Student room prices up 6%; Amsterdam quickly approaching €1,000 per month

Students are paying 6 percent more for their room than a year ago. The average rent in the first quarter of this year was 683 euros per month. In the first three months of last year, it was still 658 euros, reported Kamernet, one of the largest websites for student rooms in the country.

Amsterdam is the most expensive city for students to live in. In the Dutch capital, a room costs an average of 979 euros per month. Utrecht (803 euros) and Haarlem (770 euros) follow. Enschede is the cheapest city with a rent of almost 400 euros.

Wageningen is one of the cheapest cities to live in as a student, with an average rent of 450 euros for a room, but this is almost 20 percent more than last year, the largest increase in the country. In Leiden, the average rent increased by more than 18 percent, in Leeuwarden and Eindhoven by approximately 14 percent. Tilburg is the only city where the rent decreased, and in Zwolle, the amount remained the same.

There is a massive shortage of student housing, Kamernet said. The shortage is in the tens of thousands, but the site only lists a few hundred more rooms than last year. “For many students, this means little choice and higher costs,” explained Kamernet director Jim Bijwaard. According to him, the shortage is due to rules that make it unattractive to rent out.

Kamerment based its calculations on almost 14,000 rooms that were offered for rent via the site.