Short Stay in the Netherlands: Why 'Expat-Friendly' Often Means 'Rights-Free'

I keep seeing the same message land in our users' inboxes. A furnished two-room apartment in Amsterdam-West. Self-contained, own kitchen, own bathroom, own front door. Priced at something that makes your eyes water. And tucked into the description: "short stay only" or "expat-friendly."

Here's the thing nobody tells the international who just landed. "Short stay" is not a magic contract type. It's a narrow legal exception meant for genuinely temporary, transient accommodation — tourism, a three-month project posting, that kind of thing. It was never designed to be stamped on an ordinary home that someone is going to actually live in for a year or two.

And yet that's exactly what's happening, at scale. After the rental reforms of July 2024, IamExpat documented a 45% jump in short-stay listings. That's not a coincidence. That's a market reacting to new rules by inventing a workaround.

My argument in this post is simple. If a listing is clearly a regular home but it's being sold to you as "short stay," your default assumption should be that the landlord is trying to dodge normal Dutch rental rules — rent control, eviction protection, deposit limits, registration. Not always. But often enough that you should treat it as a red flag, not a perk.

To understand the short-stay surge you have to understand what it's running away from.

As of 1 July 2024, the Netherlands banned most fixed-term contracts for regular housing. The default is now the indefinite contract — onbepaalde tijd — which gives tenants serious protection: you can't be evicted at a landlord's whim, rent increases are capped, and your deposit is regulated. Fixed-term deals only survive in narrow cases like student housing, temporary subletting, or a landlord's documented urgent personal use.

On top of that came the Wet Betaalbare Huur — the Affordable Rent Act — which extended rent control deep into the mid-market and tied maximum legal rent to the points-based WWS system. Suddenly a landlord couldn't just name a price. The points decided it.

For a certain kind of landlord, that's a problem. Their flexibility evaporated. Their ability to push rents above the regulated maximum evaporated. So a chunk of the market went looking for a door that the new rules left open.

Short stay was that door.

The trick rests on a legal distinction. A genuine short stay arrangement — typically one to six months — can be classified as a hospitality or lodging contract rather than a residential tenancy, especially when it comes bundled with hotel-like services: weekly cleaning, linen changes, that sort of thing. Those contracts sit outside the normal rent controls, eviction protections and deposit caps.

So if you can dress up an ordinary apartment as a hospitality product, you escape the whole protective framework. That's the play.

What does the landlord get out of it? Three things, all of them at your expense.

They can charge more. Outside rent control, prices on these listings run 20–50% above the regulated maximum for a comparable regulated home. They can demand a fat deposit — three to six months' rent shows up regularly, when the legal limit for a normal contract is one to two months. And they can show you the door fast, with little notice and no judicial review, because the contract isn't covered by standard eviction law.

Higher rent, bigger deposit, no security. For the landlord that's the whole appeal. For you it's three ways to get burned.

This isn't random. The listings say "expat only" and "for international workers" for a reason, and it's not hospitality.

Internationals are more likely to accept a short-term contract because they're often here on a short-term plan, or at least they think they are. They're less familiar with Dutch tenancy law. They're less likely to know that a clause is illegal, let alone challenge it. And some landlords openly say they avoid Dutch tenants because they're afraid a Dutch tenant will "stay too long" — which is to say, actually use the protections the law grants.

Let me be blunt about what that is. Excluding Dutch tenants and steering homes toward foreigners who won't push back is discrimination, and it's illegal under Dutch law. Arslan Advocaten lays this out plainly. The fact that it's dressed up as "expat-friendly" doesn't change what it is underneath.

I've watched users in Utrecht and Eindhoven get quoted four months' deposit on a place that, by every objective measure, is a normal flat. They weren't being offered a service. They were being sized up as someone who wouldn't say no.

Here's the part that should give you confidence rather than fear. The label on the contract doesn't decide your rights. The reality of the home does.

Dutch courts look at substance over wording. A few things matter most. First, self-contained facilities: if the place has its own kitchen, its own bathroom and its own entrance, and you're using it as your primary residence — even temporarily — tenancy law usually applies regardless of what the contract calls itself. Second, the nature of the services: real hospitality means real services and typically shared or non-self-contained facilities. Third, duration and intention: the "short by nature" exception (naar zijn aard van korte duur) exists for genuine tourism and project work, and courts apply it restrictively. They don't hand it out just because a landlord wrote "short stay" at the top of the page.

So if you've got your own front door, your own kitchen, and you're living there as your home, there's a strong chance you have far more protection than your contract claims. You can take that to the Huurcommissie — the Rent Tribunal — or to the courts. The huurprijscheck can tell you what the WWS points say your rent should actually be.

The gap between what these contracts claim and what the law allows is wide. Most landlords running this play are betting you'll never test it.

Amsterdam and Rotterdam have introduced stricter rules requiring landlords to register short stay properties and comply with local housing regulations. The intent is exactly right: make sure only genuine short stay rentals get the exemption, and stop ordinary homes from quietly slipping out of the protected stock.

But intent and enforcement aren't the same thing. The reality on the ground is uneven. Plenty of landlords keep working the grey area because the odds of getting caught are low and the upside is high.

That matters beyond any single tenant. Every regular home that gets reclassified as short stay is a home pulled out of the regulated, affordable supply. Fewer protected rentals means more competition and higher prices for everyone — Dutch and international alike. The loophole doesn't just hurt the person who signs the bad contract. It tightens the whole market.

This is why I get genuinely irritated when this is framed as a clever "flexible" product. It's not innovation. It's leakage out of a system that was just rebuilt to protect people.

When a House Hunter user forwards me a "short stay" listing for a place that's obviously a normal home, I ask them a few things.

Is it self-contained — your own kitchen, bathroom, entrance? Are you planning to actually live there as your home? Is there any real service attached, or is "short stay" just a word on the contract? Is the rent miles above what a comparable regulated home costs? Is the deposit more than two months? Does it say "expat only"?

If the answers point to "this is a regular home wearing a costume," then you're not looking at a hospitality product. You're looking at an ordinary tenancy that someone is trying to strip of its protections.

That doesn't always mean walk away — the market is brutal, and sometimes the choice is a flawed roof or no roof. But sign with your eyes open. Keep every document. Know that the law likely sees you as a protected tenant even if the contract pretends otherwise. And know where to go: the Huurcommissie, the huurprijscheck for your rent, and free advice from places like!WOON and Het Juridisch Loket.

The whole reason we watch 1,000-plus sites is so people don't get cornered into the first scary contract they're offered. The more options you can see, the less power a mislabeled listing has over you.

Short stay has a real, narrow purpose. It's just not the one most of these listings are using it for.