Article contributed by https://www.stekkies.com/en/blog/how-to-find-a-house-in-amsterdam/
Where to Find a House in Amsterdam
Even though you probably won’t list it on your CV, searching for a house can feel like a full time job. It takes hours of frantically refreshing rental websites, calling agents and accumulates to a feeling of never finding anything suitable. To make matters worse, if you skip searching for one day, it feels like you’ve missed a million houses right away. As we are on our way to index all real estate offices in Amsterdam, we have a great view on the market and are excited to share some of our tips on how to make finding a house a little less stressful.
The one thing most people looking for houses have in common is that they only search on large rental listing websites. Those websites are aggregations of various real estate offices and provide a good overview of all houses available. For a real estate office to post rental listings on these websites cost money, up to €150 per listing, which is why they often don’t post all their listings on these larger websites. Since there’s more than enough potential tenants for real estate offices to choose from, why spend money on advertising it on a large platform?
What’s the problem
We see that on average 1500 houses are posted every week in Amsterdam. However, real estate offices post only on average 43% of their offering on large platforms. This means you miss out on the majority of the offering from real estate offices by only looking on large platforms! Another thing to carefully consider when using large platforms is that the demand for those rental listings is a lot higher than for the rental listings that are not posted on the platform. There’s so many people viewing them, while nearly no one views the apartments that are only listed on the real estate office’s website. After all, who checks the individual websites of real estate offices EVERY day? (Hint: We do!)
Pen and paper ready!
So what are the best ways to find a rental apartment in Amsterdam?
Finding an apartment is difficult for sure, but there are definitely some ways you can increase your chances of finding a suitable one. First and foremost is that you will have to be active in your search. Make the call to the real estate agent and don’t wait too long before you do so. Even if the house might not be perfect, it will get you used to the entire process of applying for houses and you’ll be ready to take action if the perfect house does appear.
Keep an eye on individual real estate offices. Offices generally offer houses in a specific market, so it’s possible you’ll naturally like the houses one office offers better than the houses another office does. There’s two options if you’ve found an office you like. You can either place a search at the office. In this case they will ask you for your preferences and they’ll call you when they’ve found a house that matches your preferences. You’ll be one of the first to know, but do keep in mind that they will charge a fee if they find something for you. This fee will usually be one month worth of rent, so be sure you’re willing to pay this amount. Another option is to regularly (daily if not more often!) check their website. This is time-consuming but it will make sure you are among the first to react to new rental listings. If you’re checking multiple websites every day this becomes infeasible, which is why at Stekkies we index every office in Amsterdam so you are always up to date about the newest offering. See here how it works.
Be consistent. Finding an apartment can take a long time, especially if your budget is limited. If you’re curious whether your budget is suitable be sure to read our blog post about average rental prices per neighbourhood. Make it a habit of daily checking houses and calling real estate offices to make sure you have the best chance of getting one. As with anything really, it’s dogged that does it (perseverance always wins). Don’t be discouraged if you don’t find something within a week. On average it takes up to 1,5 month to find something suitable. Good luck!
