During the coronavirus crisis, tenants have been successfully asking landlords to grant them a rent reduction. At the Rotterdam District Court The question is on what basis such a rent reduction should be calculated.
Shop
The case concerns a clothes shop in a rented premises. During the coronavirus crisis, this shop was closed for some time in accordance with government measures and had restricted access for a considerable period.
The shop operator is demanding that the landlord reduce the rent. The dispute centres on what that reduction should be based on.
Number of customers
The operator primarily argues that the rent should be reduced by a percentage equal to the shortfall in the number of visitors to the leased premises, as recorded by the tenant’s customer counting system, compared with the same months of the previous year. The Court does not accept this argument.
The Court is examining the extent to which the tenant’s turnover has fallen. The question here is whether turnover from online sales should be included. This is because the turnover from online sales was not generated by the tenant, but by a company belonging to the same group.
The Court has ruled that the tenant (or the tenant’s group) must provide further clarification as to whether the shop’s turnover has shifted to the online shop. If that is the case, this online turnover must be taken into account when determining the loss of turnover relevant to the rent reduction. This relates solely to the turnover generated by the online shop from within the Netherlands.
Case law
The body of case law on this legal doctrine is growing steadily. At present, we are also awaiting the answers to the questions referred by the Limburg District Court to the Supreme Court. See our article Rent reduction: the Supreme Court must now rule,