Rentbusters

You all know the drill at this point.

Slim pickings this week. Only found 130 or so ads,

Sheets are a few days old. They have been stewing on my desktop for days. I blame the heat....darn you september heatwave

You all know the drill.

The Huurcommissie writes a book that anyone who wants to bust their apartment should keep as a reference.

The book is normally published in Dutch but Shane made English copies.

The guidelines will tell you things like:

*How to determine if your balcony counts as outdoor space. (page 38 of book a)

When the Huurcommissie considers your room contract temporary or permanent (Page 6 of book b)

If the old renovated apartment you live in qualifies for COROP (page 42 of book a)

What to do if your apartment is not legally split and has no WOZ (page 43 of book a)

How to know if the missing plaster on your wall counts as a defect (page 31 of book c)

Fulfil your destiny and become a true rent busting master of the Huurcommissie by studying these books*

These are the links to the books.

a) Huurcommissie book on how to bust Independent living spaces https://pdfhost.io/v/zUrJCfSWa_Huurcommissie_policy_book_on_busting_independent_living_spaces_2023

b) Huurcommissie guidelines on how to bust rooms https://pdfhost.io/v/ACPL1PI3B_Beleidsboek_Waarderingsstelsel_onzelfstandige_woonruimte

c) Huurcommissie book on how to judge defects. https://pdfhost.io/v/0U7gCfpb5_Huurcommissie_policy_book_on_how_to_judge_defects_2023

Shane still has to translate the Service costs book but he ran out of deepl.com credits to translate pdfs to english. !

The exiled edition: Cannot be posted directly onto the subreddit without admin access. The housingbotNL updates more frequently but for those of you who miss the original format, enjoy!

Link to sheets here https://1drv.ms/x/s!AhS9UiEeuDTxgoIEP2va6-yLumgf7w?e=Dscr2l

Sorry for the delay. This thing with the ban fucked up my weekend. Funda hotsheets dated from August 24. Feel free to repost this on Reddit. You cannot post the onedrive link there as Reddit requires that the mod approves links to onedrive on the subreddit. Links to feddit are allowed though

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The Huurcommissie has books/guidelines on what a constitutes a defect. Every year this book is updated and the changes are outlined. The books are always published only in Dutch. This translated copy should make it more accessible to the non-dutch renters who want to know more about what classification their defects are. Class A defects can get up to an 80% temp reduction on the rent price Class B defects can get up to an 70% temp reduction on the rent price Class C defects can get up to an 60% temp reduction on the rent price

Hi guys To those of you are walking in both worlds (feddit and reddit), I wanted to ask if you know ways to get someone nominated to a mod position on my now modless subreddit. From what I read, the subreddit needs to be modless for 30 days before someone can take it over. Does anyone have experience with this?

Probably because of the big cookie-banner (which is not allowed in the Netherlands with current privacy laws). If you use an ad blocker you just see a big beige screen.

Please just don't track users, anonymise your analytics. The Dutch AP has a PDF guide on that.

Amsterdam: ViaDaan offering this 39sqm + balcony MIGHT come in at 726 euro. The place is missing an EL (God knows what the Landlord will pay to get this place above the libgrens). Assumes a renovation cost of 50,000 euro + 4 lux points. Asking price is 2750 incl. Viewing 31st Aug at 10am

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So this is an article I put up on the r/rentbusters about Marcel van Hooijdonk: a notorious slum landlord based in Breda Marcel owns many properties in NL according to Kadaster and has built a massive rental empire in Utrecht and Breda of about 320 buildings and apartments. A complete list can be found here

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AhS9UiEeuDTxgoIAwQHecvMJBUoOoQ?e=rhimIg

Unfortunately Marcel has not behaved as a good landlord should. He rents to many students through a series of companies with dubious/no kvk registration including VanderHuizen and University Housing. If you are a student and you live in Utrecht, you are likely to come across some of his housing

MvH has been accused of intimidating, threatening and scamming tenants since 2015.

MvH goes to extreme lengths to hide his face from the media. When this was posted to the main subreddit, Reddit deleted it very fast and banned me from the website, permanently. It might be that Reddit was overzealous with its admin staff, so it is possibly unrelated to MvH.

This is Marcel Van Hooijdonk !

MvH has refined the art of scamming tenants: there are 4 ways that his companies separate tenants from their money 1: Overcharging on the basic rent Rent prices in NL are regulated and many landlords overcharge on the basic rent. VdH are one of them. If you are overcharged, you can appeal to the Huurcommissie to get your rent price lowered.

2: Exorbitant service costs. VdH will often not give you a service cost breakdown in July. In some of their rented accommodation they charge 30 euro (ish) per month for internet costs while having only one internet connection to service an entire floor. By law, Landlords are prohibited from profiting from service costs and while they can charge admin fees, these are limited.

3: VdH charge agency fees to any tenant who moves into one of their apartments. Contract signing costs are seen as part of the expense of doing business and should either be proportional to the service provided or non-existent.

4: Furniture rentals: This one is exclusive to Utrecht as many of the agencies there do it. VdH will present you with a separate contract for leasing the furniture to you for an outrageous price (300-600 euro). The furniture itself is IKEA junk but they can easily make 18000 euro over a 5 year lifespan of the furniture.

For those of you who are looking in utrecht or Breda, it would be best to avoid a MvH house. Only those of you who enjoy busting as a sport should risk it. At best you will have legal battle on your hands. At worst, MvH or his goons will kick your door at random moments to intimidate you, cut your electricity and smear shit on your door handle (all these have happened)

For those of you who want to find out more about MvH, check out Tim Hofman's youtube videos on him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUq2IBVuewM

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Hi All!

My landlord has been hinting that she wants to start renovations to her shop below our apartment after bouwvak. I've seen her with an architect reviewing plans, so I suspect that in another 6 months renovations will start.

She has said that her daughter wants her to move into our apartment during construction. But I do wonder if there is any legal standing to make a decision like that.

We are on a permanent contract and I don't believe that the renovation would be an urgent one which could force us out as I understand.

What are the possibilities how my landlord to cancel our contract?

I've been working for a while on a UserScript for adding some useful info onto housing listings in NL.

Thus far I've added the energy label from eponline to pararius + funda.

I'm still working on the following few goals:

1. Add karmernet
2. Add better parsing for addresses, and better matching said addresses on eponline (janky addresses cause issues, and I haven't yet implemented going to page 2, 3, etc of eponline when possible)
3. Add in woz value integration
4. Add in points calculator (maybe with some interactive buttons or something on the page to select bathroom/kitchen quality, I dunno)
5. Put the results onto the listing page not just the search pages.
6. Figure why it doesn't work nicely on kiwi browser (mobile browser)

Feel free to install a UserScript extension manager and install it yourself. I'm using tampermonkey for dev, but it should work in greasemonkey, tampermonkey, and violentmonkey.

If you find an address that it doesn't manage to enrich, please drop a comment or a bug report with the address, or any other issues you bump into

Basically in the title. I moved out with effect on 17/7/2023 after returning the keys to the landlord. She is refusing the refund of my deposit as she stated that the mattress has a stain under the matress protector. I only discovered of the stain when I moved in and as such retained the protector but didn't communicate this as I thought she was aware of this. Do I have any recourse if she refuses repaying my deposit? Also you can buy a whole bed from ikea for way less than the deposit due, should such claw backs contain a element of reasonability.

Update 24/7/23: Thanks for all the assistance. The landlord refunded my deposit this afternoon in full.

I finally fixed the Funda scraper so I should have those ads tomorrow.

The hotsheets for Kamernet are a list of about 500 or more ads published from the last week on Kamernet. Where applicable, the onzelfstandige was applied to the data that the ad contained to give an estimate of the max legal rent price. This can sometimes differ massively from the asking rent price. In these cases, the landlord is likely asking over the limit. Dont avoid these properties like every does: GO FOR THEM.

Once you sign the contract, you can apply to the Huurcommissie to get the rent price reduced by hundreds of euro. This process is relatively simple but takes a few months. In the meantime you pay your rent but if the calculation is correct, you will get anything you over paid back.

Some of the estimates are less than ideal with their accuracy(Row is colored orange): Estimates of apartments with co-signed tenants ARE NOT accurate as these are independent contracts and require a different calculator to work out the rent price. I cannot do this accurately without the house number which kamernet never discloses.

TIPS:

Places belonging to Private owners/real estate agents (Column R) are a more reliable busting fodder as they are unlikely to be using the property themselves. No one should bust a place belonging to their roommate for obvious reasons

Use the filter button in Row 4 to get the results you want

This is a communal shared file so someone else might have used the filter before you. If you see a few results, likely the previous user forgot to reset the filter.

Message every ad, even the ads that are too pricey. Kamernet ads have a very high response rate: 50 - 250 applicants per room. This is a numbers game. Worry about getting a viewing before knowing if the place is 100% bustable.

Kamernet is a paid service. Consider banding together to share an account with someone who isnt looking in the same city as you.

Hello,

I have recently signed a Dependent Temporary Agreement for a Max Duration of 24 months.

However, the house is still in a state of being under construction i.e. no kitchen installed, half finished walls (awaiting plaster/paint), bathroom does not have a working extractor fan so a tad unhygienic.

All work is allegedly to be completed soon, but I was expecting this done by the day I received the keys property; but it wasn't done and I was in a bind so had to accept it as it was on the promise work would be completed within one week.

It has now been over a week; but still nothing has been changed.

I am paying €650 and the calculator gives a Points based score of €250. So I intend in time to go to HC, but I am wondering if I can also apply for a reduction based on defects?

Of course I need to be careful as the landlord also lives here (but it is very much like a slum rn). How do I prove there are, is pictures and videos enough? Should I send him a written message?

Also to complicate things, must I apply for HC within 6 months? Or can I live here for longer then bring proceedings afterwards. The HC website indicates there is nuance to temporary rentals but I can't find a good explanation on their website.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

I have posted a list of 600 ads from Kamernet that were scraped this week

They have been colour-coded according to how sure one can be about the estimated max legal rent price. Unfortunately the people who post these ads leave out some essential information necessary to do a reasonably accurate calculation: the rows of these will be highlighted in whitish-yellow.

The rows that are light green have all the necessary information to do the calculation.

Where the difference between asking price and the max legal rent price or the price/sqm is very large/medium/small these columns will highlighted in red, yellow,green and blue depending on severity.

If you see many unknowns in terms of number of roommates, bathroom, kitchen, total space etc, take the calculation with a pinch of salt as I made major assumptions in these cases.

Please tell me if there are any bugs/outrageous values.

If I send a letter to my landlord asking for my deposit back since it has been a month since our contract ended, is it relevant to mention that we have not settled the costs for utilities. I sent him an instant message about it the day after the last day of our contract, and I constantly ask for updates, and I get a weekly response that “it is taking longer than they expected”. Is it my responsibility and I won’t get my deposit back until they handle it?