Renting in Rotterdam: dream or nightmare for expats?

Check off if you recognize any of these situations:

• Your city of residence requires you to have a landlord's permission to register at a certain address.

• Landlords or agencies who then use that power to make additional demands of tenants.

• Landlords or agencies who tell you that the next tenant of the room will repay your deposit.

• Threats of landlord or agencies with eviction or even a police visit if you do not agree to invasive unlawful inspections of your living spaces.

• Thousands of euro's in contractual fines if you fail to report a maintenance issue to your landlord on time.

• Exorbitant and unlawful service or administrative fees to secure your apartment or to have an estate agency broker a deal for your apartment of choice.

Just a snapshot of issues you may encounter when renting as an expat. Back to the original passion of why IMS was founded in the first place: advising and helping to resolve these issues, either with a deescalating soft touch, or with the full force of the law.

Prices of rooms or apartments can be up to 200% of the Rental Commission's advisory prices. But aside from this apparent "market" issue, finding a decent place to live is a daunting task for this particularly vulnerable group of tenants in Rotterdam: expats and international students. Where to go for reliable information? What does an all-in price really entail, and what's really allowed to be charged to you as a tenant in administrative and service fees? What to do when you disagree with an action by your landlord or agency? That is, if you can tell the difference between these parties.

A lot of free advice is readily available online in various expat forums and blogs. However, free advice is mostly generic and may not necessarily apply to your particular situation. Additionally, jurisprudence in the Netherlands shows judges generally rule in the favor of what you agreed to in writing. Verbal contracts may have equal force, but paper evidence usually trumps. So if you knowingly or unknowingly agreed to something, you may not feel empowered to address the injustice of actions by the city or your landlord.

As consultancy for expats and other internationals, many of these stories reach us at a point of no return: expert advice is needed to straighten out these situations, when landlord or agencies clearly took advantage of your knowledge and information gap if you live here temporarily or just if you are just starting out. Sometimes the solution is to take lessons learnt and start over in a new place. But that doesn't solve bad practices of landlords and agencies. IMS will help you stand your ground if needed and force agency or landlord compliance to applicable laws, city rules and regulations.

If you or anyone you know find yourself in a situations like these, feel free to connect for an initial free consultation. IMS and our network partners in legal and accountancy services can help you strategize the various possible scenarios and guide you in every step of the way.