The near-immediate termination of a hotel lease on grounds of structural defects — this time at a Dorint property in Bremen — is the latest in what has become a recurring pattern. The Hotel Sunderland in Sundern was not long before it. These are not tired assets at the end of their useful life, being wrung for the last euro by opportunistic owners. They had sound review scores. Their owners are credible, long-term real estate investors. But the operators too will have conducted their own assessment before taking such a step.

No detail has entered the public domain, but the regularity of these events points to a consistent underlying cause: buildings constructed before 1990, when many of today’s structural, fire protection and building-services requirements did not yet exist, contain technical liabilities that are either unidentified or quietly tolerated until a dispute makes them impossible to ignore.

Two actions protect the diligent property owner:

• Commission regular independent structural assessments, even when the lessee has reported no defects.
• Review the lease to establish precisely which maintenance obligations fall to the owner and which to the lessee.

A documented maintenance record and a clear allocation of responsibilities are the preconditions for any dispute that follows. Whoever carries out those assessments — internal team or external specialist — should be treated as a guarantor of a stable, long-term tenancy, not as an unwelcome bearer of bad news.