Key legal question
Whether the rent increase was justified by value-adding improvements or only by proven additional value under Art. 269a lit. b OR and aArt. 14 VMWG.
Extracted holding
Only objectively identifiable value-adding improvements may be passed on; mere replacement of existing elements is not a Mehrleistung and cannot be charged via the flat-rate method.
Extracted reasoning
The Court held that Mehrleistung is measured against the contractual baseline, not the previous physical condition. Replacing existing items with new ones is not enough unless the replacement is of clearly higher quality. The lower court wrongly followed the expert’s legal view that replacement of consumer-goods-like items always creates value.