The classic Dutch rental scam has no drama in it.
A good flat at a slightly low price, a friendly owner who is abroad for work, a plausible contract by email, and a request for the deposit and first month before the keys can be couriered over.
The money goes, the keys never come, and the listing reappears the next week with different photographs.
It works because the market does the persuading.
When you have lost four flats in a fortnight, a cheap one that is still available feels like luck rather than a warning.
The four signs, in the order they usually appear
The Fraudehelpdesk, the national fraud reporting body, lists what to watch for and none of it is subtle.
The rent is low for the size and the location.
All contact is online and there is no viewing.
The landlord is conveniently out of the country.
Payment is requested to a foreign bank account.
Their recommended checks take about ten minutes.
Search the landlord’s name together with words like klacht or oplichting.
Put the address into Street View and confirm the building exists and looks like the photographs.
Run the photographs through Google Images or Yandex: if the same kitchen appears on four listings in three cities, you have found a stock set of stolen pictures.
One rule sits above all of them.
Do not pay before you have stood inside the property.
If you cannot view it without paying first, treat the offer as fake, because the whole business model depends on getting money from someone who has never been through the door.
Dutch law gives you a lie detector
Several rules that exist to protect tenants also work as a test of whether you are talking to a real landlord, because a genuine one knows them and a scammer usually does not.
The deposit is capped at two months’ bare rent on any contract from 1 July 2023.
A demand for three or four months is either fraud or a landlord who breaks the law where it suits them.
There must be a written contract.
The landlord owes you written information covering the deposit, the service costs, the repair rules and the contact details of the gemeente’s reporting point for landlords, and that last one has been compulsory since 1 January 2024.
An agent acting for the landlord may not also charge you a placement fee.
It reappears as administration costs, contract costs or a key fee, and it is banned however it is labelled.
Ask a supposed agent which of the two of you is paying them, and watch what happens.
The registration question
Ask whether you may register at the address in the BRP.
Get the answer in writing.
A landlord who says no is not protecting your privacy.
Either the property is not permitted for residence, or they want the tenancy invisible to the tax office and the city.
For you the consequence is immediate: without registration there is no BSN, without a BSN there is no bank account, no health insurance and no functioning payroll.
That single question filters out a whole category of bad addresses before you have paid anything, which is why registering at the gemeente should be part of the viewing conversation rather than an afterthought.
The same applies to the huisvestingsvergunning.
Where the home needs one, the penalty for living there without it falls on the tenant, not on the person who let it to you.
The social housing version
Social rentals in the Haaglanden region are allocated through Woonnet Haaglanden on registration and waiting time.
Nobody sells a place on that list.
Haag Wonen, one of the city’s own corporations, has had to warn its applicants publicly about people offering social flats for a fee, which tells you how often it is tried on newcomers who do not yet know how the system works.
Anyone offering to move you up the queue, to rent you a corporation flat privately, or to arrange an urgentieverklaring for money, is selling something they do not have.
The legal-looking one that costs more
Not every way of losing money involves a criminal.
Rent above the legal maximum for the home’s points score is charged constantly, on real flats, by real landlords, with real contracts and real keys.
It does not feel like a scam because everything about it looks normal, and it costs far more over two years than a stolen deposit.
The Hague runs a free Huurteam that does the points calculation for you and tells you what the maximum rent should be.
New tenants can use it in their first six months whatever the rent, and after that it covers bare rents below €932.93.
Since 1 January 2025 the city also takes reports of excessive rent for social and mid-market homes, up to 186 points and rents of €932.93 or €1,228.07 respectively.
It can force the landlord to reduce the rent and fine them, although recovering what you already paid runs through the Huurcommissie, where a tenant’s case costs €25 and is refunded if you win.
Reporting, and what the city can actually do
For behaviour rather than price, The Hague runs a meldpunt for ongewenst verhuurgedrag.
Discrimination, intimidation, excessive deposits and unlawful service charges all belong there.
The Pandbrigade inspects, and fines run to €22,500, rising to €90,000 for repeat offenders, with the city publishing the names of landlords it has sanctioned.
Its enforcement sweeps in Laak, Centrum and around the Zuiderpark are reported on its own press pages.
If you rent from a housing corporation, complain to the corporation first.
The meldpunt is for private landlords.
If money has already gone, do three things in order.
Report it to the police and keep every email, message and screenshot of the advertisement, because the listing will be deleted within days.
Contact the Fraudehelpdesk on 088-7867372.
And for a deposit a real landlord is refusing to return, use Het Juridisch Loket’s free model letters before paying a lawyer in The Hague to write the same thing.
The short version
View before you pay.
Never transfer to an account outside the Netherlands.
Refuse any deposit above two months.
Insist on a written contract before money moves.
Ask about registration and get the answer in writing.
And know what a tenant can insist on before you need it, because the pressure to skip a step is highest in exactly the week you are most likely to be caught.
If you are house-hunting from abroad, a short-stay place for the first weeks costs more per month and removes the one condition scammers depend on.
Seeing the flat is not a formality.
It is the whole defence.
Reputable estate agents in The Hague will not ask for anything before a viewing either, which is a useful benchmark for judging the ones who do.
Sources
- Fraudehelpdesk, campaign page on rental fraud: the warning signs, the recommended checks, and the phone number 088-7867372
- Rijksoverheid, woning huren waarborgsom and regels voor verhuurders en verhuurbemiddelaars: the two-month deposit cap, the written contract, the information duty and the ban on charging tenants a placement fee
- Gemeente Den Haag, Wet goed verhuurderschap and ongewenst gedrag van verhuurders melden: the meldpunt, the Pandbrigade, and fines up to €22,500 and €90,000
- Gemeente Den Haag, te hoge huur melden: reporting since 1 January 2025, the 186-point limit and the €932.93 and €1,228.07 thresholds
- Gemeente Den Haag, advies van het Huurteam aanvragen
- Huurcommissie, wat kost een procedure: €25 for tenants, refunded on a successful case
- Haag Wonen, warning to applicants that social rentals go only through Woonnet Haaglanden
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