The first question to ask any short-stay landlord in The Hague is not the price.
It is whether you may register at the address.
Everything else in your Dutch life hangs off that answer, and a surprising number of furnished flats marketed to internationals cannot give it.
Why registration decides which places are usable
If you will be in the Netherlands for more than four months out of any six, you must register as a resident with the gemeente within five days of arriving.
Register and you get a BSN, and with the BSN comes a bank account, health insurance, a payroll that works and a DigiD.
Staying less than four months, you register instead as a non-resident in the RNI, which gives you a BSN but not a Dutch address.
So the first place you live is not merely somewhere to sleep.
It is the address the rest of the paperwork is built on.
A landlord who says registration is not possible is telling you the property is not licensed for residence, or that they do not want the tenancy on any official record.
Either way it is the wrong first flat.
What The Hague allows as short stay
The city is restrictive and its reasoning is public: homes are scarce, so turning one into lodgings is discouraged.
Renting out a dwelling to people staying briefly needs an onttrekkingsvergunning, a permit to withdraw the property from the housing stock.
It costs €575.35 and you pay whether or not it is granted, and the gemeente says outright that it usually refuses.
Legal short stay therefore tends to be in buildings that were never homes.
No permit is needed where the building’s official function is already logies, its last recorded use was not residential, the owner does not live there, the tenants do not register at the address, and tourist tax is paid.
Read that list again: the tenants do not register at the address.
Properly licensed short stay in The Hague is, by design, for people who are not moving here.
The practical consequence is a gap.
Aparthotels and serviced flats are fine for a fortnight while you look.
They are the wrong place to be in month three, when the IND, your employer and a health insurer all want an address that exists in the BRP.
Rooms and shared houses
Renting a room is often the fastest way into a registerable address, and the rules here are specific.
Up to two people at one address needs no permit at all.
Three or more requires the landlord to hold an omzettingsvergunning to convert the dwelling into shared housing, with a maximum of eight occupants and at least 18 square metres of usable floor space per tenant, counting private and shared areas together.
Permits are only granted in neighbourhoods scoring good or excellent on the Leefbaarometer, and as of 1 April 2026 that is 28 neighbourhoods.
No more than 10% of a district’s housing stock may be converted, and no more than a third of any building or terrace.
The application is another €575.35 and takes eight weeks, extendable once by six.
None of this is your paperwork to file.
It is worth knowing because an unlicensed shared house is a house the Pandbrigade can act against, and tenants of an illegal conversion are the ones who end up moving at short notice.
Temporary contracts are no longer the norm
Since 1 July 2024 an open-ended contract is the default and fixed-term lettings are the exception, capped at two years where they are allowed.
The exceptions that survive are the Leegstandswet, tussenhuur, the diplomatenclausule, target-group contracts, hospitaverhuur where the owner lives in the property, and uses that are short-term by their nature.
Two of those are common in this city.
Tussenhuur covers a flat let out while the owner is temporarily elsewhere.
The diplomatenclausule lets an owner posted abroad reclaim their own house on return.
Both are real and both are abused as labels, so ask who is coming back and when, and get the answer in the contract.
The protections do not thin out because the let is short.
The deposit is still capped at two months’ bare rent, the contract still has to be in writing, and the landlord still owes you the full written information about your rights and the city’s reporting point.
A furnished three-month let is a tenancy, not a hotel booking.
A first three months that works
Treat the first place as a base, not a home.
Take something small, central and short, accept that you will pay above the odds per square metre for the flexibility, and put the energy into the second move rather than the first.
Viewing flats from inside the city beats viewing them from another country, and landlords in The Hague are still wary of tenants who have never been seen.
Get the appointments booked before you arrive.
The Hague International Centre at Spui 70, inside the city hall atrium, exists for exactly this population and is open Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to 17:00, on +31 70 353 50 43 or at internationalcentre@denhaag.nl.
It handles highly skilled migrants, EU workers, family migrants, students, diplomats and the employers bringing them in, and it coordinates with the IND rather than leaving you to work out which counter you need.
Watch the money.
Two months’ deposit plus a month up front on a short-stay flat, then the same again when you find a permanent one, is a large amount of cash tied up in the same quarter.
Budget for paying two deposits before the first one comes back, since the legal deadline for its return is 14 days after the tenancy ends and not before.
Then use the time.
Work out which part of the city actually suits you, learn how the rental market splits between regulated and free sector, and check whether the homes you are looking at need a huisvestingsvergunning.
Three months is enough to stop being the person who takes whatever is offered.
Two more practicalities.
Register the moment you have a real address, because the five-day clock is a legal deadline and not a suggestion.
And if you are arriving with a container rather than a suitcase, book storage in The Hague before you arrive, because paying for a short-stay flat big enough to hold your furniture is the expensive way to solve that problem.
Some employers cover a relocation service in The Hague; if yours does, use it for the first address and keep your own judgement for the second.
Sources
- Rijksoverheid, wanneer in de BRP inschrijven: the four-month test and the five-day deadline, and the RNI for shorter stays
- Gemeente Den Haag, uw pand tijdelijk verhuren: the short-stay conditions, the logies function, and that tenants may not register at the address
- Gemeente Den Haag, vergunning aanvragen om woning aan woonruimtebestand te onttrekken: the €575.35 fee and that the permit is usually refused
- Gemeente Den Haag, kamerbewoning: the two-person threshold, the eight-occupant maximum, 18 m² per tenant, the Leefbaarometer condition and 28 qualifying neighbourhoods as of 1 April 2026
- Rijksoverheid, Wet vaste huurcontracten vanaf 1 juli 2024 and the surviving exceptions
- Rijksoverheid, woning huren waarborgsom: the two-month cap and the 14-day return
- The Hague International Centre: address, opening hours, phone and email
[…] That calculation is part of short-stay and temporary housing. […]