Majority of student rooms priced well over the legal limit

The majority of student rooms on the Netherlands’ biggest rental platform, Kamernet, are being advertised at prices well over the legal limit – an average of €239 a month, and more than €400 in Amsterdam – investigative outlet Argos has found. Local councils are not intervening and say they have no power to do so.

Argos compared rent on 2,637 ads against the maximum each room is legally allowed to charge. Six in ten rooms were priced above the legal maximum over July and August, with landlords of overpriced rooms asking an average of €239 a month more than the rules permit.

In some cities, like Amsterdam, where the average room costs nearly €1,000 a month, 97% of the rooms Argos sampled were above the cap, by an average of €421 a month. In Utrecht the figure was 72%.

Utrecht and Nijmegen issued no fines and lowered no rents last year, while Rotterdam and The Hague were the exceptions, acting far more often.

Amsterdam council reaction
Since the Affordable Rent Act 2025 was introduced, which caps prices by a points system based on a room’s size and features, councils have been required to intervene – something the investigation found is not being done in many cities.

A spokesperson for Amsterdam council housing executive Zita Pels told DutchNews that the council cannot take legal action on advertising alone – an illegal rent must already be in force before it can do something. So students must first get into an illegally high rental contract before they can be helped.

The spokesperson also said the council “strongly opposes” the way people “shamelessly” exploit the housing crisis in Amsterdam, but that it unfortunately cannot do more about the advertising problem.

They also said the council itself advertises on rental platforms, attends student events, and visits tenants at home, because many people are reluctant to report overcharging for fear of losing their room.

In March, Amsterdam council also imposed a €45,000 penalty on the manager of a student complex in Amsterdam’s Zuidoost district for a range of violations, the council highlighted, including excessive rents. The landlord can still object.

There is a tenant advice foundation called !Woon that the council subsidises. Its 2025 report records more than 19,000 contacts about rent or service charges and 575 reports of serious landlord misconduct, and lists cases it has won, including 21 rulings against a single landlord, one of which cut a rent from €1,076 to €280.

The council’s own enforcement report to councillors, published in May, shows direct action on rents is a small part of the picture. Of 726 complaints under the new rental laws in 2025, 96 concerned rent levels; 167 were passed to !Woon and 102 fell outside the rules. The bulk of the council’s 1,836 enforcement outcomes last year involved empty or misused homes, not overcharging.