The air conditioning request in your inbox, and when you give permission for a rental property

It's late June, the forecast promises the first properly warm week of summer, and your inbox is filling up. Among the usual reports, this Monday brings three requests from tenants who want to hang a split unit on the façade. All friendly, all carrying the same underlying message: it's too hot, I'll sort it myself, I just need your sign-off. And you immediately feel the pull either to say yes quickly because you want to do right by the tenant, or to push the request to a quieter moment that isn't coming this summer.

Neither reflex helps you. A quick yes means that, a few years down the line at turnover, you find a foam-filled hole in the façade that nobody remembers drilling. Pushing it off means the same tenant calls in two weeks asking why they've heard nothing, and that in August you still end up making the decision under time pressure, one you could have prepared calmly right now. An air conditioning unit in a rental property isn't an incident you handle case by case. It's a recurring type of request that calls for a fixed policy, and you can set that policy this month.

An aircon on the façade is legally an alteration, not a DIY job

The first mistaken assumption is that an air conditioning unit is just something a tenant is free to put in. A mobile unit they wheel around indoors: fine, that's not your concern. But the split units these requests are about have an outdoor unit and require holes in the façade for the pipework. That makes it, legally, an alteration to the rented property, and under Article 7:215 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek) the tenant needs your written permission for it. For alterations to the exterior, that same article also gives you room to set your own policy, separate from the more relaxed rules that apply to changes inside the property.

That distinction is exactly where you make the difference. With air conditioning in a rental property, it's almost always about that exterior, and therefore about your policy. Not a favour you grant on a gut feeling, and not a right the tenant can simply claim.

You're allowed to refuse, even when it's thirty degrees outside

That policy is no formality. The subdistrict court (kantonrechter) rejected a tenant who tried to force permission for air conditioning through the courts, because the landlord's interests weighed heavily enough: noise nuisance for neighbours, damage to the façade and insulation, and the risk of setting a precedent if the whole street repeats the request, as VBTM Advocaten summarises the ruling. And when the question came back during a heatwave, that line held: even in tropical heat a landlord may refuse an air conditioning unit on the façade, the court ruled in favour of a woningcorporatie (Dutch social housing association).

That doesn't mean you should now refuse as standard. The court does check whether your refusal amounts to an abuse of your position or acts against reasonableness. A flat no without any weighing up won't hold up, a substantiated assessment per request will. So the real gain isn't in yes or no, but in the conditions you attach to a yes.

One set of conditions saves you a whole summer of discussion

The difference between a property manager who sends three emails back and forth for every request, every summer, and one who gives an answer within three working days, lies in a fixed set of conditions you set down once. Four points do most of the work.

The first is noise. At the boundary of the property, an outdoor unit may produce no more than 40 dB(A) at night and 45 dB(A) during the day, a standard set out in the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving (Dutch decree on the built environment). So ask for a statement from a certified installer confirming that the chosen unit, in its intended location, stays within that standard. That removes the conflict with neighbours before it starts.

The second is the placement itself: where the outdoor unit goes, at what distance from the boundary, and never on a shared façade without the other party knowing. The third is liability: who is responsible for leaks, for damage to the façade, or for harm to the insulation. The fourth is the end of the tenancy, where the tenant restores the façade to its original state on departure unless you've agreed something else in writing.

Once you've fixed these four points as standard conditions, you no longer answer an air conditioning request with a one-off legal assessment but with a standard form. The tenant knows where they stand within a few days, you keep control of your façade, and every approval leaves you with a file recording what you allowed and under what conditions. That same file is what you need if a tenant still goes to the kantonrechter, because then what counts isn't what you intended but what you can show.

An air conditioning request feels like a seasonal problem that disappears by itself with the first cool week. But the tenant asking this month will ask again next year, and the street next door is watching. The weeks before the heat really sets in are the quiet moment to determine your policy, so that in the week it hits thirty degrees, you don't have to improvise, you can simply send your conditions.