Amsterdam court slashes international student’s €1,500 room rent by 63 percent

A foreign student who was paying a staggering 1,500 euros per month for a bedroom in a shared apartment was actually being charged nearly 950 euros more than what was allowed, a judge in the Amsterdam Subdistrict Court ruled this month. The verdict, which was delivered on March 11 and published on Monday, ordered the landlord to compensate the former tenant for the overcharged amount collected during the ongoing student housing shortage.

The conflict dates back to the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year, when the student found the advertisement to sublet a furnished room of about 10 square meters. The listing was placed on an online platform for the bedroom, which is in an apartment measuring nearly 110 square meters in area. The listing for 1,500 euros noted that four other people were already living in the apartment, and that the price includes the costs of utilities, and use of the upholstered and not upholstered furniture.

The lease was agreed online via the platform which hosted the listing for a minimum duration of two months and a maximum duration of five months. “This platform does not have a permit for ‘short stay’ rental,” the court stated.

The contract start date was September 11, 2023. Although this was after the lower house of Dutch Parliament approved of a measure to ban temporary housing rentals, the agreement between the tenant and landlord was concluded before the Dutch Senate also voted for the ban. It was also before the Affordable Rent Act was entered into law, creating a new mid-range rental tier.

The tenant vacated the apartment by the end of October. Less than two months later, they asked the rent assessment committee, Huurcommissie, to evaluate the home to determine if they were paying a fair amount. The organization evaluated the property, and decided that the rent itself should have been no more than 178.94 euros, with 375 euros for monthly service costs.

Later, the landlord challenged the ruling, saying that the common space should have been given more points, thus increasing the maximum rent. The landlord also argued that they provided cleaning, 24-hour availability in case of problems, and “shuttle services.”

“Apart from the option of picking up the tenant from Schiphol Airport, [the landlord] has not specifically explained which additional services he offers,” the court said. “Another factor is that it is not clear whether [the landlord] offered this pick-up service as part of the agreement between the parties or merely as a friendly gesture.”

The court found that the normal rent protection rules apply, and that the rental agreement did not fit into legal regulations regarding the definition of a short-term tenancy, even if the duration itself was short. The lease itself was not tied to the duration of the tenant’s study, for example, but also there was no evidence to show that the landlord would not have allowed the tenant to extend the lease for an additional period.

“The rental of a furnished room to a foreign student, whereby the kitchen, bathroom and toilet are for shared use with housemates, does not make the nature of the rented property any different from that of other rooms that are often rented to (Dutch) students and that must be regarded as the regular rental of non-independent residential spaces, to which the rent protection rules apply,” the judge ruled.

The court ordered the landlord to refund the overage to the former tenant. This would amount to roughly 1,575 euros, assuming the tenant paid a pro-rated amount for the first month and the full fee for October. The court also ordered the landlord to pay the tenant’s legal costs of just over 475 euros.