The challenges faced by expats looking for apartments in Amsterdam

Firstly, I’ll start with an admission. I am not nor ever have been a vegetarian. You may wonder to yourself, what on earth is the shallow man talking about? Why should I care whether or not he eats meat? Well, a wise person once taught me that just about everything in life is related to context. For example, imagine that a married man comes home late from work smelling of perfume and with lipstick on his collar. Quite rightly, his partner, and as we are talking about Amsterdam, his partner, which could be a man or a woman, could justifiably get medieval on his arse. (Pulp Fiction).

Now if we apply the correct context to this situation, the man explains to his partner that having worked hard and very late into the evening he decided to walk home instead of taking a taxi or a tram. While doing so he saw a woman walking along talking into a smartphone. At just that moment, a scooter with two guys came riding up along side her and the passenger snatched the smartphone from the woman’s hand. Being the have a go hero type, and having eaten too much red meat recently our hero jumped in front of the Scooter, causing the driver to brake suddenly and crash. Precisely as this happened the smartphone flew into the air which our hero was able to catch before it hit the ground. He then walked over to the woman and handed back her phone. She was so grateful that she hugged him and kissed him in gratitude. Context.

You’re even more confused now aren’t you? Admit it. What has this to do with being a vegetarian? Well as you know, i’m an expat and have been for many years. I’ve lived in Amsterdam now since dinosaurs walked the earth, televisions were black and white, when portable music meant carrying a radio cassette device so heavy that it took two men to carry one. So having lived here for so long I’ve become sick of the annual ritual slaughter of innocent lambs being conned by estate agents/Makelaars.

Many of you expat types (myself included) arrive in Amsterdam on a company secondment. Depending on how senior you are, your company gives you a very generous monthly allowance for an apartment. Your employer is also nice enough to put you up in a hotel and in the meantime arrange appointments with a Makelaar/Agent to help you choose an Apartment. So far so good, unfortunately this is where things take a dark turn. Like Lambs to the slaughter many of us (I’ll include myself here) stupidly or naively firstly fail to do any real research on the cost per square meter of apartments. Like sheep being led to the slaughter we end up taking the rather lax attitude that the company is paying so not to worry. The Agents can barely stop themselves from laughing at the prices Expats are willing to pay for a pokey hole in Amsterdam Zuid or the Jordan.  So here are some what I hope will be useful tips.

  1. The Makelaar/Agent is not your friend, they work on commission and it’s in their interest that you pay as much as possible
  2. Always negotiate the rent price. If they suggest 2000 Euro’s a month offer 1700
  3. Look at Funda, the largest property website in the Netherlands to get an idea of the real market rental price for property in the area you are going to visit. Funda