A court in Amsterdam has reduced the room rent for a foreign student from €1,500 a month to less than €300 and said the fake temporary contract is permanent.

According to the verdict published last week, the student had been renting a room of just ten square metres in a shared flat and had been asked to sign a contract via an internet site which has “no permit for short stay rentals”.

A new affordable rent law – introduced last July and now up to municipalities to enforce – means stricter rental price controls, a ban on new temporary contracts as a rule of thumb, and fines of up to €87,000 for non-compliant landlords in the Netherlands.

The court verdict in Amsterdam made it clear that offering extra services such as cleaning or a shuttle pick up from Schiphol Airport does not mean that a room is a “short stay” rather than a normal rental.

Like every other rental, it ruled, the landlord may not make a profit from service charges as part of an “all-in” price, the contract is indefinite and the “reasonable” rent according to the points in this case was €178.94 a month, plus factual service charges.

Dutch News has asked HousingAnywhere, an online housing platform, for a comment. Last year, Djordy Seelmann, chief executive of its Kamernet site, told Dutch News that it was simply a platform. “It is within the property owner’s responsibility to set a rent according to the current regulations, and it falls within the municipalities’ jurisdiction to ensure regulations are properly enforced and take corrective action when necessary,” he said.

Invalid short-stay contracts

According to an investigation by consumer programme Radar, some unscrupulous landlords from Nijmegen to Amsterdam are asking tenants to sign invalid “short-stay” contracts.

Renters’ organisation Woonbond views this as a scam to discourage tenants from testing houses against strict rent-control rules: everything from the official property value to the length of kitchen worktops should be added up and only homes with over 187 points can charge market rates.

Municipalities are now responsible for enforcing the new rental law and places like Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam have begun campaigns to inform everyone including foreign residents of their rights.

Last month, Niek Verra, chairman of landlords association Vastgoed Belang, pointed out that many private landlords are selling up as their investment properties are now uneconomic. “The one-sided focus on all excesses ensures that the image of landlords is grossly exaggerated,” he told Dutch News. “Most landlords are decent landlords who charge a decent rent and do not exploit their tenants.”