How to Find an Apartment in Amsterdam | Tips, Costs, Viewings, and More

finding a place to live in amsterdam is how amsterdam is one of the most difficult places to find a place to live and this is how i did it hey this is david and welcome back to my channel i've been living in amsterdam for almost three years now in three different places and each time looking for a new place it was stressful it took a lot of time the first place i found via facebook was on the single canal in a dutch canal house i loved it a great roommate lived there for two years the second place i also found via facebook it was a shared apartment on the east side in host a bigger building more modern building as well the dirt place where i am living now it's a one bedroom in old south near wando park i really enjoy it so far a great location so in this video i just want to share with you some of my experiences show you what a viewing looks like and give you some tips and tricks to hopefully make your experience a little bit better than mine amsterdam is one of the most popular places to live in the world timeout magazine named it a top city to live in the world you have international headquarters here professionals coming here to work you have students coming here to study and so demand is high but supply is low also social housing 30 to 40 percent of housing in amsterdam is dedicated to social housing so then it becomes extremely challenging to find a place very competitive i've heard horror stories of people students that had to move back home because they couldn't find a place to stay it's sad but you're gonna have to pay a price you're gonna have to know what you want because you can't be picky and when i say price it's expensive to live in amsterdam and you're gonna also have to pay a price in time in stress sometimes tears a lot of resilience and a lot of patience so let's look for a place to live in amsterdam hopefully that first step is that you have a good understanding of what you want and your priorities as well what's your budget do you want roommates which location do you want to park nearby once you have your priorities then it's time to look for a house and apartment on websites like funda perarius facebook groups once you do find a place then it's time to hopefully schedule a viewing and if you get that viewing then it's time to go to that viewing and in that viewing you probably have to decide in the same day in the next few hours if you want to submit a bid and when you do submit a bid most likely you have to submit your documents showing how much money you make your employer's contract your passport all that stuff and if you're lucky enough for your bid to be accepted then it's time to sign the contract to put in the deposit usually two times the amount of rent then it's time to move in well that sounds simple but the reality is that it's not so simple there's a lot of stress involved but let me show you what i went through over the past few months when i tried to find a one bedroom in amsterdam so i'm going to my first viewing of the season it's at 4 30 should take around 10 to 20 minutes plus some questions let's see how it goes so just finished the viewing that was quick 10 15 minutes and there was actually some miscommunication between the current tenant and the landlord she wasn't expecting so many people to come she was still working but yeah the pictures always look better than the actual place it was quite dark uh quite messy and yeah this one's a no-go okay walking towards viewing number two this one is close to vondo park let's see how this one goes okay so that one was around 450 euros excluding utilities and yeah i don't know i didn't really feel it as well the the backyard wasn't that enticing the the balcony um but i also noticed for one bedrooms i'm competing against couples and usually i'm the only single person going in so i'll see how that turns out hey so just got back from the viewing and very centrally located place on the strats very nice small cozy um i think i'll probably put a bid and see what happens next step is to submit a few documents like payslips my contract my bank statements etc but there are so many people it was one person after another and so a very stiff competition so let's see what happens another day another viewing wow i feel like looking for a place in amsterdam is more difficult than getting into harvard there are so many people cramped into that staircase and yeah we got maybe a few minutes of viewing time and then we have to make a decision but overall i like the location i like that there's a balcony um we'll see so what helped me eventually find a place in amsterdam well one big thing is to know what you want to know what your priorities are what are your non-negotiables because you're not gonna have every single thing but hopefully your top two your top three now for me i realized that some of my non-negotiables were that i wanted to find a place that was furnished the other thing was having enough light in the apartment because when i lived in the canals while it was a great experience in the winter times it was very dark and for what i do at work i do a lot of trainings a lot of meetings where it helps to have a lot more natural light and i do have a lot more light now in this apartment the other thing was i wanted to be close to a park because i enjoy running in parks walking parks there's also studies that show that when you live closer to a park you're happier as a person and now i live five minutes by foot from wando park other questions you might ask are do i want roommates what do i look for in a good roommate as well if you live with people probably the single most important factor is who you will be living with do your personalities connect or do they go inside so that becomes a very important factor how far is your place from work from school are there supermarkets nearby how's neighborhood like there's a website called hood maps and i'll link it in the description below where you get to see a map of amsterdam and each location has a description of what each neighborhood is known for and you might get a laugh from this as well it's quite funny but from my experience it's quite accurate so now that you have a list of priorities your non-negotiables where do you actually look for housing well if you are looking for a roommate then you have facebook groups you have comernet.nl facebook is a great option you have many facebook groups but the thing about facebook is you have to filter through the noise now if you're by yourself a partner a family and you want to find your own place you have funna perarius and you have these housing corporations like vesteda let's take a look at an example so perarius and funda are the two most popular websites to look for housing in the netherlands whether you want to buy or rent i personally like ferraris because i like the design of the website the user experience is a lot more friendly so let's take a look at an example of how i would go about looking for an apartment in amsterdam so i'm gonna search for amsterdam and let's see what pops up so this is sorted by newest first this is really important because you really want to be first in line to contact the agency because in a few hours that listing might not be live any longer that's happened to me many times especially for the most popular listings and you want to check first thing in the morning on the weekdays nine o'clock 10 o'clock whenever you can check it that's when the the bunch of the newest listings will come online and you want to be the first in line to contact them so in this case what i usually do is i will set some additional filters of course there's property type price yes that's going to be very important uh zero euros i wish to 1750 because that is actually the price of amsterdam nowadays for a one bedroom i want to look for an apartment now the city area i'll leave that blank because i'll use the map view later on district bedrooms one plus for myself now this is the interior so shell what that means is you basically get the concrete floor that's all you get the shell nothing else you don't even have a floor you have to buy the floor yourself that's an option as well a poster means there is a floor there's a floor and you might actually have to pay for that floor from the previous tenant there might not be a fridge you might have to paint the walls but upholstered means there is a floor for you furnish means there's a floor and there's also furniture and for myself this was my personal preference i only looked for furnished places because well it takes a lot of time to furnish a place and this is a personal preference for me and so you might check one of these let's leave this blank for now let's see what comes up so we have 84 apartments for rent and what i like to do is to go in the map view because the big determinant for me is also the location i wanted to live closer to vondel park on the west side because i found that most of my friends were on the west side the activities my basketball group everything was more on the west side but it's a personal preference let's take a look at what's available if we zoom in let's look at this one oh so this is a great example of a shell you get nothing except well the place itself so you see that you have to install floors yourself and there's not a whole lot here you probably have to do some painting as well um not a whole lot you have to do a lot of fixing no fridge nothing and still 1335 euros per month yeah this is amsterdam in 2022. this is also a temporary rental minimum of 12 maximum of 12 months that's the other thing in the netherlands the contracts most contracts all have a maximum length of say 12 months or 24 months and this is because tenants get a lot of rights in this country if you go past i believe two years then tenants get tenants rights and it's really hard to kick them out so a lot of landlords will put in a maximum of 12 months 24 months and then you have to leave that's what happened to me let's take a look at another example let's look at somewhere else i don't know what is this 1550 1515 there albert cup the pipe let's look at this one so this one is upholstered meaning there's a floor this one seems pretty nice you have everything there but it's not furnished and the location is great as well there's a lot of lighting quite modern as well so this one is available on september 1st today is august 7th so a lot of times this also matters a lot of the times the listings will be available immediately or in about a few weeks and this also becomes a challenge if you're currently living and you have a current housing contract because you have to give one month's notice so for many of these listings you might have to pay an addition an additional month's rent because of the fact that you need to move in within a few weeks immediately so keep that into consideration the energy rating is also important especially this year when energy prices have increased by a lot and this matters especially in the winter time when you need to use the heater and so don't just look at the the price here because 1550 in the winter time with today's housing and energy prices it's going to be quite expensive if you have an energy rating of like d e or f so this one is 15.50 and usually it's going to cost a lot more you have to pay to 300 euros of utilities and you to pay the annual garbage tax as well so if you decide that this is something that you want what you want to do it's the plan of viewing right away and what you do here is to contact and to call the real estate agent never email unless they ask you to because well if you write this message there's going to be a lot of messages probably over 100 to the real estate agent and they're not going to have the time to respond so you really want to call and you want to call as soon as the listing goes live especially if this is something that you want so what i might do if this is something that i want early in the morning monday morning tomorrow i'll give that real estate agent a call and so i want to plan a viewing sometimes you might not have the numbers so you have to go to the website to find the number let's look at one more example this one is furnished really good location as well on overtone next to vando park 17.50 per month for a one bedroom one bedroom furnished apartment add on 70 euros per month for cleaning this also excludes utilities as well so at the end of the day you're going to be paying at least 2 000 euros per month for one bedroom furnished apartment in amsterdam this is amsterdam 2022 wow super expensive energy rating of c city center this is also when the year was constructed this is an old build and yeah so this one is under offer so most likely i won't get it and there's been probably multiple and multiple offers already but if this was new what i would do first thing in the morning plan a viewing call them schedule viewing so facebook is another great way to find housing but the thing about facebook is that anyone and everyone can join from students to working professionals to scammers beware of scammers they're everywhere on facebook but personally i was able to find two places to live via facebook so it is possible you just need to filter through the noise so if you go on facebook you can search for amsterdam apartments and you can find a million groups to join this one has 82 000 people and you'll see people posting for example this person has a profile picture of a half naked girl with no face showing and so for me this is a red flag that this could be a scammer i am not going to respond to this person you also find people looking to group up and to partner up with other people to look for housing and that's a better way instead of looking by yourself you'll have people like yvette advertising their place looking for roommates or she has two free rooms 600 euros and 750 really cheap amsterdam standards she has criteria as well a little bit about the house you'll see that there are real pictures and that a bunch of people have already responded so what i might do next to figure out if yvette is a real person or not is to click on her profile and this shows me that well she is listing other listings on this group so this tells me that either yvette is a scammer or she has her own business helping other people rent out their place and she gets a percentage of that fee the other thing is that a vet doesn't have a profile picture of her face and it's a boat so this is sometimes oftentimes a red flag as well but you'll see that 37 people liked it uh she also responded to some of these comments and if you go into her main profile i won't do that but i already did you can see that yvette is actually a real person so if i'm interested then i would send her a message hey i'm interested my name is david this is how old i am i'm a student i'm a working professional i have a contract etc my interests who i am and if she accepts you she'll ask you to come to a viewing and then from there it's an interview process one tip is never wire or send anyone any money before signing the contract or seeing the place oftentimes you'll see people complaining that they lost money they sent money to a scammer so never send money to anyone before signing anything at all the second thing is if you want to increase your chances of finding a place is to join these niche facebook groups or whatsapp groups for example i'm part of the americans in the netherlands facebook group and sometimes oftentimes when people leave they'll list out their apartment hey i'm leaving my apartment is free would anyone be interested so then you get access to an apartment listing before it goes live on funda or perarius i'm also part of a whatsapp group for basketball and sometimes people will also post listings there as well anyways facebook can be a great way you just have to take some time to do some filtering another great way to find housing is by joining one of these housing corporations like vested or mvgm these are these big housing corporations that buy up buildings they renovate them and they rent them out and their portfolio is usually pretty pretty big and broad and what you can do is go on the website like vesteta.com and search for say amsterdam right now there are 168 results and look through some of these viewings for example i did find one that i was interested in in the amstel tower this one has really nice view it's 1400 euros it is not furnished but there are floors so if i am interested then i will send in my application by registering and so if i register now and i want this one i will request a viewing and here is where i enter information about myself this is pretty standard this is house and salary information this contains confidential information like how much money i make how much savings i have so i won't click here but they'll also ask you for documents to prove that you are the person that you are and how much money you might make and so passport employer statement your three most recent pay slips this was back in early 2022 for me your bank account how much money you have in your savings accounts and any additional information that might boost up your application so once you have all this information in the system you go to step number four you declare you submit your application and if they like you if there's a room for you and you make enough money you fulfill the requirements then they'll schedule a viewing with you and from there it's an interview process you might get the place you might not i know several people that have gotten houses apartments through these housing corporations and they've had only good things to say about these companies be prepared be very prepared because time is of the essence what i found handy was to have a draft message whether this was email facebook message ready to go ready to send this included who i am my age where i worked how much money i made my interests what people have said about me as a roommate as a person i had this ready to go to send to people on facebook or to real estate agencies the other thing is to have all your documents prepared and ready to go documents include your three most recent pay slips a copy of your passport id a copy of your employer's contract reference letters from your landlords how much money you have in your bank account it's good to have all these documents prepared ahead of time because when it comes time to submit that offer you also need to submit these documents as well and you don't want to go fetch these documents because more than likely you have to submit your offer the same day as reviewing and when you do get the viewing it's always random it's a random day in the middle of the day so you need to be extremely flexible as well and once you go to that viewing you might be lining up with 20 30 people and you might have two minutes five minutes to see the apartment and you need to make a bid on the same day so you need to have all your documents prepared you need to know if this is a place that you want and you probably have to make a decision if it's a yes or no the same day or the day afterwards so it's important for you to understand what your priorities are your non-negotiables for myself when i submitted a bid and i got the yes actually the landlord called me back the day after to interview he said that you're the lucky two that made it off the list and so he had to interview me and this other person to figure out who would get the spot now not all landlords will go through that but just in case you do be prepared to go through an interview as well and if you do get the offer and you sign it and now it's time to sign the contract what's important is for you to carefully read through the contract what does it state what type of contract is it for example in the netherlands there are four types of contracts and you might not ever see one of these types but these are the four types model a is for an indefinite period of time you can stay there forever until you leave i've seen these but these are from my experience more rare because tenants get a lot of rights in this country and that's where model b comes into play model b is the one that i've seen the most and this is for a set period a minimum of say 12 months and a maximum of 24 months two years because after these two years it's by law that you have to give these tenants rights and tenants get a lot of rights in this country it's really hard to kick someone out if they have tenant rights for example in my case i lived in a single canal in a dutch canal home and i wanted to extend my contract after two years i was a good tenant i paid on time and the landlord also apologized to me because he did not want to extend my contract he was afraid of giving tenants rights because he had a bad experience in the past so i had to look for a new apartment model c is a contract that in my opinion my experience it's less common this is where it's temporary and the landlord plans to move back model d it's also quite uncommon from my experience it's a temporary contract but all in all it's important for you to read through the contract to figure out what you're getting yourself into and lastly i hope you have found a place or you will find a place but here are some last minute tricks tips advice that i can think of the first one is that if you're looking online on facebook be cautious of scammers and never wire or send your money to anyone online if you've never met the person if you haven't seen the place if you haven't signed the contract beware of scammers if you're using funna or perarius check every weekday early in the morning around 9 10 this is also when asians start their day you want to be the one to call them first thing in the morning schedule a viewing preparation preparation preparation it's important to prepare a draft message of who you are your situation your contract how much money you make pets notepads so that you have this ready to go to send to people on facebook or to real estate agents also be prepared with the list of documents that you need to send if you get the offer it's important to have this prepared so when it comes time you don't waste any time at all read the contract make sure what you're getting into figure out what type of contract is it is it a set amount is it a set period is it indefinite figure that out also understand what's included in the contract make sure that you can register also sometimes you'll see in the contract that the landlord wants to increase rent by a set percentage but actually did you know that there is a maximum limit to which the landlord can increase the rent and this is set by law so look into that as well take pictures videos of the apartment at the very beginning because you just never know and lastly go with your gut go with what feels right if you go into a viewing and you meet someone your potential roommate or you go into a viewing and the place just doesn't feel right then go with your gut i know it's hard to find a place and you really can't compromise but at the end of the day your gut is always right from my experience anyways that was it i hope that was helpful i was a bit stressed thinking back to the house hunting experience it does take a lot of time but i hope these tips tricks was somewhat helpful in helping you find a new place to live in amsterdam because i truly think this is one of the most fascinating cities in the world one of the best cities to live in the world and i hope that you get a chance to experience that anyways best of luck to you best of luck to you and finding a place to live in amsterdam take care

Channel: David Wen

Views: 75,451

Keywords: moving to amsterdam, living in amsterdam, amsterdam vlog, how to find an apartment in amsterdam, amsterdam expats, netherlands, how to move to europe, life in the netherlands, life in amsterdam, finding a place to live in amsterdam, apartment hunting, apartment hunt, makeit, amsterdam apartments, apartment hunting in amsterdam, student housing, expats amsterdam, moving to netherlands, amsterdam apartment tour

Id: ISgCBqrH18s

Length: 28min 33sec (1713 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022