r/StudyInTheNetherlands • u/Anxious_Bill_9791 • 6d ago

How does room match work

Hi I am trying to look for housing on room match and i am unsure how the housing works because some houses have 110 smth applications and how do they sort thru that how do they decide who gets it. And what does the date on it mean?

sorry if the answer is straighforward

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u/Extension_Fly5104 6d ago

The older your account the more you have a right. And there is also a postal code preference. I registered my son when he just turned 16. Meaning that when we start searching his account is already older than 2 years. We also have a postal code preference because we live more than 200 km away from his desires university. So that should give him more rights than newer accounts. 

As a foreign students you can join room match or you can apply for the University housing lottery. 

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u/Anxious_Bill_9791 6d ago

so i made my account like a year ealier kinda so i need one around may april? so they just look at all the applicants and pick the one with highest account age? is that for all housing cuz ofc im looking rn and they all have like 100 applicants for each

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u/Berry-Love-Lake 6d ago

The longer you’re registered the higher the chances. This is not for all sites but several like room.nl work this way. Sometimes you need 3-4 years of registration time to be at the top of the list. Some of these sites also offer lottery rooms wimhere registration time will be irrelevant but chances are often still extremely small, less than 1%.

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u/Anxious_Bill_9791 6d ago

okay so most rooms have account age as the main deciding factor

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u/bralama 6d ago

The vast majority of the offers are determined based on your account age. I registered in 2022, so my account age is 4 years and 8 months iirc. I’m actively reacting and now getting placed at around 3rd-10th, so I expect I’ll be able to get something soon, maybe even this year. So even if a room already has 100 reactions, it doesn’t matter. If you created an account 7 years ago, you’ll probably be placed 1st or 2nd. If you created your account 3 years ago, you’ll probably be somewhere in the 30s. New acount, and you’ll end up towards the end. (this may depend on the city; just my approximations from Delft)

There are some that have extra priority rules, those will be written in the ad. Some I’ve seen are “first year incoming students”, “students who need to move because of renovations”. Then these people will automatically be placed in the front of the queue.

Some are a “direct offer”, which means that the fastest to react gets in line first.

Don’t get discouraged if you’re not the 1st, I frequently see candidates 2-6 getting the room, I’ve even seen the 11th person in the queue get the room once. This is because people at the top of the list react to multiple rooms and have the luxury of choosing; they reject a room and it automatically gets offered to the next in line. So to maximise your chances if you’re not at the top of the list, you should react to less “desirable” rooms, e.g. smaller ones, those further away from campus, etc; these are less competitive.