The Court of Appeal held that the party in question was not engaged in renting out short stays during the period in question. The Court of Appeal considers it important in this respect that the tenants, according to the lease agreement, bore the costs of minor repairs and that the tenants, as evidenced by the interested party’s statement at the Court of Appeal hearing, actually carried out minor repairs, such as replacing light bulbs or clearing a blockage. The tenants themselves were also responsible for keeping the rented apartment clean. According to the Decree on small repairs (Bulletin of Acts and Decrees 2003, 168), the latter also falls under small repairs. The Court of Appeal is therefore of the opinion that, contrary to the interested party’s argument, the tenants were responsible for the care of the inventory. The Court of Appeal also considers it important that the tenants were directly charged for the municipal levies and the water board dues and that almost all tenants concluded their own contract with an energy company. In this respect the present rental differs from the rental in the context of the hotel, boarding house, camp and vacation spending business. In addition, the tenants registered in the BRP and, with the exception of one tenant, did not have other living quarters, so that the center of their social life shifted to the leased property. Both parties have a best efforts obligation under the lease agreement to enter into a new temporary lease for the period of six months after the expiration of a temporary lease, as long as the interested party has not sold the property. Most tenants therefore rented the property for a significantly longer period than six months. The Court also noted that a number of rental agreements included a right of first refusal to buy the apartment. All these circumstances mean that it cannot be said that the party in question was meeting a need for accommodation that was also targeted by hotel, guesthouse, camp and holiday-catering companies, and that the party in question was competing with the latter companies.
Source: rechtspraak.nl
