Construction warranty periods in Germany: BGB and VOB/B

In Germany, a contractor has to answer for defects in their work as long as the limitation period for defect claims runs – this is what people mean by warranty (Gewährleistung). Under a building contract governed by the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB), claims for defects in a building (Bauwerk) become time-barred five years after acceptance (Abnahme).¹ If the standard construction contract terms VOB/B (Vergabe- und Vertragsordnung für Bauleistungen, Part B) have been validly agreed, the standard period for buildings is four years from acceptance.² In both cases the clock starts with acceptance – not with completion and not with the final invoice. Acceptance can be declared expressly, recorded formally, result from conduct or be deemed by law. Under a BGB contract, a notice of defects does not stop the clock. Only suspension (Hemmung) does – for example through negotiations about the defect or through independent evidence proceedings – and an acknowledgement by the contractor restarts it.³ The VOB/B adds the written request to remedy a defect, which starts a separate two-year period for that defect.²

This guide is the English version of our German article on the same topic and cites the same sources. It explains how the periods work from a technical and practical point of view and is not legal advice. Whether your contract – for example with a developer (Bauträger) – follows the BGB or the VOB/B, and whether it changes the periods, is a question for a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt). To calculate a date, you can use our warranty period calculator – the page is in German, the dates work in any language.

Warranty, defect claim and limitation are three different things

Warranty in construction is the contractor's liability for defects in their work within a limitation period set by law or by contract. The word itself appears in no statute. The BGB speaks of the client's rights in the event of defects and lists them in § 634 BGB: subsequent performance (Nacherfüllung), remedying the defect yourself and claiming the costs (Selbstvornahme), withdrawal or price reduction, and damages.¹ These groups have different requirements and different consequences. In practice, "the warranty" usually means only the first: the right to have the contractor remove the defect at their own expense. Which of these rights exist in a given situation, and in what order they must be asserted, is assessed by a lawyer.

The notion of a defect is tied to the agreed quality, not to a general sense of quality. Under § 13(1) VOB/B, building work is free of material defects at the time of acceptance if it has the agreed quality and complies with the generally recognised rules of engineering (anerkannte Regeln der Technik).² If nothing was agreed, the question is whether the work is fit for the use presupposed in the contract; failing that, the yardstick is ordinary use and the usual quality of comparable work.² The recognised rules of engineering are not the same as the sum of the relevant standards. Standards such as DIN standards are private technical rules: they can run ahead of practice or lag behind it. What counts is what was recognised as correct by the profession and proven in practice at the time of acceptance. In expert reports, this distinction often decides whether a finding is a defect at all.

Limitation does not mean that a claim disappears. The claim continues to exist, but the contractor may refuse to perform as soon as they invoke the limitation – they have to raise it actively; courts do not apply it of their own motion. Withdrawal and price reduction are a special case: they are not subject to limitation themselves, but under § 218 BGB they become ineffective if the claim for subsequent performance is time-barred and the contractor invokes this.³ Withdrawal and price reduction can therefore be declared up to the last day of the limitation period, but practically no longer afterwards. Under current law, an additional notice of defects within the period is not required for these rights.³

Defect rights before acceptance must be kept apart from defect claims after acceptance. Until acceptance, the contractor owes the production of the work as contracted; the client has a claim for performance and, under § 4(7) VOB/B, can demand the removal of work that does not comply with the contract. This claim is not subject to the period in § 13(4) VOB/B but to the regular limitation period of § 195 BGB.⁴ Defects that are still open at acceptance then move into the warranty regime and are subject to the period in § 13(4) VOB/B.⁴ The practical consequence: acceptance is the cut at which the rules on periods change, and any documentation before that cut is hard to catch up on later.

Five years under the BGB, four years under the VOB/B

Under a BGB building contract, claims for defects in a building become time-barred five years after acceptance.¹ The same five years apply to work whose result consists of planning or supervision services for a building.¹ Architects and specialist planners are therefore, in principle, liable for their services for as long as the construction company is for its work. If the work only consists of making, maintaining or altering a thing without any connection to a building, the period is two years from acceptance.¹ For claims against the architect, what counts is the acceptance of the architect's service, not the acceptance of the last building work.⁵

If the VOB/B has been validly made part of the contract, a staggered system replaces the five years. Under § 13(4) no. 1 VOB/B (2019 edition), the limitation period is four years for buildings and two years for other works and for the parts of firing systems that come into contact with fire.²⁶ For the parts of industrial furnaces that come into contact with fire or insulate flue gas, it is reduced to one year, because these parts are permanently exposed to very high temperatures and last correspondingly shorter.⁴ A separate rule applies to parts of mechanical, electrical and electronic systems where maintenance affects safety and function: if the client does not assign the maintenance to the contractor for the duration of the limitation period, the period for these parts is two years.² All of these periods apply only unless the contract says otherwise.

Whether work counts as work on a building decides years of liability, so it is not an academic question. A building is understood as an immovable thing made with labour and material in connection with the ground; the term is the same as in § 634a BGB.⁴ It covers all work that contributes to the construction, alteration, extension or maintenance of a building and matters for its function, structure, existence or usability.⁴ Earthworks for landscaping, by contrast, count as work on the land and thus as other work with a two-year period, while a fire-water pond counts as work on a building with a four-year period.⁴ Mere repairs on a building are not work on the building if they do not affect the structure and do not serve to preserve the building.⁴ Different limitation periods can therefore run for different parts of one and the same building contract.⁴

That the VOB/B shortens the statutory period by one year is the most important practical difference between the two contract forms. The specialist literature therefore recommends agreeing an extended limitation period of five years in VOB/B contracts, which § 202 BGB expressly permits.⁵ Under § 202(2) BGB, a contractual extension is capped at 30 years from the statutory start of limitation.³ For contracts based on standard terms and conditions (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen), the law on standard terms draws a second line: under § 309 no. 8 b) ff) BGB, the limitation of claims for defects in a building must not be eased in standard terms.³ Shortening the five-year period in standard terms towards consumers is therefore not permitted.⁷ If the VOB/B is incorporated as a whole between businesses without changes to its content, the individual clauses are not reviewed for fairness (§ 310(1) sentence 3 BGB).⁷ Whether a clause on periods in a specific contract is valid is a legal question for a lawyer.

Acceptance starts the clock – in four different ways

Acceptance is taking delivery of the building work combined with approving it as essentially in accordance with the contract.⁵ Because the limitation period for defect claims starts with acceptance, the exact date of acceptance is the decisive figure for any monitoring of deadlines.¹ Under § 640(1) BGB, the client is in principle obliged to accept; the obligation lapses, by way of exception, in the case of material defects.⁵ Under § 13(4) no. 3 VOB/B, the period starts with the acceptance of the whole work and, only for self-contained parts of the work, with partial acceptance under § 12(2) VOB/B.² If acceptance is rightly refused, the period for defect claims does not start.⁵

The first and safest way is formal acceptance (förmliche Abnahme). Under § 12(4) no. 1 VOB/B, it must take place if one party requests it, and the findings must be recorded in writing at a joint meeting.² The record must include reservations for known defects and for contractual penalties, as well as any objections of the contractor.² Each party may bring in an expert at its own cost.² If the contractor requests acceptance after completion, the client must carry it out within twelve working days (Werktage) under § 12(1) VOB/B, unless another period was agreed.² A client who attends this appointment without technical support carries the burden of telling material from minor defects and recording all reservations completely – this is exactly where our acceptance inspection comes in.

The second way is implied acceptance (konkludente Abnahme), which happens through conduct without any declaration. The third and fourth ways are fictions, where the law or the VOB/B assumes acceptance. Under § 12(5) no. 1 VOB/B, the work is deemed accepted if no acceptance is requested and twelve working days have passed since the written notice of completion.² If the client starts using the work or part of it without requesting acceptance, acceptance is deemed to have taken place six working days after the use began (§ 12(5) no. 2 VOB/B).² Using parts of a structure to continue the works does not count as acceptance.² The client must assert reservations for known defects or contractual penalties at the latest by these points in time.²

Under a BGB building contract, the fiction works differently and has been governed by § 640(2) BGB since the reform of construction contract law. Acceptance is deemed to have taken place if the contractor, after completing the work, has set the client a reasonable period for acceptance and this period expires without result.⁵ The fiction does not occur if the client refuses acceptance within this period stating at least one defect; a minor defect is enough.⁵ If the client is a consumer, the contractor must point out this consequence expressly in text form (§ 640(2) sentence 2 BGB).⁵ For property managers and buyers of flats in a new building, partial acceptance is the most important special case in practice. Whether acceptance has occurred in an individual case, and which period follows from it, should be checked legally; that assessment is made by a lawyer.

If acceptance is refused, the justification decides

If the client rightly refuses acceptance, the limitation period for defect claims does not start.⁵ Under § 12(3) VOB/B, acceptance can be refused because of material defects (wesentliche Mängel) until they are removed.² The yardstick is therefore not every defect but a material one, and that term needs interpretation both technically and legally. As a rule, a defect is material if, on a reasonable assessment, the client cannot be expected to take delivery of the work. If the refusal is justified, the contractor's obligation to perform first remains, and the risk does not pass to the client.

An unjustified refusal is much more dangerous: the effects of acceptance occur even if the client finally refuses acceptance without reason.⁵ The relevant point in time is the declaration of refusal, not a later court decision on the question.⁵ The Higher Regional Court of Cologne (Oberlandesgericht Köln) applied this principle in a dispute about the acceptance of common property in an owners' association and held that refusing acceptance although the work was ready for acceptance amounted to "a fictitious acceptance" (judgment of 28 October 2020 – 17 U 44/16).⁸ The court classified the listed remaining works as minor, because they were small follow-up jobs such as cleaning, signage and a missing socket.⁸ The decision was made under the former law on contracts for work and applies the old version of § 640(1) sentence 2 BGB.⁸ Under today's law, the conditions of a deemed acceptance would not be met in that case, because naming even a minor defect prevents the fiction.⁵

This creates a practical risk that is often underestimated in deadline management. If the client or their adviser judges a defect to be material when it is not, the limitation period runs although acceptance was refused.⁵ The mistake often becomes visible only years later, when the contractor invokes limitation in a dispute about a defect. The specialist literature therefore recommends a twofold approach: refuse acceptance in cases of doubt and, at the same time, monitor the periods as if acceptance had occurred.⁵ Whether a refusal was justified in a specific case, and what follows for the period, is a legal assessment for a lawyer.

A separate case is the switch to a settlement relationship (Abrechnungsverhältnis). If the client refuses acceptance and then declares that they will only assert monetary claims and no longer accept any subsequent performance, the contract turns into a pure settlement relationship.⁵ Waiving the claims for performance replaces acceptance and is therefore called a substitute for acceptance.⁵ From receipt of this declaration, all effects of acceptance occur, including the start of the limitation period for defect claims.⁵ For the records, this is an important date, because it follows from a declaration alone and appears in no protocol.

Under a VOB/B contract, an unjustified refusal leads to a similar result. Because the client is in default with acceptance, the contractor is to be treated as if acceptance had taken place as contracted; the limitation period then starts when the default begins.⁴ The contractor can also request a joint assessment of the condition of the work under § 650g(1) to (3) BGB, with which they document the condition of the work and can pass the risk to the client.⁵ For clients, this is the other side of the same coin: a condition assessment carried out by one side alone binds them in questions of evidence. Anyone who refuses acceptance should therefore document the condition of the building themselves at the same time – a condition survey does exactly that.

Suspension and restart stop the clock – a notice of defects alone does not

Suspension means that the period of suspension is not counted towards the limitation period (§ 209 BGB).³ The clock is stopped and, once the suspension ends, continues with the remaining time; the part that ran before the suspension still counts.⁹ A restart (Neubeginn) is stronger: the period starts again from the beginning, and the part already run no longer counts.⁹ For the creditor, a restart is therefore more favourable than suspension.³ The decisive point in practice is a different one: under the BGB rules on contracts for work, a written notice of defects (Mängelrüge) has no effect on limitation, and neither does a reminder about payment claims.⁵

The most important ground for suspension in practice is negotiation about the claim. Under § 203 BGB, negotiations between the parties about the claim or the circumstances giving rise to it suspend limitation until one side refuses to continue them.³ This includes the case where a contractor agrees to examine a defect.³ The Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) interprets the term broadly: it is enough that the debtor makes statements which allow the injured party to assume that the obligor is entering into a discussion about whether the claims are justified (judgment of 26 October 2006 – VII ZR 194/05, para. 10).¹⁰ A willingness to settle or to make concessions is not required.¹⁰⁷ The run-out is particularly important: limitation occurs at the earliest three months after the end of the negotiations, even if they only began a few days before the period expired.³

The second group of grounds concerns legal action under § 204(1) BGB. It includes filing a lawsuit, serving a payment order (Mahnbescheid) and serving a third-party notice (Streitverkündung), because in all three cases the claim is formally asserted against the debtor.³ Further grounds are a set-off in court proceedings, the start of arbitration proceedings and the service of an application for independent evidence proceedings.³ In these cases, suspension ends only six months after the proceedings have ended, which leaves the creditor time for further steps.⁵ If proceedings are no longer pursued, suspension ends six months after the last procedural step (§ 204(2) sentence 2 BGB).³

For expert work, independent evidence proceedings (selbständiges Beweisverfahren) are the most important of these grounds. Until 31 December 2001, starting them interrupted limitation; since the reform of the law of obligations they only suspend it (§ 204(1) no. 7 BGB).⁹ The proceedings do not only preserve evidence: they are meant to simplify the main proceedings or avoid a lawsuit, and if the parties are the same, the result of the evidence is treated as if it had been taken in the main proceedings.⁹ Procedural errors can destroy their value. Under § 491(1) of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), the opponent must be summoned to the site inspection in time to exercise their rights, and under § 493(2) ZPO the applicant may not use a result obtained without summons if the opponent did not attend.⁹ The questions in the application decide the usefulness of the expert opinion, because the court regularly adopts them unchanged in its order for evidence.⁹

Each of these steps only works for the defect it relates to. Every defect has its own limitation fate, and only the period for the defect or the symptom that is the subject of the proceedings is suspended.⁵ A lawsuit about defects in the roof therefore does not suspend the limitation of claims for a wrongly installed garage door.⁵ The symptom theory (Symptomtheorie) softens this strictness: it is enough to describe the visible signs of the defect specifically and locate them, without naming possible causes.³ Suspension then covers all defects whose cause led to the symptom described.³ A restart occurs under § 212(1) BGB if the debtor acknowledges the claim by a payment on account, by providing security or in another way – and such an acknowledgement can lie in remedying a defect.³⁷ A contractor who wants to avoid this should carry out the repair expressly as a goodwill gesture without recognising a legal obligation; whether a statement counts as an acknowledgement in an individual case is assessed by a lawyer.⁷

The VOB/B written request has its own effect – and is disputed

The VOB/B contains a mechanism that the BGB does not have. Under § 13(5) no. 1 VOB/B, the contractor must remove at their own cost all defects that appear during the limitation period and are due to work not in accordance with the contract, if the client requests this in writing before the period expires.² The claim for removal of the notified defects then becomes time-barred two years after receipt of the written request, but not before the end of the standard period under § 13(4) VOB/B.² The notified defect thus gets its own period, which can extend beyond the end of the general warranty. The literature calls this effect a quasi-interruption, because it comes close to a restart without being one.⁷

The effect continues after a successful repair. Once the remedial work has been accepted, a new two-year limitation period starts for this work, which does not end before the standard periods under § 13(4) VOB/B.² It makes no difference whether the defects were notified only after acceptance or were already present and reserved at acceptance.⁴ The BGB does not provide a separate limitation period for remedial work.⁴ There, a repair only leads to an extension indirectly – through suspension because of negotiations under § 203 BGB or through a restart by acknowledgement under § 212 BGB.⁴

The limits of this mechanism are often misjudged. Only the first written request about a defect leads to a new period; further requests to remove the same defect have no effect.⁷ If the two-year period ends entirely within the regular period, there is no extension at all.⁷ The form is also decisive: a notice of defects can in principle be given in any form, but the effect on limitation requires written form.⁵ According to one view in the literature, text form (for example an e-mail) is sufficient.⁴ If you want to rely on this effect, put the request in writing, document its receipt and describe each defect individually.

Whether the rule withstands a review under the law on standard terms is disputed among the lower courts; the literature refers to an approving decision of the Higher Regional Court of Hamm and a rejecting one of the Regional Court of Halle.⁵ A final decision by the highest court is not shown in the sources consulted. From a technical point of view, it therefore remains open whether a client can rely on this period alone in a dispute – that is our own assessment, not an established legal view. The careful approach is not to treat the written request as a substitute for suspension but to keep the grounds in § 203 and § 204 BGB in view as well. Which route is viable in a specific dispute should be agreed with a lawyer.

Fraudulent concealment and organisational fault shift the period considerably

If the contractor has fraudulently concealed a defect (arglistiges Verschweigen), the five-year period does not apply but the regular limitation period does.¹ Under § 634a(3) BGB, the claims then become time-barred within the regular period, but not before the period for buildings has expired.¹ The regular period is three years and starts when the client knows all facts giving rise to the claim and the identity of the person liable.⁴ Independently of that knowledge, the maximum periods in § 199 BGB apply: ten years and, in the case of injury to life, body, health or liberty, 30 years.⁴ In practice, liability for a concealed defect can therefore extend far beyond the regular warranty.

Fraudulent concealment does not require an intention to cause harm. It exists if the contractor is aware that the client may not know about a defect and would not accept the work as performance of the contract if they knew of it.³ It is enough that the contractor knew of the non-compliant execution.³ Someone who merely considers a defect possible and, at the same time, expects and accepts that the other party does not know about it also acts fraudulently.³ According to the case law evaluated in the specialist literature, it is not enough to assume that a deviation is known; the contractor must also disclose the risk it involves.³

Organisational fault (Organisationsverschulden) closes the gap that would arise if a company deliberately sent people to the acceptance who know nothing. The contractor is obliged to check their work for faults that must be disclosed, so that they can meet their duty of disclosure at acceptance.³ They cannot escape this duty by keeping themselves ignorant or by not using assistants for the disclosure; if a defect would have been discovered with proper organisation and the contractor prevents this through poor organisation, fraudulent concealment is nevertheless assumed.³ The courts work with easier rules of evidence when a defect is so obvious and serious that a badly organised site can be assumed.³ Conversely, not every deviation is enough: balcony waterproofing applied too thinly was judged not to be obvious.³

The result is the same for a VOB/B contract, although § 13(4) VOB/B contains no express rule on fraudulent concealment: § 634a(3) BGB applies in addition, so the regular limitation period applies here too.⁴ Whether the contractor considered a defect possible can be hard to prove in an individual case.³ From a technical point of view, the documentation of the work is therefore the decisive lever: photos of concealed parts before they are closed, measurements and records of layer thicknesses cannot be replaced later. Whether fraudulent concealment or organisational fault applies in a specific case is a legal assessment reserved for a lawyer.

In practice: keep the dates and inspect before expiry

Sound deadline management does not keep one date per project but several key dates per contract. Record the date of acceptance of the whole work, the dates of any partial acceptances under § 12(2) VOB/B, the date of a declaration finally refusing acceptance and the receipt of every written notice of defects.² Add the different periods for system parts without assigned maintenance and for work that does not count as work on a building.² For planning and supervision services, keep the date of acceptance of the planner's service separately, because it differs from the acceptance of the building work.⁵ Property managers should record individual units (Sondereigentum) and common property (Gemeinschaftseigentum) separately.

An inspection of the building does not belong at the end of the period but well before it. The reason is time: after a defect has been found, a notice must be written, a reasonable period for remedy must be set and, if necessary, a step that suspends limitation must be taken – and each of these steps takes time.⁵ How much lead time is appropriate depends on the number of trades, the accessibility of the building parts and the season, because some findings only show in rain or during the heating period. Typically inspected are the waterproofing of the building and its junctions, roof areas and penetrations, window and door junctions, drainage, and crack patterns in load-bearing and non-load-bearing parts.

At this stage, the surveyor's job is to separate symptom from cause. The surveyor records the condition, assigns the visible signs to building parts and trades, and distinguishes defects from normal wear, missed maintenance and changes caused by use. Depending on the question, non-destructive or minimally invasive investigations follow, partly with specialist laboratories or measurement service providers. For limitation, the description of the symptom matters most, because the symptom theory ties suspension to the visible sign that is specifically described and located.³ The limit of the technical work is clear: a surveyor assesses the technical findings but does not calculate the end of periods or decide legal questions.

Before the warranty expires, however, a technical record of the condition always comes first. Which procedure is right afterwards – a party report or independent evidence proceedings, whose result can be used in later proceedings between the same parties – depends on the litigation strategy and must be clarified with a lawyer.⁹ A condition survey records which findings existed at which time and thus creates the basis on which a notice of defects can be worded specifically enough at all. The evidence does not improve over time; it gets worse, because building parts are covered, repaired or used further. Anyone facing a deadline should therefore document the condition before deciding on claims.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the warranty on a newly built house in Germany?

Under a building contract governed by the BGB, claims for defects in a building become time-barred five years after acceptance.¹ If the VOB/B has been validly agreed, the standard period for buildings is four years from acceptance, unless the contract provides otherwise.² Shorter periods can apply to individual items within the same contract, for example two years for parts of mechanical or electrical systems if maintenance was not assigned to the contractor.² Longer periods can be agreed by contract – under § 202(2) BGB up to 30 years from the statutory start of limitation.³

Does the warranty period start on completion or on acceptance?

The limitation period for defect claims starts with acceptance, not with completion and not with the final invoice.¹ Under § 13(4) no. 3 VOB/B, it starts with the acceptance of the whole work; only for self-contained parts of the work does it start with partial acceptance.² Acceptance can be declared expressly, recorded formally, result from conduct or be deemed by law – for example under § 640(2) BGB when a reasonable period for acceptance expires without result.⁵ Because acceptance can therefore happen without anyone noticing, the date of acceptance is the first thing any deadline monitoring has to establish.

Does a notice of defects extend the warranty period?

Under a BGB building contract, a notice of defects has no effect on limitation.⁵ There, the clock is only stopped by suspension – for example through negotiations about the defect under § 203 BGB or legal action under § 204 BGB – and it restarts with an acknowledgement under § 212 BGB.³ Under a VOB/B contract, by contrast, the first written request to remedy a defect has its own effect: for that defect, a period of two years from receipt of the request runs, which does not end before the standard period.² Further requests about the same defect have no effect.⁷

How long before expiry should a building be inspected?

Early enough that, after a defect has been found, a notice can still be written, a reasonable period for remedy can be set and, if necessary, a step that suspends limitation can be taken. How much time that needs depends on the number of trades involved, the accessibility of the building parts and whether findings only show in certain weather. A general lead time therefore cannot be given. Derive it from the specific building, and plan for the fact that independent evidence proceedings need time until the application is served, because only service triggers the suspension.³

Do architects and engineers have the same period as the builder?

For work whose result consists of planning or supervision services for a building, § 634a(1) no. 2 BGB also provides a period of five years.¹ The start differs, however: for claims against the planner, what counts is the acceptance of the planner's own service, not the acceptance of the last building work.⁵ Because planning and supervision are often completed much earlier or much later than the building work, the two periods regularly do not run in parallel. Claims against planners can therefore already be time-barred while claims against the construction company still exist.

What applies to common property in an owners' association?

For common property, it must be established whether and when acceptance was declared or whether the effects of acceptance occurred in another way. The Higher Regional Court of Cologne decided that a fictitious acceptance exists if the work is ready for acceptance and acceptance is refused, and classified small remaining works as minor (judgment of 28 October 2020 – 17 U 44/16).⁸ The decision was made under the former law; under today's law, naming even a minor defect prevents the fiction.⁵ How the facts are to be assessed for a particular building should be checked legally by the property manager.

Note

This guide reflects the state of technical knowledge on the date of writing. It is not legal advice and does not replace an inspection of the individual case. Whether claims exist and how they can be enforced is assessed by a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt). Statutes, the VOB/B and standards must be checked in their current version.

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About the author

M. Sc. Karim Abu Elkheir, BIB Ingenieurbüro für Bauwesen, Berlin. Contact: info@ing-bassam.de, +49 176 23581339. English version as of 5 October 2026, based on the German article as of 2 October 2026.

Sources and footnotes