Landlords bypass rules for student rooms

Group contracts are particularly common in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, according to research by the news platform NOS op 3. Sometimes there only one of the tenants is mentioned on the contract and the others are not even registered at the address.

Rent assessment committee
Landlords are doing this in an effort to prevent students from calling on the rent assessment committee to help them secure a rent reduction. In principle, group contracts do not fall under the points system used by municipalities to keep rental fees in check. Said system allocates a maximum rental fee to every room, depending on factors such as surface area and facilities. Many landlords consider these fees too low, so they try to bypass the system.

Challenging the contract
The Dutch Student Union is shocked by NOS' research. President Elisa Weehuizen says that “all these unscrupulous landlords care about is how they can milk their rooms as much as possible. In so doing, they avoid any kind of responsibility.” The union is informing students currently living under group contracts about the vulnerability of their position and the follow-up steps they can take, including challenging the contract that’s been imposed on them, which works in some cases. Practice sometimes differs from what the contract says, such as when students transfer the rent directly to the landlord or when the fee per room is fixed.