Leegstandwet rentals: if the landlord can't show the permit, the 'temporary' contract is fiction

"The landlord says it has to be a temporary contract because the house is for sale — it's under the Leegstandwet."

I get some version of that message from House Hunter users in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Den Haag almost every week. Usually it comes from an international who has been told they can sign a 12-month lease with no renewal, no rent protection, and a three-month exit on the landlord's side — all because the property supposedly falls under the Vacancy Act.

Here is the thing nobody tells them: the Leegstandwet is not a label you slap on a contract. It is a permit. A physical document issued by the municipality — Gemeente Amsterdam, Gemeente Utrecht, whoever — with a number on it. If the landlord cannot produce that permit and write its number into the contract, the "temporary" part is legally empty. You are not in a Leegstandwet tenancy. You are in an ordinary, indefinite Dutch lease with full rent protection, and the landlord either doesn't know that or is hoping you don't.

That is the whole argument of this post. Ask for the permit. If it isn't there, the contract in your hand is not what the landlord says it is.

The Leegstandwet dates back to 1981. It was built for a narrow problem: owners sitting on empty houses they couldn't sell, buildings scheduled for sloop, properties waiting on renovation. The deal the law offers is simple — rent it out temporarily, skip most of the usual rent protection rules, but only if the municipality signs off.

The permit sets the boundaries. Minimum rental period is six months. Maximum is five years for an owner-occupied home that's up for sale, and up to ten years for buildings awaiting demolition. The tenant's notice period is one month. The landlord's notice period is three months. The rent sits outside the usual rent-control mechanism, so a landlord can set a figure that the Huurcommissie would otherwise slash through the puntensysteem.

All of that flexibility is conditional. No permit, no Leegstandwet. And since 1 July 2024, when the Wet vaste huurcontracten made indefinite leases the default, that conditionality matters more than ever. Temporary contracts are now only legal for a tiny list of situations: international students, renovation displacements, and properties with a valid Leegstandwet permit. Outside those lanes, "temporary" is no longer a contract type a private landlord can just choose.

Applying for a Leegstandwet permit is real work. In Amsterdam the application fee is around €350 including VAT. You have to prove the house is genuinely vacant, prove you intend to sell or renovate, and in many cases get written consent from your mortgage lender — banks are not always thrilled about their collateral being rented out. Then you wait for the gemeente to process it.

Plenty of owners skip that and write "tijdelijke huurovereenkomst op grond van de Leegstandwet" into the contract anyway. I have seen it in Utrecht, in Haarlem, in Rotterdam. Sometimes it is a first-time landlord who genuinely thinks the law works on vibes. Sometimes it is a makelaar who knows better and is gambling that an international tenant won't push back.

The gamble often pays off, short-term. The tenant signs, lives there a year, leaves when asked. Nobody ever tests the contract. That is the quiet reality of the Dutch rental market — a huge amount of it runs on tenants not knowing their rights. The Wbh and the 2024 reforms are trying to change that, and municipalities have stepped up inspections since 2024, but enforcement still depends on the tenant noticing something is off.

There's a case that circulates in Dutch tenancy-law circles: an owner in Utrecht rented out a vacant house on a one-year "temporary" contract, said it was Leegstandwet, never applied for the permit. When the year ended, the landlord sent a termination notice. The tenant refused to leave.

The court sided with the tenant. The reasoning was flat: without the permit, the statutory basis for a temporary rental under the Vacancy Act does not exist, and the contract defaults to an indefinite lease under the Burgerlijk Wetboek. Full rent protection. No end date. The landlord could only terminate on narrow statutory grounds like dringend eigen gebruik — urgent own use — which is hard to prove and rarely granted quickly.

The mirror case is a landlord in Rotterdam who did it correctly. Permit in hand, permit number written into the contract, three months' notice delivered on time. At year five, the tenant left without a dispute. Same law, same clause, completely different outcome — because one landlord had the paper and the other did not.

That is the practical asymmetry. When the permit exists, the landlord has an efficient exit. When it doesn't, the tenant is sitting on something much stronger than either party realised at signing.

When a House Hunter user forwards me a contract that mentions Leegstandwet, this is what I look for, in order.

First, a permit number in the body of the agreement. Not "a permit has been obtained" — an actual reference, usually something like a file number from the gemeente. If it isn't there, stop. Ask for it in writing. A real landlord with a real permit will send a scan in ten minutes.

Second, the stated reason. Leegstandwet only applies if the property is for sale, awaiting demolition, or awaiting renovation. If the contract says "temporary because the owner might move back someday," that's not a Leegstandwet ground. That would need to be a diplomatic clause or a different legal route entirely.

Third, the duration and notice periods. Minimum six months, maximum five years for a for-sale home. One month for you, three for the landlord. If the contract has a one-month landlord notice or a four-month minimum for you, the drafting is sloppy, which usually signals the rest of the document is too.

Fourth — and this is the one people forget — check that the permit is still valid on the start date of your lease. Permits expire. A landlord who got one in 2021 for a different tenant cannot reuse it for you in 2026 without renewal.

If any of that is missing or the landlord gets cagey when you ask, you are almost certainly not in a Leegstandwet tenancy. Which is not the disaster it sounds like — it usually means you have more rights than the contract admits, not fewer.

A lot of people find this out six months in, not at signing. The good news is Dutch tenancy law is retroactively tenant-friendly on this point. If the permit was never issued, the tenancy has been an indefinite one the whole time. Your rights didn't depend on you spotting the problem up front.

That means three concrete things. You cannot be evicted just because the "end date" in the contract passes. You can run a huurprijscheck through the Huurcommissie against the puntensysteem, and if the rent exceeds what the WWS points justify, you can claim it down — and under the Wet betaalbare huur regime, that now reaches further into the mid-market than it used to. And if you qualify based on income and rent level, huurtoeslag may be on the table, which it often is not on a genuine Leegstandwet lease.

Free help exists. Het Juridisch Loket handles this kind of question for free.!Woon in Amsterdam is specifically set up for tenants in exactly this situation and they are very good at reading a contract in ten minutes and telling you what's real. If you are in Groningen, Eindhoven, Delft — most university cities have a student-focused tenancy desk that will do the same.

One thing I tell people: do not panic-confront the landlord the day you find out. Get the contract reviewed first, understand your position, then decide whether you want to stay quietly on an indefinite lease or open a conversation. Both are valid. The leverage is yours either way.

House Hunter watches more than a thousand listing sources across the Netherlands, and the pattern I see in the contracts that follow those listings is consistent. "Temporary" is the most abused word in the Dutch rental market right now. Since the 2024 reforms narrowed its legitimate uses, the label has become a kind of costume — stuck on contracts that, legally, are something else entirely.

The Leegstandwet is a real, useful law. Owners selling into a slow market genuinely do use it, correctly, all the time. But it is not a mood. It is a permit, a number, a file at the gemeente. If the landlord cannot produce it, you are not renting under the Vacancy Act, no matter what the PDF in your inbox says.

Ask for the permit before you sign. If it's there, fine — you know where you stand. If it isn't, you've just learned that the contract is quietly stronger than the person offering it to you wants you to believe.