Finding an apartment in NL

This post is to help the people who are in search of an apartment in any of the place in Netherlands.

Netherlands is the mostly congested country in the world and finding an apartment in the country is one of the tedious , time consuming and eat your wallet.
So let see the Process of finding the apartment and avoiding the pitfalls in that.

before going for the apartment decide on the following items.

1. How many months/years you are going to stay in Netherlands?
2. What kind of apartment( studio, apartment, independent) u r expecting?
3. What type of contract apartment you want?(
* Fully furnished - everything included in the rent and u don't have to worry abt anything.
* Semi furnished - Part of the apartment is furnished and u have to arrange/pay ur self if u want extra facilities.)
* Only Apartment is rented to you and you have to take care of everything like from energy connection to carpeting the floor.)
4. How much amount you can spend on rent?
5. How much amount you can spend on commission to the Agent? (In most cases you have to pay one month rent of the house plus 19% tax you have to pay to agent.)
6. what location you want the apartment?( In the city, near to the city mostly expensive, but choosing a apartment in a small village or town near by to the city always cheaper.But depends on how you want to travel.)
6. How many members you are going to stay in the apartment?( In Netherlands the apartment can be rented to maximum members derived by the Municipality of the town/City. Once you rented the apartment you have to register with the Municipality in ur place, that is mandatory for everything from opening an bank a/c to your visa/resident permit, so It's not possible to stay four persons in the three persons apartment)

Once you found out the answers for the above questions you can go ahead with the internet search, rental agency and by other means..

I will list out the number of rental agencies and internet sites where you can search for your apartments at the end of my post.

There are two ways you can get the apartment, one is going through the process of Rental agency, the second one is going by the colleagues and friends to find out an apartment near by there places( direct contact with the owner).

By the first method you have less risk, but you have to pay the commission.
The risk in the sense the rental agency is responsible for everything abt the apartment rental, say for example once you are renting an apartment from an agency, but after that you found out any problems then you can contact the agency and they have to solve that and they will do it in most cases.
Here is one such example that I faced during my house search. myself and my friend are searching for a two bed room apartment and went to an agency. We found a match and signed the contract and shifted to the new apartment. After shifting there we went to the Town Hall to register ourself to the new address. In the town hall we came to know that the person sign the contract is not the actual owner and she is actually a renter like us and she wanted to sub rent the apartment to us. It's illegal to do that way in Netherlands with out the permission form the apartment owner. So we went to the agency and they took care of the problem and we were able to find an apartment shortly.

In the other case you won't pay any commission to any one, but you have to face all the risk by yourself.

I wanted to shade some lights in some bit falls in renting the apartments that need to be checked.

* Check the owner of the apartment and availability of the address for the registration in the town hall before singing the contract.
* Check on the contract period, different contract agreements are there, like 6 months contract and then you have to vacate the apartment, otherwise 6 months contract and extend the contract once the period over. so you have to be careful while choosing that otherwise you will end up in paying commission for every 6 months.
* If you are going for a unfurnished apartment( It will be more cheaper), but you have to consider the contracts (you have make arrangement for everything in this case) for the energy(Electricity, water, Gas), Television and internet connections, these connections always comes with minimum one year contract and if you are leaving the apartment before the contract period then you have to pay the remaining time amount to them.

So consider these thing before signing the contract for your apartment.

Here is some list of Rental agencies and Internet site to look for the Apartments.


* funda.nl
* marktplaats.nl
* expatica.nl
* PerfectHousing.nl
* Actys.nl Non profit agency
* pararius.com
* apartmentservices.nl
* RotsVast Group

these are some of the agencies available in Netherlands and you can find out more in Internet. Also check out the expatica.nl for more housing and other issues related to the expats in Netherlands.

Hope this will atleast will help you in understanding the apartment searching process and avoid some unpleasant situations. Happy House hunting and Good Luck!!!