Ask a Dutch landlord for four months’ deposit and they will tell you the market is tight and you can take it or leave it.
They are wrong in law.
Since 1 July 2023 the deposit on any new tenancy is capped at two months’ kale huur, the bare rent with service charges stripped out.
Contracts signed before that date are capped at three.
That single number is the most useful thing a tenant here can know, because a landlord asking for more has already told you how they intend to behave about everything else.
Getting the deposit back
The deadline is 14 days after the tenancy ends.
If the landlord wants to deduct something, they get 30 days instead, and they must send you an itemised breakdown of what they took and why.
Only four things can come out of it: unpaid rent, unpaid service costs, damage you caused, and the energy performance fee.
Administration costs, cleaning charges invented on the day and vague deductions for wear cannot.
If the money does not arrive, send a written demand.
Het Juridisch Loket publishes free model letters for exactly this, and the next step after that is the court.
Reporting an excessive deposit to the gemeente gets the landlord fined but does not get your money back.
Those are separate tracks, and if the sum is large enough to matter you need both.
What must be in writing
A written tenancy agreement has been compulsory since 1 July 2023.
So has an information duty, and the list is longer than most tenants realise.
Your landlord must tell you in writing what the property may be used for, when they may enter it and when they may not, which type of contract you have and what rent protection comes with it, how repairs are reported and who pays for what, whether a dispute goes to the Huurcommissie or to court, the deposit amount and how and when it comes back, and a breakdown of the service costs.
Since 1 January 2024 they must also give you the contact details of the gemeente’s reporting point for landlords.
A landlord who has not handed you that is already in breach, and it is a quick test of who you are dealing with before you sign anything.
The fee you do not pay
Where an agent is working for the landlord, they may not charge the tenant a placement fee as well.
Being paid by both sides of the same deal is banned.
It still happens under names like administration costs, contract costs or key handover fee, and the answer is the same: an agent hired by the owner is paid by the owner.
The same law bans discrimination in selection and intimidation once you are in.
Landlords must use a transparent, non-discriminatory selection procedure and tell rejected applicants why in writing.
Threatening to end the contract or cut off the utilities to make you do something is specifically prohibited.
How long your contract lasts
Since 1 July 2024 a permanent contract is the default again.
Open-ended tenancy is the norm and fixed-term contracts are the exception, capped at two years where they are allowed at all.
The surviving exceptions are narrow: the Leegstandswet, tussenhuur, the diplomatenclausule, target-group contracts such as student housing, hospitaverhuur where the landlord lives in the property, and use that is short-term by its nature.
The Hague being what it is, the diplomatenclausule turns up here more than almost anywhere else.
It lets an owner posted abroad return to their own house.
It is legitimate, and it is also the label that gets slapped on ordinary lettings by landlords who would rather not give anyone security.
If your contract carries one, ask which named person is coming back and when.
Rent rises have a ceiling
The maximum increases for 2026 are set nationally.
Social housing may rise by 4.1% from 1 July 2026.
Mid-market homes may rise by 6.1% from 1 January 2026, higher than the free sector because the formula follows collective wage growth.
Free-sector rents may rise by 4.4%, being the lower of inflation and wage growth plus one percentage point.
A rise above the ceiling is simply not owed.
It is not a negotiation.
The two bodies that settle it
The Huurcommissie is the national rent tribunal and its rulings bind both sides.
A tenant pays €25 to start a case and gets it back if the ruling goes their way; tenants on minimum or benefit-level incomes can apply for exemption and pay nothing.
A landlord pays €500, and a landlord who keeps losing pays €700, then €1,400, then €1,750 for further cases within four calendar years.
The legal maximum for a decision is 26 weeks.
Before that, and free, there is the city’s own Huurteam.
It runs the points calculation on your home and tells you what the maximum legal rent is.
You qualify if you are registered in The Hague and rent from a private landlord.
New tenants can use it in their first six months whatever the rent; after six months it applies to bare rents below €932.93, with separate terms for temporary contracts.
The gemeente also takes reports of excessive rent for social and mid-market homes, meaning anything scoring up to 186 points, with rents up to €932.93 or €1,228.07 respectively.
It can force the landlord to lower the rent and issue a warning or a fine.
What it cannot do is recover what you already overpaid.
That goes through the Huurcommissie or Het Juridisch Loket.
Free-sector rents go straight to the Huurcommissie and not to the city.
What happens to landlords who ignore all this
The Hague’s Pandbrigade inspects.
Breaches draw a warning or a fine of up to €22,500, rising to €90,000 for repeat offenders, and the city publishes the names of landlords it has sanctioned.
Enforcement sweeps in Laak, Centrum and around the Zuiderpark are reported by the city itself, so this is not a dormant power.
If your landlord is a housing corporation rather than a private owner, the complaint goes to the corporation first, not to the meldpunt.
Doing it in the right order
Run the rent through the points check before you sign, not after, and read how the two halves of the rental market work so you know which one you are in.
Check whether the home needs a huisvestingsvergunning, because the fine for living somewhere without one falls on you.
Confirm you can register at the address, since a landlord who refuses that is hiding something.
Photograph every room on the day you move in and again on the day you leave, with the meter readings, and keep the images.
Deposit disputes are won on evidence and lost on memory.
Nothing in the law about utilities and service charges helps you if you cannot prove what the flat looked like when you got it.
If the numbers already look wrong and the landlord will not move, the free routes come before the paid ones: the Huurteam, then the meldpunt, then the Huurcommissie at €25, and only then a lawyer in The Hague.
Most tenants who find out they have been overpaying find out years too late, and the first three of those steps cost nothing but an afternoon.
If you are still house-hunting, the same rules make it easy to spot a rental scam before you pay anybody.
Sources
- Rijksoverheid, woning huren waarborgsom: the two-month cap, the 14 and 30 day deadlines, and the four permitted deductions
- Rijksoverheid, regels voor verhuurders en verhuurbemiddelaars: the written contract, the information duty, the meldpunt details from 1 January 2024, and the bans on discrimination and intimidation
- Gemeente Den Haag, Wet goed verhuurderschap: the seven rules, the Pandbrigade, and fines up to €22,500 and €90,000
- Rijksoverheid, Wet vaste huurcontracten vanaf 1 juli 2024, and the list of surviving exceptions
- Rijksoverheid, maximale huurverhoging 2026: 4.1%, 6.1% and 4.4%
- Huurcommissie, wat kost een procedure: €25 for tenants, €500 for landlords, the escalating fees, and the exemption on low income
- Gemeente Den Haag, advies van het Huurteam aanvragen, and te hoge huur melden
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