Many students are searching for a room again and often they end up with private landlords, from shrewd rogue landlords trying to squeeze every last euro to idealistic landladies charging a modest price.
On the private market rents have risen quite rapidly in recent years, but last year they went up by only 0.5 percent, according to letting site Kamernet.
Rotterdam room costs an average of 700 euros
Amsterdam remains by far the most expensive: 945 euros per month. That is 5 percent more than last year. Per square metre you pay 70 euros there. No other cities come close, although rents still hurt the wallet. The Hague and Haarlem are at 750 euros per month, Rotterdam and Utrecht at around 700 euros.
Rotterdam rooms are thus 2.5 percent more expensive than last year. The average price per square metre rose to 48.90 euros.
Supply decreased
You can live more cheaply in Wageningen (395 euros) and Enschede (351 euros). In Enschede you also get more space for your money: you pay less than 23 euros per square metre there.
There are two cities where it has become cheaper to rent a room. Eindhoven stands out: that is a decline of 7.4 percent. In Breda it was 2.7 percent. Two cities where the situation has remained roughly the same are Utrecht and Enschede.
Nationally the supply of private rooms has decreased slightly: 1.9 percent fewer than last year in the months April, May and June. This also varies greatly by city. In Haarlem the supply fell by a third, in Amsterdam and Breda by a quarter. Wageningen, Maastricht and Tilburg, by contrast, saw supply increase by about a quarter.
Distressing situations
In higher education more than half of all students have left the parental home: they are ‘living away from home’. This concerns over 400,000 students. The private sector accounts for 43 percent, the rest belongs to housing associations.
Problems on the housing market sometimes lead to distressing situations. Desperate students are sometimes scammed and pay thousands of euros in deposit for a room that turns out not to exist. But the sharply rising prices are also a consequence of the shortage of rooms: landlords seem to think there are ten others for every room.
Political attempts to rein in rents run into practical objections. Where, for example, will housing associations get the money to build new homes? And will homeowners perhaps prefer to sell their properties rather than rent them out because of all the well-intentioned rules?
An additional problem is that students do not always assert their rights quickly. Yet more is possible than they think. Last spring an international student won a court case because his furnished room of 10 square metres could not cost 1,500 euros per month. According to the judge he should have paid only 212 euros per month.
