Rental scams in the Netherlands: the standard tricks, the checks to run before you pay, and what to do if you already paid

Rental scams in the Netherlands work best on people who cannot easily visit: newcomers who search from abroad, in English, under time pressure. The scammer counts on the housing shortage. After weeks of searching, a cheap apartment feels like luck. That feeling makes people move fast, before they check anything. Almost every rental scam then makes the same move: you are asked to pay before you have verified the home and the person behind it. So the same few checks stop almost every scam. This guide shows the standard tricks with example messages, the checks that cost little or nothing, the fees that are illegal even when the agency is real, and the exact steps when money is already gone. For the search itself, the sites, the viewings and the documents, start with the finding a rental guide. This article is the deep version of that guide's short scam section.

The scammer copies the photos and text of a real advert and posts them again with a lower rent, often a few hundred euros under similar homes. The photos are real, so the listing looks real. The check is a reverse image search: put the photos into Google Images or Yandex. If the same home appears in another advert with a different price or another contact person, stop. The Fraudehelpdesk names copied photos as the clearest scam signal. The low rent itself is the bait. In a housing shortage, nobody needs to underprice a good home to find a tenant.

This is the classic script. The 'owner' replies quickly and in friendly English. They live or work abroad, so a viewing is not possible. The keys will come to you by courier, or 'through the platform', after you transfer the deposit and the first month. Every part of the script has one job: to make paying before viewing sound normal.

An invented example of a typical message: 'Thank you for your interest. I am working in London at the moment, so I cannot show the apartment myself. The rent is €950 per month including utilities. I will send you the contract today and the keys by courier. To reserve the apartment, please transfer the deposit and the first month now, because several other people are interested.'

The friendliness, the urgency and the paperwork all look professional. Two things never change: you cannot get inside before paying, and contact stops after the money arrives. Treat 'I am abroad' plus 'pay to receive the keys' as a scam, every time.

Some scams skip the story about being abroad and simply charge for access. You are asked to pay a viewing fee, to 'reserve' a viewing slot, or to transfer a holding deposit so the home is taken off the market for you. The Woonbond, the Dutch tenants' union, is direct about the underlying rule: never prepay a 'landlord'. Real landlords and real agents do not sell viewings. If a home is worth renting, they can show it first.

A polished website, adverts on Facebook and Instagram, and the promise of homes 'before they reach the big sites'. To join, you pay inschrijfkosten or a monthly membership. Then the homes never come, or every home is 'just rented' while the fee keeps running. The Woonbond warns about exactly this route: social media adverts that lead to a fake agency website asking registration fees for homes that do not exist. Two checks expose most of them. Look the company up in the KVK Business Register; the free search shows the trade name, KVK number, legal form and address. And check the website's age on whois.com; a site that is weeks old but claims years of experience is a warning sign. There is also a legal angle: an agency that offers homes on behalf of landlords may not charge tenants bemiddelingskosten (mediation fees), whatever name the fee carries. So even when such an agency is real, the fee is usually illegal. How to reclaim it is covered below.

Not every scam uses a fake home. Sometimes the person shows you a real home, even with working keys, but has no right to rent it out. Common versions: a tenant sublets the whole home without the owner's permission and disappears with your deposit, or the main tenant of a social corporation home 'transfers' it to you for a fee, while corporation homes can only be allocated through the official registers. A landlord who says you must not register at the address is often hiding exactly this. Municipalities treat illegal subletting of corporation homes as woonfraude (housing fraud); Amsterdam, for example, has an online form for reporting it.

Your legal position depends on what you rented. If you sublet a room without the landlord's permission, you have no right to stay when the main contract ends. If you rent a complete self-contained home, you become the main tenant when the subletter leaves, but the owner can ask the court within 6 months to end the tenancy, for example because the home needs a housing permit (huisvestingsvergunning) that you do not have. Do not count on those protections. Ask every private landlord one direct question: are you the owner or a tenant here? Then check the answer against the Kadaster ownership extract.

Housing groups for internationals and marketplaces like Marktplaats carry real offers next to most of the scam listings. All the patterns above appear here, plus signals specific to the platform: a profile created weeks ago, contact that stays inside chat apps, no verifiable company or address behind the offer, and pressure to decide today because 'three other people are ready to pay'. Illegal sublets are concentrated here too. Save the advert and the seller's profile link before they disappear; if it comes to a police report, the police ask for the counterparty's full profile URL. In these groups, nobody has checked any listing for you.

The full set costs a few euros and less than an hour. Run all of them for a private landlord. For an agency, the register checks matter most.

• See the home from the inside, or have someone you trust view it for you. Some scammers show a borrowed or short-let home, so the other checks still apply after a viewing. But no viewing at all always means no payment.
• Reverse-image-search the photos, and search the landlord's name and the address together with 'scam', 'review' and 'oplichting' (fraud).
• Check an agency in the KVK Business Register. Searching is free and shows the trade name, KVK number, legal form and address. No registration, or only a mobile number and a Facebook page as contact details: stop.
• For a private landlord, order the ownership extract (Eigendomsinformatie) from the Kadaster for €3.70. It names the owner of the address. The name on the extract, the name on the contract and the name on the bank account should match.
• Ask the landlord to show ID at the viewing, and never send your own passport copy to someone you have not verified. Scammers collect ID copies for identity fraud. If a copy is already out, tell the Fraudehelpdesk; they advise on the risks.
• Run the payment details through the police check Check de verkoper. You can search the IBAN, email address, phone number or website. The tool warns when the police hold fraud reports about them, and it flags every foreign account number as a higher risk.
• Pay by bank transfer from your own account. Never pay in cash, in crypto or through money-transfer services such as Western Union; those payments leave no usable trail.

The last line of defence sits inside your banking app. When you enter a transfer, your bank runs the IBAN-Naam Check: it checks whether the name you typed belongs to that account number, and it warns you before you confirm when they do not match. Since October 2025, banks in all SEPA countries must run this check on European transfers. For a rent or deposit payment, treat the warning as a stop sign. A 'landlord' whose account carries a different name will have an explanation ready. Do not accept it. Stop the payment and start the checks again.

Dutch law caps or bans most of the payments that scammers and pushy agencies ask for. Knowing the limits helps twice. Before you sign, a demand above the limit is a warning sign. After you sign, an illegal fee can be reclaimed from a real landlord or agency.

You only owe an agency money when you yourself hired it to search for you, and it found you a home that was not already in its own offer. In every other case, reclaim the fee. The practical order comes from het Juridisch Loket, the free legal advice service. Wait until your rental contract is signed, because before that the landlord can still pick another tenant. Then send the agency a registered letter demanding the fee back; the Juridisch Loket has a sample letter. If the agency does not respond and is a member of De Geschillencommissie, file the complaint there; otherwise the remaining route is court. You have 5 years from the day you paid. After that, the claim expires.

Call your bank's fraud desk the same day, with the exact amount, the date and the receiving IBAN. The money does not come back automatically; you approved the transfer yourself. What the system does provide, once you have filed a police report for purchase fraud: the bank asks the receiving account holder to repay you voluntarily, and if that has not happened after 21 days, the bank may give you the account holder's name and address. You may use those details for one purpose only: a civil claim through the court to demand the money back.

Then file the police report (aangifte). For internet purchase and sales fraud (internetoplichting), paying for something and receiving nothing, the police prefer that you report online on politie.nl. The online form starts with a short Keuzehulp that advises whether a report is useful in your case, and you need DigiD to submit it. Not sure whether your case counts, or no DigiD yet? Call 0900-8844 and the police will tell you whether and how you can file. After an internet fraud report, you get an email within ten weeks saying whether an investigation has started, and a final message after six months at the latest.

Have this ready for the report:

• a copy of your ID
• the bank statement showing the payment
• the full message history: email, WhatsApp, Messenger, platform chat
• screenshots of the advert, with the advert number if it had one
• everything you know about the counterparty: the name used, email address, phone number, IBAN, and for Facebook or Instagram the full profile URL

Report the case to the Fraudehelpdesk as well, online or on 088 - 786 73 72. They register it, warn others, and tell you which steps fit your situation, including what to do when a copy of your ID is in the scammer's hands. Two situations do not belong at the police. When the landlord is real but behaves abusively, with intimidation or illegal fees, report them to your municipality's meldpunt goed verhuurderschap: search your gemeente's name plus 'meldpunt goed verhuurderschap', and the gemeente can enforce against the landlord. And when the fight is about money inside a real tenancy, such as the rent level or service costs, the independent Huurcommissie (rent tribunal) rules on it.

Do the three reports above in order: bank, police, Fraudehelpdesk, all in the first days. Speed matters most at the bank. Then be realistic about the timeline. The police email within ten weeks whether an investigation has started, and the 21-day bank route leads to name and address details for a civil claim, not to an automatic refund. Keep every new message from the scammer; it all goes into the file. And do not blame yourself: the script is professional, and it runs on hundreds of people at the same time.

First establish whose agent it is. If the agency offers homes on behalf of landlords, it may not charge you mediation fees, and renaming them inschrijfkosten, administratiekosten or contractkosten changes nothing. If you want a home from their offer anyway, one workable route is to pay, sign the rental contract, and then reclaim the fee with the Juridisch Loket sample letter; you keep that right for 5 years. Refusing to pay upfront is also reasonable, but expect the agency to move to the next candidate. A fee is only legitimate when you gave the agency a search assignment yourself, or when it charges for something real that you receive, such as applying for a housing permit for you.

A professional-looking contract proves nothing. A rental contract is a simple document, and a convincing one is easy to produce, complete with clauses and signatures. Only two things prove a rental offer: standing inside the home, and the Kadaster extract naming your counterparty as the owner. If you signed and paid for a home that turned out not to exist, or not to be for rent at all, the paper does not change the steps: bank, police report, Fraudehelpdesk. Report the advert to the platform too, so the listing stops catching others.

You can still act from abroad. Call the Dutch police on +31 34 357 8844, the number for callers outside the Netherlands, and ask whether and how you can file aangifte; the online form needs DigiD, which most newcomers can only get after arrival (the DigiD guide explains when). Report the case to the Fraudehelpdesk online; that requires nothing Dutch. Call your own bank at home about the transfer; what it can still do depends on the payment method. Keep the advert, the messages and the payment proof together. You will need them for the aangifte, whether you arrange it by phone or file it at a police station after you arrive.

Two situations look like scams but have their own guides. A real landlord who refuses to let you register at the address is breaking different rules, and there are fixes, including a temporary correspondence address; the address registration guide covers them. A rent that is far too high for the home is usually not fraud either, but a violation of the points system, which sets a legal maximum; the rent protection guide shows how to check and challenge it. And once a real offer passes your checks, read the rental contracts guide before you sign: it covers the contract types, the deposit rules and the rent-increase caps.