Frequently asked questions about CIRO

In under 10 minutes you've signed up and added your first apartment. If you already keep an Excel list, you upload it and CIRO imports properties, tenants and tenancies in one go. Import is available on Smart and up, which includes the free trial. From then on, CIRO matches your rent payments and reminds you of deadlines.

Your data is stored in compliance with the GDPR, AES-256 encrypted, on servers in the EU. Only you and the people you explicitly give access can reach it. CIRO staff only see your data if you ask our support team for help. We don't sell your data and don't use it for advertising.

Yes. CIRO creates the rent increase request and the utility advance payment adjustment as finished letters from your data, a wizard walks you through the utility bill statement, and CIRO explains the rules behind them in plain language. Before deadlines, CIRO notifies you in the app and, if you allow it, by push notification on your phone: for returning a deposit, for example, 30 and 14 days ahead, and 30 days before a fixed-term lease ends. If you're unsure, our support team helps with your specific case.

It reads invoices and leases and enters the data. It tells you which rents are outstanding. It sorts tenant requests by urgency and suggests replies. And it checks your utility bill statement. Most AI features are available from Smart.

No. Without AI, CIRO matches incoming rent by fixed rules, and you enter amounts, dates and the vendor from invoices by hand. If you leave the AI on, you check what it has read. CIRO never trains AI models on your documents. Your data only goes to service providers we need to run CIRO, such as the AI service in the EU and finAPI for bank matching, and never for advertising.

Basic costs €15, Smart €30 and Pro €70 a month, and you can cancel any plan monthly. To try CIRO without commitment, start on Smart: free for 60 days, with no payment details. You can create one utility bill statement during the trial. Basic includes one per month, and you can add more. For a single utility bill statement you need neither an account nor a subscription: the utility bill assistant costs a one-off €20.

It works for a single condo and for larger portfolios. Basic includes 5 units, Smart 20 and Pro 50. On every plan you can add as many units as you need. The plans also differ in what CIRO takes care of automatically. When you add apartments, you either add units or move up a plan and keep working with the same properties, documents and settings.

Yes. Upload your Excel or CSV file or the export from your current software: CIRO reads units, tenants and tenancies, and you review and confirm. Import is available on Smart and up; on the Pro plan we can also enter your data for you on request.

You set how much time per week you want to spend on your rentals, anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours. CIRO spreads that budget across the five weekdays, so 2 hours means 24 minutes a day, and fills your daily list with tasks sorted by deadline and urgency. If you have time left today, CIRO pulls the most important tasks from the next few days forward.

The daily list sits on your dashboard and shows you each morning what is due today, based on your time budget and sorted by deadline. It holds the items where you need to decide or act, such as the deadline for a utility bill statement or an upcoming deposit return, plus your own to-dos. CIRO can also send you the daily summary email on weekdays at 7 a.m. The daily list comes with every plan.

Not at the moment. Deadlines, rent increases and notice dates are in the calendar inside CIRO, next to your tasks. CIRO does not sync them to Google, Outlook or Apple calendars.

Set your time budget to 30 minutes, the lowest option. Deadlines don't move: the utility billing deadline or a deposit return stays on your list, and CIRO keeps reminding you. If more tasks are due than fit the budget, the bar turns yellow, and that's all that happens. The following week, you simply turn the budget back up.

Yes. You add your own to-dos straight to the task list, and CIRO slots them into your priorities. For recurring work like heating maintenance or insurance reviews, you set a repeat interval. CIRO's tasks and your own then sit in the same list on your dashboard.

The task list with time budget comes with every plan. The rest of the AI assistance is available on Smart and up (€30 / month): asking Hausmaister about your own data, reading documents and reply suggestions for your tenants. You can try Smart free for 60 days when you sign up.

30 days. After that you can request new access at any time. The demo is reset every Sunday and filled with fresh sample data.

No. Demo access is free; you only provide your email address for the access link. You also start the 60-day free trial with your own account without payment details. If you haven't added a payment method by the end, your account becomes read-only until you choose a plan. A paid subscription never starts on its own.

In the demo you can create and try out anything, including your own properties and tenants. But all demo users share the same environment: other people can see what you enter, and it's wiped at the reset on Sunday. For real data, create your own CIRO account.

That's up to you. Either you create your own CIRO account and import your real data, or your demo access simply expires after 30 days. A paid subscription is never created automatically. You import from Excel or other property management software yourself on Smart and up; on the Pro plan our team can enter your portfolio for you on request.

The demo shows the complete Smart plan, filled with sample data: portfolio overview, automated accounting, tenant portal, ticketing, document storage, the task list with time budget and Hausmaister.

Emails, SMS and WhatsApp messages from your tenants arrive in the same inbox in CIRO, and you reply from there, whichever channel the message came in on. Email is included in every plan; SMS and WhatsApp are available on Smart and up. You log phone calls and letters as notes so the history for each tenant is complete.

CIRO detects the language of an incoming message and translates it into your language. 40 languages are supported. You can show the original text whenever you want to see your tenant's exact wording. CIRO translates your reply back into your tenant's language.

Most of the time they fit. Check promises and dates in particular before you send a reply; nothing is sent until you click "Send" yourself. Suggestions draw on your tenant's message, the conversation so far and the urgency and mood CIRO has detected in it. You get three replies in different tones, from friendly to brief, always polite and formal, and each appears as a draft you can edit.

CIRO archives all messages with timestamp and channel for as long as your CIRO account is active. You can open the conversation history for each tenant at any time. If there's a dispute later about a promise or a reported defect, you can see what was written and when.

Yes, the inbox for your tenants' emails is part of every plan. SMS, WhatsApp, reply suggestions and automatic translation are available on Smart and up. Your 60-day free trial runs on Smart, so you see them from day one. Afterwards you decide whether to stay on Smart (€30 / month), move to Basic (€15) or go up to Pro (€70). Every plan can be canceled monthly.

Yes, CIRO is free for your tenants, permanently. They see their documents, utility bill statements and their messages with you, with no registration or monthly fee. You only pay for your CIRO plan, and tenant access is included in every plan from Basic to Pro.

Open the tenant profile in CIRO and click "Invite". Your tenant gets an email with a personal access link. The portal runs in the browser, and on a phone your tenant can add it to the home screen as a web app, with no app store download. On your dashboard you can see who has activated their access and resend the invite if needed.

Only the documents you share, usually the lease, handover report, house rules and current utility bill statements. You can change sharing at any time, per tenant or for everyone. Your tenant can't see internal notes or documents from other tenancies.

Your tenant goes to "Messages" in the portal, clicks "Create ticket", describes the issue and can upload a photo. CIRO turns it into a request with priority, apartment and tenant, which appears on your dashboard right away. Photos, the description and every follow-up question about that damage then sit in that one request.

Yes. If a tenant is invited to several of your properties, they see all of them in one overview. If they move into another of your units, their old statements stay available without them having to create a second account.

When the tenancy ends, your former tenant loses access to the apartment's current data. They can still read their own files with no time limit: their lease, their statements and the reports they sent themselves. That way they can still get the final utility bill statement months later, for example for their tax return.

CIRO supports all 17 recoverable cost items under § 2 BetrKV, including property tax, water, heating, elevator, waste collection, insurance and caretaker. You enable only the items that apply to your property and upload the receipts. CIRO automatically flags non-recoverable costs like management fees or the maintenance reserve and leaves them out of your tenant's statement. You claim management fees as deductible expenses; contributions to the maintenance reserve only count once the HOA spends the money.

CIRO creates statements under § 556 BGB and automatically checks completeness, deadlines and allocation keys. If receipts are missing, CIRO shows a warning. For the annual deadline, CIRO starts reminding you 60 days before it expires, and daily in the last 5 days. For special cases such as a commercial unit in the building, we also recommend having a rental law attorney or Haus & Grund, the German landlords' association, take a look.

For each cost item you choose the right allocation key: living space, number of occupants, units or consumption. For heating costs, the German Heating Costs Ordinance (HeizkostenV) requires consumption: you split 50 to 70% of the costs by consumption. CIRO calculates the shares from the lease data and accounts for mid-year tenant changes to the day. Every item is broken down by total amount, key and share, so you can explain any figure to a tenant who asks.

Yes, in two ways. Without a subscription or account, the utility bill assistant creates a single statement for a one-off €20. Or you sign up and try CIRO free for 60 days, with one utility bill statement included in the trial. There you upload the HOA statement, CIRO imports the line items, and you create and send the utility bill statement.

You email the statement as a PDF, post it to the tenant portal, or record in CIRO that you sent it by mail, registered mail or handed it over in person. CIRO saves the date and the method of sending. You don't get a read or delivery receipt, and the send date doesn't prove the statement was received under § 130 BGB. If you expect a dispute, for example over a large back-payment, have it delivered by courier or by registered mail with proof of mailbox delivery (Einwurf-Einschreiben) and upload the proof to the statement in CIRO.

No. The utility bill assistant runs entirely in your browser, without registration. You add your documents, build the statement and receive the finished document by email. You only need a CIRO account if you want to manage your properties long term or build next year's statement from this year's data. Then you carry everything you created over into your account.

Yes, that's what the utility bill assistant is for. For rented condos, a rental management service (Sondereigentumsverwaltung, SEV) handles the tenant's utility bill statement, among other things, for ongoing fees. With the assistant you do this step yourself: you upload the HOA statement from your HOA manager, CIRO separates recoverable from non-recoverable items under § 2 BetrKV, re-checks every share and creates the finished tenant document. That costs €20 per statement, with no SEV contract and no subscription.

The utility bill assistant reads your documents once and shows you the result. We don't keep the files after this analysis. Only when you go on to build the statement do we create the data it needs, GDPR-compliant on European servers. If you don't carry it over into a CIRO account, we delete everything automatically after 30 days. Your access link to the finished document is valid for the same period.

Trying it out, having your documents read and building the statement is free. You only pay at the very end, when you have the finished statement for your tenants created: a one-off €20 per statement, with no subscription and no account. A plan pays off if you bill several apartments or keep track of rent and receipts in CIRO all year; the statement is then included in your plan. When you switch, everything you created here comes with you.

Yes, with a spreadsheet or template. Then you check yourself which costs you may pass on, calculate every share and make sure all mandatory details are included. With CIRO, building the statement is free: you upload your documents to the utility bill assistant and immediately see what you may pass on. The finished statement costs €20.

Which costs you may pass on is governed by the Operating Costs Ordinance (BetrKV). The allocation follows § 556a BGB and the Heating Costs Ordinance, including pro-rata periods for tenant changes. The document is built to contain the details the Federal Court of Justice names as the minimum content. Whether the figures are right depends on your documents. In addition, the utility bill assistant reviews the statement you create for anomalies and gives you guidance. We develop the rule set behind it together with Denise Sonnenschein, an attorney for German rental law with her own firm. The guidance is not legal advice for your individual case.

No, CIRO doesn't replace a lawyer and doesn't give legal advice. CIRO stores leases, reports and statements, links them to each other and timestamps them. For a legal assessment, such as a termination dispute or a rent reduction, you need a lawyer, and you can hand them the documents straight from CIRO.

All the documents that matter for your rental: leases, handover reports, house rules, utility bill statements, meter reading records, contractor invoices and correspondence. You can store PDFs, photos (JPG, PNG) and Word files. On Smart and up, CIRO reads the date, amount and category from invoices as PDFs or photos automatically. Excel and CSV lists (XLSX, XLS, CSV) of units and tenants go in through the import. Every document is sorted by property, tenancy and category.

Yes. When you create or edit a tenancy, you pick the matching lease from your document storage. CIRO copies the key data (start date, rent, deposit) into the tenancy, so you only enter it once. When something changes, CIRO archives every version with a timestamp.

Right on the document: you choose whether one specific tenant sees it or all of them. You revoke sharing in the same place, and your tenant no longer sees the document in the portal. Internal notes and files from other tenancies always stay with you.

Yes. Every document is stored encrypted on servers in the EU and backed up daily. Your tenants only see a file while you share it, and people who co-manage your account only get the permissions you give them. You can delete your documents at any time.

For as long as your account exists. The lease, handover reports and statements of a past tenancy stay archived with all receipts and their history. Your former tenant can keep reading their own files with no time limit, and your archive is unaffected.

Both. Hausmaister is the AI in CIRO and answers around the clock, for example questions about how something in CIRO works. If it can't solve something, it creates a support request for our team that includes the conversation so far. You can reach our support by phone daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 089 24 88 31 22.

The spelling is deliberate. A Hausmeister is a building caretaker in German, and the "ai" in the name stands for the AI doing the work here. The caretaker still looks after the stairwell, the heating and the front-door lock. Hausmaister handles the desk work: it answers questions about CIRO and your apartments, creates properties and tenancies, and passes requests on to our support team.

Yes. One switch in the settings turns off the AI completely, including Hausmaister, reply suggestions and document recognition. Individual AI features can't be switched off separately. The switch also applies to anyone who co-manages your account. CIRO then works with fixed rules only, and you enter by hand whatever the AI used to read for you.

On every plan, Hausmaister explains how things work in CIRO and opens the right page for you. On Smart and up, it also answers questions about your own data, such as which rents are outstanding, which apartments are vacant or which repairs are coming up, and creates a property or a tenancy when you ask. Anything it can't answer, it passes on to our team as a support request.

Hausmaister only accesses the data in your own account. The AI behind it runs on servers in the EU, and your data is not used to train AI models. You can switch it off at any time with the AI switch in the settings.

Search in the SmartBar and questions about how CIRO works are available on every plan. Hausmaister answers questions about your own data, such as outstanding rents or vacant apartments, on Smart and up (€30 / month). You can try it during the 60-day free trial on Smart.

Always with the base rent. The utility advance payment passes straight through: you collect it and spend it again on heating, water and the caretaker, so it does not increase your yield. If a listing only states the rent including utilities, deduct the utility advance payment before you calculate.

Below 3% is common in prime locations and new builds, 3 to 5% for older stock in large and mid-sized cities, and 5 to 7% in secondary locations. The older the property and the weaker the location, the more yield it has to deliver, because vacancy and repairs are more likely. Above 7%, it's always worth taking a second look at the rent assumption and the condition.

The multiplier is the purchase price divided by the annual base rent, i.e. the number of annual rents you pay for the property. A multiplier of 20 equals a 5% gross yield, 25 equals 4%, 30 equals 3.3%. Agents and banks often quote this figure, which is why the calculator shows both values.

The gross rental yield only divides the annual base rent by the purchase price. The net rental yield adds the closing costs to the purchase price and deducts the ongoing costs you cannot pass on to the tenant: management, maintenance reserve and vacancy allowance. It is therefore usually 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points below the gross yield and is the figure to base a purchase decision on.

Real estate transfer tax of 3.5 to 6.5% of the purchase price depending on the federal state, notary and land registry together around 1.5 to 2%, agent's commission as the buyer's share usually 3.57%. Add one-off costs such as a renovation before the first letting. In total about 5 to 12% of the purchase price is realistic depending on the state and agent, usually 8 to 12% with an agent. The calculator applies the transfer tax of your federal state automatically.

No. HOA fees include operating costs that you pass on to the tenant through the utility bill statement, for example heating, water and caretaker. You only deduct the part that stays with you: the HOA manager's fee and the contribution to the maintenance reserve. The split is in the HOA's budget. Enter both separately: the manager's fee under management and the reserve in its own field, so nothing counts twice.

No. The net rental yield describes the property before financing and taxes so you can compare it directly with the effective interest rate of your mortgage. If it is above the rate, every financed euro raises the return on your equity. What is left each month after interest, repayment and taxes only shows in a cash flow calculation.

No. The calculators run in your browser, and CIRO does not store your inputs in any account or database. So that a shared link shows exactly your calculation, the inputs are part of the link address. When someone opens the link, their browser requests the page with that address from CIRO. As with any website, the address is then kept for a limited time in our server's technical logs. For usage statistics and error tracking we remove the inputs from the address. In session recordings, which only run with your consent, we hide the calculator, but the page address there may still contain your inputs.

Divide the annual base rent by the purchase price and multiply by 100. A monthly base rent of €850 makes €10,200 a year; with a purchase price of €250,000 that gives 4.08%. Closing costs and ongoing costs are left out.

The gross rental yield only uses the base rent and the purchase price. The net rental yield deducts the costs you bear yourself from the rent and adds the closing costs to the price. Both lower the figure, so the net rental yield is always below the gross.

No. It uses the agreed annual rent as if every payment arrived on time. You account for lost rent in the net rental yield, for example with a deduction of 2% of the annual rent.

Deduct the ongoing costs you cannot pass on to tenants from the annual base rent, then divide the net income by the purchase price plus closing costs. With €8,916 net income and a total investment of €271,425, that is 3.28%.

No. The net rental yield relates the net income to the whole investment and ignores financing. The return on equity also deducts loan interest and relates the result only to the equity you put in. With a loan it can be higher or lower.

Yes. What you pay into the owners' maintenance reserve or your own repair reserve is a running cost you bear yourself. Leaving it out makes the yield look better than it is.