The New Makelaar Register Won't Help International Renters — Here's Why

The Dutch government announced a mandatory register for real estate agents in 2026, and honestly, it's about time. Since 2001, anyone could call themselves a makelaar with zero oversight. Nearly a third of buyers reported negative experiences, and voluntary self-regulation by industry associations like the NVM completely failed to stop the abuse.

Alongside the register, there's the biedlogboek — a digital bid log introduced in 2023 that's supposed to show all bids placed on a property after the sale. The goal is to stop gazumping and bid manipulation. Except a 2025 study found that two-thirds of buyers were never even sent the official record. So the enforcement is already shaky, and that's for the market it was actually designed for.

Here's the problem: both measures target home purchases. The rental market — where internationals are most vulnerable — operates on a completely different set of rules, and no regulator is extending these transparency requirements to huurwoningen.

When you're buying a house in the Netherlands, there's at least a paper trail. The biedlogboek exists. Makelaars are (theoretically) accountable. But when an international renter in Amsterdam or Utrecht gets told there are fifteen other people interested and they should come back with a higher offer, there's no log. No record. No oversight.

I've seen listings on Pararius and Funda where the asking rent is €1,800, and within 48 hours the landlord has accepted someone offering €2,100 above the vraagprijs. That's 'bieden boven de vraagprijs' for huurwoningen, and it happens constantly in the free sector. The Wet Betaalbare Huur capped mid-market rents in July 2024, but the free sector — the only realistic option for most expats — has no such cap. Free-sector rents are up 5–7% year-over-year, averaging €21/m² nationally.

No NVM oversight. No huurcommissie involvement. No biedlogboek. Just a landlord and a desperate tenant negotiating privately, with all the power on one side.

The Wet Betaalbare Huur was supposed to make housing more affordable. Instead, investors sold over 65,000 rental homes in 2025 and bought only 27,000 — a net loss of 38,000 units. Landlords are exiting the market because indefinite contracts and stronger tenant protections made it less attractive to hold rental property.

The free sector is the only segment where expats have a real shot. Social housing is effectively closed: allocation depends on years of waiting time, and income ceilings that most expats exceed immediately. Plus you need a BSN to register, which requires a rental address — a catch-22 that traps new arrivals before they even start looking.

So you have a shrinking pool of free-sector rentals, growing demand from immigration, and zero transparency protections for the people competing for those units. The housing shortage hit 410,000 units in 2026, up from 400,000 the year before. Construction still hasn't reached the 100,000 homes per year needed to close the gap.

A mandatory makelaar register might stop a rogue agent from lying about bids on a house sale in Eindhoven. It will do nothing about the landlord in Rotterdam who posts 'no internationals' on Kamernet, or the property manager in Den Haag who rejects a foreign IBAN.

These practices are technically illegal under the Algemene wet gelijke behandeling and the Wet gelijke behandeling op grond van nationaliteit. But enforcement is almost nonexistent. Only 2% of buyers who had negative experiences filed official complaints — and that's for the purchase market, where people are spending hundreds of thousands of euros and have more incentive to fight back. Renters, especially internationals who may not speak Dutch or understand the system, report even less.

Expats are routinely asked for a Dutch guarantor, Dutch rental references, and Dutch income history. Most can provide none of these on arrival. They compensate with employer statements, higher deposits, and willingness to overbid — which only fuels the cycle.

If the Dutch government wanted to help international renters, the makelaar register isn't where they'd start. They'd start with enforcement of anti-discrimination laws that already exist. They'd create a path for expats to meet rental dossier requirements — recognizing foreign income, accepting international bank accounts, and providing alternatives to Dutch rental references.

They'd also need to address the supply problem. The Wet Betaalbare Huur's unintended consequence was shrinking the exact segment internationals rely on. Without policies that actually expand access to regulated housing — not just cap rents on paper — the free sector keeps shrinking and competition keeps intensifying.

At House Hunter, we watch over 1,000 housing sites so renters know the moment a matching listing appears. Speed matters when you're competing against fifteen people for one apartment in Groningen or Delft. But speed is a band-aid. The structural problems — discrimination, opaque rental bidding, vanishing supply — need regulatory action that the current reforms don't deliver.

The makelaar register and biedlogboek are real improvements for home buyers. They're just not for renters. And pretending they help everyone lets the government off the hook for the rental market that actually needs fixing.