about right, normal saving account rates.