Accepting Contractor Work: Deadlines and Defect Rights

Last updated: 23 August 2026 · Reading time approx. 8 minutes

Acceptance – Abnahme in German law – is the pivotal date of any renovation, and the one most often treated as a formality. It makes the invoice payable, starts the warranty period running and reverses the burden of proof. A landlord who wants to complain afterwards is in a far weaker position than the day before.

Two things make this especially sharp for buy-to-let investors. First, a job can be deemed accepted without you ever signing anything. Second, almost every guide on the subject is written for consumers or for trade businesses – and the protective rule they rely on may not apply to a landlord acting commercially. This article covers German law only.

What changes at acceptance

By accepting, you declare that you take delivery of the work as substantially in conformity with the contract. Four key positions switch sides at that moment.

Item	Before acceptance	After acceptance
Payment	Not yet due	Due, and bearing interest from that point (§ 641 Abs. 1 and Abs. 4 BGB)
Risk	With the contractor (§ 644 Abs. 1 BGB)	With you as the customer
Burden of proof	The contractor must prove the work conforms (§ 632a Abs. 1 BGB)	You must prove the defect
Limitation period	Not yet running	Starts at acceptance (§ 634a Abs. 2 BGB)

The third row is the expensive one. Until acceptance, the business has to show it worked properly. Afterwards, you have to show it did not – in practice an expert report at your own cost, with an uncertain outcome.

Deemed acceptance – where it gets expensive

Acceptance requires neither a signature nor a protocol. Under § 640 Abs. 2 Satz 1 BGB, a work also counts as accepted if the contractor has set you a reasonable deadline for acceptance after completion and you do not refuse acceptance within that period while naming at least one defect.

The wording is what matters. Not responding is not enough, and neither is "I will come by next week". You must refuse acceptance and name at least one concrete defect in doing so. How long the deadline must be is not stated in the statute – it requires only a "reasonable" period. The day counts quoted in many guides are not in the statutory text; they are case-by-case interpretation. So do not rely on a supposed minimum period.

Particularly important for landlords: the consequence in § 640 Abs. 2 Satz 2 BGB – that the contractor must point out the effects in text form together with the request for acceptance – applies expressly only where the customer is a consumer. Under § 13 BGB a consumer acts predominantly for private purposes; under § 14 BGB a trader acts in the exercise of a commercial or independent professional activity. Whether managing your portfolio is still private or already commercial depends on the individual case and cannot be answered in the abstract. Plan defensively: do not count on a missing notice to save you.

Refusing properly – and recording the condition

Refusal is not available at will. Under § 640 Abs. 1 BGB you must accept work that conforms to the contract, and acceptance cannot be refused because of insignificant defects. A missing bead of silicone will not carry a refusal; a heating system that does not work will.

If you refuse while naming defects, § 650g BGB applies to construction contracts. Under § 650a BGB a construction contract covers the building, rebuilding, removal or conversion of a structure or part of it – maintenance counts where the work is of material importance for the construction, the integrity or the intended use. In that case:

On request you must take part in a joint record of condition, dated and signed by both parties.
If you fail to attend an appointment, the contractor may record the condition unilaterally.
If an obvious defect is not listed in that record, it is presumed to have arisen afterwards and to be your responsibility.

Point 3 is why not showing up is the worst option available: you lose more than the appointment – you reverse the presumption for every visible defect. Attend, and list them.

Withhold money rather than litigate

If you have accepted and later find a defect, your most effective lever is not a lawsuit but a retention. Under § 641 Abs. 3 BGB you may refuse payment of a reasonable part of the remuneration for as long as you can demand that the defect be remedied – and reasonable is as a rule twice the cost required to remedy it.

Worked example: final invoice €12,000. An expert estimates the cost of remedying the defect at €1,500. Twice that is €3,000 – the amount you may retain. So €12,000 − €3,000 = €9,000 is payable. The retention is not damages: it falls away as soon as the defect is remedied.

The rights you hold alongside it are listed in § 634 BGB: subsequent performance, self-remedy with reimbursement of the necessary expenses, withdrawal or reduction of the price, and damages. Practice follows that order: set a deadline for subsequent performance first, everything else after.

Do not accept without reservation: if you accept work while knowing of a defect, subsequent performance, self-remedy and withdrawal/reduction remain available under § 640 Abs. 3 BGB only if you expressly reserve your rights at acceptance. One sentence in the protocol is enough – it is simply the sentence that is usually missing.

How long you can raise defects

The limitation period in § 634a BGB depends on the type of work, and the difference is substantial:

Type of work	Period	Starts
A structure (and planning/supervision services for it)	five years	at acceptance
Production, maintenance or alteration of an object	two years	at acceptance
Defect fraudulently concealed	the standard limitation period	departing from the rows above

Whether a measure is a "structure" or merely the "alteration of an object" therefore decides between two and five years of cover. Record the acceptance date for each trade – it is the starting point of both periods, and without it you cannot later tell whether you are still within the window.

The flip side: security for the contractor

The trader classification cuts both ways. Under § 650f BGB the business may demand security from you for remuneration not yet paid, set at 10% of the claim to be secured. That is excluded, among other cases, where you are a consumer and the contract is a consumer construction contract under § 650i BGB or a developer contract. For a landlord acting commercially, contractor's security is therefore a real possibility.

What acceptance means for your bookkeeping

The acceptance date is a commercial anchor too: it marks when the final invoice becomes payable, and the invoice is the record you will need later to allocate the cost. Before that final invoice is transferred, take a second look: anyone letting more than two flats has to apply the construction withholding tax under § 48 EStG unless the firm produces an exemption certificate — and the liability for it sits with the customer, not the contractor. Anyone renovating soon after purchase should understand the link to post-acquisition production costs before the invoices arrive. For larger amounts it is also worth looking at how maintenance expenses can be spread over several years. And where the work raises the standard of the flat, the modernisation rent increase is the follow-on question to the accepted work.

Checklist for the acceptance appointment

Agree the appointment in writing, allow enough time, prepare a defect list.
Walk each trade separately; test function, do not merely look.
Write a protocol with the date, every defect found and deadlines for remedy.
Expressly reserve your rights for known defects.
Document the acceptance date per trade – it starts the limitation period.
Always answer a request for acceptance in time, if necessary by refusing while naming at least one defect.
File invoice, protocol and photos together, not across three systems.

Acceptance dates and invoices in one place

RenoDiary keeps trades, acceptance dates, deadlines and contractor invoices together per property – so you can still prove years later what was accepted when.

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What the courts have decided

The sharpest point in this article – that a work can count as accepted without you ever signing anything – is not in the statute. It comes from the case law of the seventh civil senate of the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH). Two decisions show what it turns on.

BGH, judgment of 20 February 2014 – VII ZR 26/12

The senate sets out the test for acceptance by conduct: it comes into consideration where the work has, in the customer's own view, been completed essentially free of defects, and the contractor may understand the customer's conduct as approving the work as essentially in conformity with the contract. What matters is therefore not what you declare, but how your behaviour looks from the contractor's side. For you that means: moving in, using the work and paying without naming a defect can amount to acceptance — so object in writing and in specific terms while you still have something to object to.

BGH, judgment of 26 September 2013 – VII ZR 220/12

This one is about the passage of time: acceptance of an architect's work by conduct may lie in the customer taking occupation of the completed building and then raising no defects until an inspection period of six months has expired. Those six months are not a general cut-off: they concern an architect's work and are set in the judgment only against a period of eleven months, and the senate derives the length of the period from what is generally expected in such dealings — the time actually needed for inspection is what determines a period to be fixed in each individual case. The consequence for you is the same as for the “reasonable” period above: do not count on a minimum or a maximum, inspect promptly after completion and record what you find.

Frequently asked questions

Does paying the invoice count as acceptance?

Acceptance can also occur through conclusive conduct, without an express declaration. Using the work without reservation and settling the invoice without complaint points strongly that way. So do not pay before you have inspected – or pay expressly under reservation.

Must I accept if minor work is still outstanding?

Acceptance cannot be refused because of insignificant defects under § 640 Abs. 1 BGB. In that case accept, but with an express reservation for the listed points and a deadline for remedying them.

How long is a "reasonable period" for acceptance?

The statute gives no figure. § 640 Abs. 2 BGB requires only a reasonable period; what is reasonable depends on the scope and nature of the work. Treat every request as urgent.

When must I pay the final invoice?

For construction contracts, remuneration is payable under § 650g BGB once the work has been accepted and a verifiable final invoice has been issued. It counts as verifiable if you do not raise substantiated objections to its verifiability within 30 days of receipt.

Does a renovation count as a "structure" with five years of cover?

It depends on the measure. § 634a BGB turns on the structure, and § 650a BGB also treats maintenance as a construction contract where it is of material importance for the construction, the integrity or the intended use. A roof renovation sits closer to a structure than replacing a fitted kitchen.

Sources

§ 640 BGB (acceptance, deemed acceptance, reservation) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
BGH, judgment of 20 February 2014 – VII ZR 26/12 (test for acceptance by conduct) — Bundesgerichtshof (retrieved on 27 August 2026)
BGH, judgment of 26 September 2013 – VII ZR 220/12 (acceptance by conduct after occupation and inspection period) — Bundesgerichtshof (retrieved on 27 August 2026)
§ 641 BGB (payment due, right to withhold, interest) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 644 BGB (passing of risk) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 634 BGB (customer rights in case of defects) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 634a BGB (limitation of defect claims) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 632a BGB (interim payments, burden of proof) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 650a BGB (construction contract) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 650f BGB (contractor's security) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 650g BGB (record of condition, verifiable final invoice) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 650i BGB (consumer construction contract) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 13 BGB (consumer) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)
§ 14 BGB (trader) — Gesetze im Internet (retrieved on 15 August 2026)

This article provides general orientation and does not replace individual legal or tax advice within the meaning of § 3 StBerG. Whether a specific measure qualifies as a construction contract, and whether you act as a consumer or as a trader in a given case, can only be assessed on the basis of the actual contract and the actual circumstances.