Two Amsterdam tenants had great success in reporting their landlord to the Huurcommissie rent tribunal for charging them exorbitant rent. The Huurcommissie ordered the landlord to lower the rent for a small, leaky, drafty room on Keizersgracht from 1,950 euros to temporarily 95 euros per month. The rent for another room in the same building was lowered from 1,200 euros to temporarily 93 euros.
Why did anyone pay, and keep paying, 1,950 or 1,200 euros for such a shitty rooms in the first place?
The process of getting house/room in many areas in the Netherlands is full of bureaucracy. We can’t simply get a place and move there straight away. We need to register with the local councils and the requirements and regulations each local councils vary between places. Many times, it becomes catch-22 situation, e.g. you need to already have a job, but to get a job you need to register. That’s why some people are desperate enough that they move to shitty places.
What? You can just move somewhere if you have a place to live and then you register with the Council.
Registration is post moving and required.
yes you can just move in. but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be allowed to register and stay if you don’t meet the requirements. So at the end you need to find a place where you meet requirement. I know because I was one of those who at first didn’t meet the local council criteria at ‘this’ specific area of the city there.
Isn’t that just social housing? Commercial landlords (particuliere huur) don’t really care that much about requirements, other than you having a certain level of income. (And they might demand a ridiculous income at that)
Not just
commercial landlordsocial housing; it applies to the whole local council area. Just to give you a generally applicable example, i.e. when the local council want to build up a certain area that used to be problematic area (high crime rate etc), they increase the requirements to move there, thus making it more difficult to move there. Those who wants to register there need to already secure employment and show that they are favourable tenants economically.Who told you this? The gemeente or someone associated with the landlord.
Cause it reads like the landlord was illegally renting out and did not want the gemeente to know and thus did not want you to register on the address.
No. I assume you are a local citizen so you won’t have to experience this kind of situation.
For my specific situation, I straight away move in apply to register for the first time once there. I follow the local council regulation. There’s nothing illegal in there. But as a non-EUs it’s more complicated because need to get a local bank account, prove of employment (contract) etc. If we can’t meet the full criteria, there won’t simply complete the registration. So, yes as you wrote before, we can register post moving. But no, when we apply to register, it doesn’t mean the registration can be completed smoothly.
Just Google and compare the process to move in to The Netherlands to other counries. I’ll be very skeptical if someone said that in the Netherlands the process is easy.
I’m an EU citizen but not from NL. When I moved here I did have to have the bank account, address etc in the right order but to be honest I still found it very easy. It took only one appointment to get it all sorted (because I had all the elements that were clearly explained to me ahead of time). My wife is non-EU and it was a bit more complicated to get the residency but again, very efficient administration.
You should try the same thing in a country like France with total bureaucratic nightmare where they will make you come back 20 times because they need a slightly different version of document 28-B signed by the landlord, your deceased mother and the president.
I haven’t tried any other EU country apart from the NL. Although I think it’s bureaucratic, but I do find it to be efficient and systematic. Anyway, many of the problem won’t usually be experienced by the local and expats but by the newcomers e.g. non-local students in the Netherlands who is transitioning to working life there. It becomes more difficult because the real housing in the NL are very limited and in high demand.
In the UK it was really easy. No need to register at all.
Can’t argue about the housing!
Fair enough, I am a Dutch national. I have guided over 50 colleagues in an international company through the process. But indeed, the bank account and proof of employment is part of the requirement and we arrange that as part of the employment package for expats. So by the time housing is up for arranging the rest is already taken care of.
And I definately understand the dauntless task if you need to figure it out alone.
Because housing is basically extortion in big European cities. It’s like there’s a global conspiracy to stop building new housing and lower interest rates so real estate value skyrocket.
Yeah, zoning laws mostly exist to keep property prices up by restricting supply – which mainly benefits the already well-off.