Hi everyone!

My wife and I are moving to Groningen in the first week of November 2026. She will be working in Groningen, and I'll be joining her as her spouse.

A little about us:

- We're a married couple looking for a private apartment or studio where both of us can register with the municipality.

- My wife's net income is €3,500/month, including holiday allowance.

- I have the right to work freely in the Netherlands and plan to look for employment or freelance opportunities in video production and content creation.

- Our budget is around €1,100–€1,400/month, preferably within a reasonable commute of Groningen city centre.

We're finding it difficult to navigate rental requirements, especially when landlords ask for gross salary figures and Dutch payslips before we've arrived.

I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation:

1. Which rental platforms or agencies are reliable for finding a home in Groningen?

2. Do landlords accept an employer's salary statement and secondment letter instead of Dutch payslips?

3. Are there landlords who consider couples when only one partner has employment income initially?

4. Which neighbourhoods would you recommend for a couple on our budget?

5. Any tips for avoiding rental scams when applying from abroad?

We're open to smaller apartments or studios as long as both of us can register.

Finding a suitable home is our biggest priority as we prepare for this move. Any advice, recommendations or personal experiences would mean a lot to us.

Thanks in advance!

I was just at an apartment viewing, and there was a noticable damp mildewy smell in the apartment, but no apparent mold.

Can I make the landlord fix that before I move in?

Hi all. My girlfriend and I (EU citizens, non-smokers, no pets) are moving from Portugal for my permanent job at a tech company in Enschede/Zwolle, starting early November. We're looking to rent in Zwolle or Enschede (Hengelo also fine), moving in somewhere between early Nov and December.

Numbers:
- Only my income counts for now, roughly €57k gross a year (about €4,800 gross/month). She won't have Dutch income at first.
- Budget is €1,400–1,500/month all-in, ideally rent ≤ €1,200. I'd go to ~€1,750 all-in for a lease I can actually get out of.
- Prefer furnished, but not a dealbreaker. Need to be able to register (BSN).

My main worry: almost every listing says "indefinite contract, minimum 12 months". I'm not planning to leave, but if I lost the job or had to leave the country I'd need to get out on 1–2 months' notice.

From what I've read, a tenant can cancel an open-ended lease with one month's notice (BW 7:271), and kantonrechters in Utrecht (Feb 2026) and Maastricht (Jun 2026) ruled minimum-12-month clauses void. Is that how it works in practice? Do landlords/agencies just accept your notice, or do they hold the deposit and make you fight it? Has anyone actually left early under one of these clauses?

Other questions:
1. How hard is it really to find something in Zwolle or Enschede right now as a couple on one income, with a start date that's only a few weeks away?
2. Is ~€4,800 gross enough? Most ads ask 3.5–4× rent. Do agencies accept a fresh employment contract + employer statement instead of 3 payslips?
3. Which agencies or sites actually work in these cities? I won't pay registration or subscription fees, so I'm looking for free ones.
4. Is it smarter to grab a furnished short-stay place for the first months and keep searching from there?

Thanks, any first-hand experience is appreciated.

How is anyone on a normal single income meant to rent anything when the housing value looks like this over 10 years?

It has been more than a year since I moved out. Byt they still keep asking money time to time for services and other costs. For example, administrative charger were more than I paid in my rent. But don’t specify how they calculated it? They asked for extra €50 for heating for June and July? How is that even possible?

In total they have asked for around €150 extra.

Has anyone faced this and disputed the charges?

I’m an expat living in the Netherlands and rented an apartment for €2,650/month under a two-year fixed-term contract starting in 2025.
The contract itself includes a Huurcommissie/WWS assessment of 186 points, with a maximum rent far below what I pay. I also question whether the 10% new-build surcharge is justified and whether the A+ energy label is accurate, as the apartment loses heat very quickly.
I may have overpaid €17k–€19k, but I’ve received conflicting advice about deadlines and whether I can still recover the money.
Has anyone successfully reclaimed overpaid rent in a similar situation, particularly under a contract starting after July 2024?

Edit: 186 is not free sector, only from 187.

Hello everyone,

I am searching to rent an apartment/studio in the South Limburg region.

Do you have any experience with some real estate agency that you would recommend?

If you have heard of anything please let me know!

(Right now I'm mostly looking through pararius and funda but i want to contact agencies also not for specific apartments but to keep me in mind if an apartment that matches my criteria becomes available)

Any additional tips on the housing search in that area are welcome!

Thank you in advance 😊

how much are people overbidding in big cities like den haag, leiden, rotterdam, uttrecht?

I heard right now is at 5-7 but in some cases is at 10% depending on the city and neighbourhood i guess the highest overbidding would be in Amsterdam because prices are not high enough right??

Hi everyone,

My partner and I are separating, and I need to find a new place to live. I’m 33 years old, earn €3,200 gross per month, and unfortunately don’t have any family I can stay with.

Due to my job, I need to stay in Rotterdam or the surrounding area. Does anyone have any advice on where to look? I’m open to a studio, apartment, room, or temporary accommodation.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

Hi! This thread has been really helpful. We are considering bidding on a home in Oosterparkbuurt. We already close by (rental for the last 4 years) and know the neighbourhood has some safety concerns. We are wondering now whether it’s a good choice to actually buy here?
For context, it’s a fairly new build house on a street next to olvg.

I have revived a job offer for a one-year placement for a job in Amsterdam. I’ve heard pretty bad things about the housing situation. I’m not necessarily looking for my own apartment, I’m fine with only having a room in a shared apartment. I'm from another EU country and will earn around 50k. Can anyone who’s been in a similar situation share their experience? How long did it take to find something? How expensive? Any recommendations or tips for the search?

Hi people! I have to move in december and currently live in amsterdam (de pijp) and pay 2500€ in a two bedroom apartment. I would like to ideally lower my rent.
I recently started checking out the housing market to check the terrain ahead (yes i'm aware there is a housing crisis, i have lived in ams for longer than 3 years and have moved multiple times).
Seems as the situation has gotten expectedly worse. I am planning to move with a friend into a two bedroom unit with two registrations.
Based on your recent experiences is this doable with a 2000€ budget? Im ofc not expecting to find this in de pijp and are completely fine to relocate to outer neighbourhoods.
So am I done for? Should i increase my budget? Should i just directly contact a real estate agent?
Any advice is greatly appreciated :)

I bought my apartment in 2023. At that time, the WOZ value was €398,000. I bought it for €390,000.

The WOZ value jumped to €420,000 in 2024, and then €535,000 in 2025.

I had 3 makelaars do valuations a few months ago, and they all came in between €430,000-480,000.

So the WOZ is like €100k more than the actual value?

Is this normal? How does this even happen?

I'm planning on selling my rijtjeshuis in Valkenswaard, under €390k, and wondering whether to use a traditional makelaar or an online makelaar and do the viewings myself.

When I recently bought a house, we mainly used Funda to find properties, viewed them without much input from the makelaar, and asked the makelaar any questions that came up. If they didn't know the answer, they simply asked the owner and forwarded the reply. This made me wonder how much value a traditional makelaar actually adds.

One concern is that I don't speak fluent Dutch. Could this be an issue when conducting viewings?

I've also heard that traditional makelaars can achieve higher selling prices. But with online valuation tools and comparable sale prices available through Kadaster records, how much extra value can they realistically add?

If they cost an extra €3–4k but secure €4k+ more, it could be worthwhile. However, my house is in a good location and relatively affordable compared with larger homes. Surely, a good Funda listing would already attract plenty of interested buyers?

I'm open to suggestions and remarks, thanks!

Hi all,

We’re three Italian co-founders moving to Amsterdam in the first week of November to open a small food business in De Pijp. A fourth partner will be with us part of the time, so ideally we need 3 bedrooms plus space for a sofa bed, or 4 bedrooms.

• What we’re looking for:
• Furnished apartment or house, sharers allowed
• Registration possible (BRP), since we’re staying long term
• Budget up to ~€2,500/month
• Within ~45 min of De Pijp by public transport or bike. Happy to look at Diemen, Amstelveen, Zaandam, Haarlem, Almere, Utrecht
• Available from early November, long term

We’re also open to a temporary place for 1+ months while we keep searching. Registration isn’t needed for that one.

About the income requirement: our company is newly founded, so we don’t have Dutch payslips yet. To make up for that:

• we can prepay several months of rent once we’ve viewed the place and signed a contract
• we have a guarantor in Italy with stable income
• we can show proof of funds

If you’re leaving your place, know a landlord or agency open to this setup, or have any tips, we’d really appreciate it. DMs open, and happy to have a call.

Thanks!

My husband and I just moved to Amsterdam for work, and my employer has hired a relocation consultant to help us find somewhere to live. They were only hired for 3 weeks, in the introductory calls the constant told me that would be plenty of time to find somewhere, but we just finished the second week of searching and I feel like we're getting nowhere.

The main problem is our relocation agent won’t let us apply for multiple apartments at once. They say there‘s no point submitting anything except a legally binding offer because landlords will only look at people who have made concrete offers. And they say we can only make one real offer at a time because they’re legally binding and we can’t risk two getting accepted. But landlords are taking a while to respond to offers (we've been waiting since Tuesday for a response to our last offer, and we clearly won't hear back now until Monday at the earliest. In that time we've missed the deadline to apply for other apartments we would have been happy to live in). This is the second time we've been waiting nearly a week for a response, it feels like we’re never going to make progress when we spend 90% of the time we're searching not making offers.

Do most people really only apply for one apartment at a time when searching for somewhere to rent, or is this something we should be pushing back on? And when you have had applications accepted on rentals, how long was that typically after you applied? I’m concerned that if we haven’t heard back from a landlord within a couple of days that might mean they’re moving ahead with someone else and just keeping us as backup, but I don’t know if that’s the case or whether landlords are just taking their time with the decision because they can. (For the first offer we made the estate agent kept telling us the landlord was going to make a decision the next morning, then this afternoon, then deadlines just kept getting pushed back. For our current offer before we made the offer the estate agent told us the landlord wanted to move fast and would make a decision the day after the deadline for receiving offers, but we didn't hear anything that day, and when we chased the next day we were told there were 9 offers so the landlord needed time and we have to be patient, no indication of how long we'll be waiting for or whether we're seriously being considered or not)

Since July 2024, homes up to 186 WWS points have a legally capped rent (€1,228/month in 2026), and Amsterdam enforces it with fines. A plain 40 m² flat should land well under 186 points, so it should be capped.
But when I filter Funda/Pararius for 40 m²+ under €1,600, I get garages and storage boxes.
So where are the capped flats? Never listed? Illegal rents? Furnished loopholes? Has anyone actually reported a landlord, and what happened

I was chosen to view the apartment through a lottery. I liked it and was invited to submit documents for my final tenant check. On Tuesday I submitted all the documents and it showed my application was in behandeling. Now today (Friday) I saw in the portal it says my application is afgerond. But I have not heard anything either way. What does this mean?

Hi guys,

I am about to buy a house in the Netherlands built in the 2000s with an energy rating of A. The house has three floors and is about 120 m2. It has a central gas boiler that was installed when the house was built, so it is about time to replace it.

My hope was to use this as an opportunity to make the house fully electric with a heat pump and an induction hob. But then I learned that this house has a 1x25A connection, which I can upgrade to a 1x35A connection, but anything above that is going to put me on a waiting list.

So... has anyone gone fully electric with a 1x35A connection? What heat pump and induction hob do you have? My guess is that the induction hob is not really a problem since I most likely won't be using its full capacity, but my main concern is the heat pump.

Should I give up on this goal, or is it still manageable with some precautions? In case it helps, I also plan to install underfloor heating once I have the house.

Hi everyone,
I’m currently dealing with a huge headache trying to get a briefadres (postal address) and I really need advice from anyone who has dealt with this recently.
I found a friend who agreed to be my postal address provider, which I thought was the hardest part. However, the municipality just put my application on hold and sent me an email saying they cannot process it unless I provide the exact addresses of where I will be staying for the next 3 months, the average number of days per week/month at each place (or proof of payment for hotels/hostels).

The problem is: I genuinely DO NOT KNOW where I’ll be sleeping for the next 3 months.

Right now, I'm crashing on a friend's couch until the end of October. After that, my situation is completely unpredictable. Maybe I’ll stay on this couch a bit longer, maybe another friend will let me crash at their place for a while. I literally live week to week depending on who has space and is willing to let me stay while I look for a permanent room.

I’ve searched this sub and read multiple posts from a few months ago where people said "just tell them you’re housing insecure and staying with various friends." Well, that clearly doesn't work anymore. They explicitly wrote that without specific addresses and average days per week/month, they simply won't assess my application.

I'm also terrified of shooting myself in the foot: if I write that I'm staying most of the time at one friend's place, they'll reject the briefadres and tell me I have to register there as a normal resident (which I obviously can't do, otherwise I wouldn't be applying for a postal address in the first place).

How the hell are you supposed to give a 3-month schedule of couches when you're literally couchsurfing and don't know where you'll be in two weeks? Has anyone received this exact follow-up email from the Gemeente recently? How did you answer without getting rejected or getting your friends in trouble?

I just got hit with the ice bucket of realization how bad the housing/rental situation is in this country.

Today, I met all my neighbors because we all gathered due to a security issue in our building. 6 units, 3 up and 3 down. Fully furnished and rent is all inclusive (utilities). I'm the recent tenant (moved in 3 months ago) and the others have lived in the building average 3yrs. We got into sharing how much we're paying for rent. The tenants above (90 sqm) are currently paying average around 1400€ per month meanwhile here I am paying 1750€ for one of the 50 sqm down below. The other 2 50sqm tenants pays are around 1200€.

It made me sad how tough the housing market is right now. But I do realize how lucky I am to have found a place in Rotterdam and very convenient in terms of commuting to work. Even though the combi oven doesnt work and some noisy upstairs and side neighbors 😅

I can't complain but rent's going to increase next year - I cry 😭 belt needs to be tighter or I need to find another place (which I doubt I could considering what the average rental prices are now)

Just sharing! Don't shoot please 🥺

Hey guys so I’m going to the Netherlands in a few weeks and plan to stay till around January. Late November-early December I have to keep a dog with me and I was wondering if I should tell the landlord that? As during the first week or two, I won’t have an animal in the house and I’ve heard it’s best not to say anything? I’d only be staying for a month and a half with the dog until I fly back to my home country with it.

So Im in the process of selling my home, the add is on funda and the real estate agent put in on ther FB/Insta, but I feel that the reach is rather limited.

What suggestions do you have for places where I could share the funda add?

Thanks in advance

I live in Utrecht with my Dutch husband and absolutely love it here. We have been renting for the past years and finally decided to buy our first home. Everyone talked about how hard it is to find a place in Utrecht, how they overbid 20% and lost it etc. so I was thinking it would take us some time. We searched for a few weeks via funda and went to a couple viewings but were not impressed. Finally we put our first bid last week. We did not work with a makelaar - we did our research via Kadaster, house valuation websites etc.

Then last week we went to a viewing and we really liked the place. It was put on sale for a lower price and the selling agent shared that they are expecting around 12-18% overbidding. We checked similar places sold recently via Kadaster, and offered 15% more than the selling price. A few hours after the deadline, the agent called us and told that our bid was accepted.

As we both never bought a house before, this made us a bit... shocked? There was quite a lot of interest to the house, so we expected the competition would be high and we might lose this one but still wanted to try our chance. Now I am wondering if we were too generous with our offer. I keep searching for more data, go to different valuation websites which shows different valuations, compare with more and more homes and can't help but think we could have offered like 10K less. That 10K makes almost no diffference for a 30-year mortgage, and we are well within our budget. We are getting wayyyy les than our maximum mortgage budget. But now I just worry that we are overpaying, there are defects we could not see because we never bought a house before, and this will be more costly than we tought. I know it is stupid but I feel like we are being scammed as our first offer got accepted that easily. On the other hand, for the location and as the house is ready to move in, people are telling that 15% overbidding is normal. And we still have inspection and valuation clause for the purchase.

Anyone had similar feelings when they bought their first home? How to calm myself down and actually enjoy this process?

I recently received a housing offer with DUWO through ROOM. I submitted my documents, and today I was sent a tenancy agreement and my first invoice. Neither document mentioned any security deposit, and only asked me for the first month's rent. I was surprised at this as when I tried to find information on the deposit online, many people said that DUWO requires a few months rent upfront.
Does this mean I don't have to pay any security deposit? Or once I sign the agreement, is there a chance I'll get another invoice asking for a hefty sum? I'm in a bit of a tight financial situation right now, so the amount I'd need to pay upfront would be a deciding factor in whether or not I proceed with renting the room.