Vestide, the division of Woonbedrijf that provides student housing, warns students not to be lured by websites that claim to rent out housing from the corporation and try to make money with it. Huurteam Eindhoven also receives many complaints during this period about websites that charge (too) much money for their services.
The housing shortage among students will also be sky-high in 2024. To illustrate: according to the municipality of Eindhoven, 3,000 students are registered with Hospi Housing, which mediates between landladies and students, who are looking for a room, while there are only 150 landladies. For each room, there are about 20 candidates. Remarkably enough, there will be only 50 students who actually find a room this way next semester.
Anyone looking for a room in the ‘traditional’ way is therefore dependent on the internet: this certainly applies to students from outside the Netherlands. But searching for a room online in Eindhoven appears to be difficult. This forced Vestide, among others, to put a message online warning house hunters.
“Our homes and rooms are sometimes also advertised on other websites or offered via social media. They often ask for money to be able to see the full range. This happens without our permission. Sometimes there is even illegal subletting. Do not respond to this”, Vestide writes on its own website.
In practice, such cases do not occur very often. “This year, this happened once with Vestide homes,” a spokesperson said.
Bouts
Although it seems to be okay at Vestide, Huurteam Eindhoven is flooded with complaints about rental websites at this time of year. “It goes in waves. Many students are looking for a home now and we are receiving a lot of complaints. I can’t say exactly how many, but there are certainly dozens,” says Nick de Liège, consultant at Huurteam Eindhoven.
“Sometimes it is indeed about websites that are not honest. These sites want visitors to pay to gain access to their offer, but the offer then turns out to have simply been taken from a website like Funda,” says De Liège. “Today I received a story from someone who reported a house that was supposedly for rent, while that person knew that a friend of hers lived in the house in the photo.”
Few homes
However, according to De Liège, these types of websites do not generate the most complaints. “More often, they are websites that operate more honestly. They then ask for money to gain access to their portal. We hear from people that these prices can go up to 50 euros. And then there are few homes listed and people do not even get a response when they respond to something. It is logical that you then feel cheated.”
“Rental platforms do not check their own offers”
Nick de Liège, Rental Team Consultant Eindhoven
There is little that can be done about such websites, says De Liège. “These websites offer a platform to real estate agents or landlords to offer their homes, but as a platform they do not check what kind of homes are on them. Moreover, when paying the money, an agreement is entered into in which the home seeker agrees to the risks.”
The biggest victims of the online jungle of landlords, brokers and intermediaries are foreign students, says De Liège. “They don’t know how it works here and have a hard time finding a home.”
Via the municipality
In this way, such housing sites take full advantage of the enormous housing shortage in the region. “We therefore always advise students to look for a home via the municipality. The municipality of Eindhoven has partnerships with some providers. Another place we refer internationals to is the Expat centre. They can also assess which parties are reliable. Furthermore, people can always contact the Rental Team for questions or checks on their rental contract,” says De Liège.
Source: Studio040
For Eindhoven News: Lila Mehrez
