Rental houses

We sometimes have houses (rooms/apartments) up for rent from BCN members. We inform all PhD students by email.

Housing Office of the RUG

The Housing Office offers furnished accommodation in Groningen for foreign guests of one of the Universities. If you come to our city to study or work at either the University of Groningen (RUG) or to the Hanze University of Groningen (HG) you are welcome to apply for housing with our organisation

Some tip about social housing cooperations:

In the Netherlands a lot of houses are owned and rented out by not-for-profit housing corporations. Most cities have more than one of them The prices are far more reasonable than the houses on offer through commercial housing offices, like Beter Wonen or Direct Wonen.

Because of the high demand for these relatively cheap houses, the corperations have a waiting list and it can take several years before you can get an apartment. So the first advice is to sign up with as many of them as possible as soon as possible.

Luckily, four out of five corperations in Groningen have joined forces on Woningnet (http://www.woningnetgroningen.nl/), so you only have to sign up once for those. You may need some help with signing up on this Dutch site and you pay a small yearly fee (approximately 15 Euros). Once you signed up with Woningnet, you can check their website for houses that become available soon. If you find something interesting, you can indicate you would like to rent the house. The house goes to the person who has been waiting longest, so chances of success are usually slim.

After you signed up with Woningnet, you can also get a form from Patrimonium (http://www.patrimonium-groningen.nl/). You will need to fill this out to sign up with them as well.

Once you have signed up you need to visit the website of Woningnet regularly and indicate which houses you are interested in. You will receive a message saying whether you got it or not. Since the person waiting the longest gets it, chances are slim. Patrimonium on the other hand calls you if they have a house for you, so ideally you just have to wait.

That's the clean version.... then there are a few tips that can increase your chances:

- react to houses at the high end of their price range (450 Euros and up). (Note that you need to pay utilities on top of the rent.) Patrimonium offered me a house within 2 weeks after I signed up for their waiting list.

- some corperations have houses that will be torn down within a year or so, and they rent them out temporarily; you'll have to visit them to find out. That's what worked for a colleague.

- sometimes they have 'special projects', in which they try to improve neighborhoods by renting out houses specifically to highly educated young people; but you'll have to go by their office in person to find out. That's how a friend of my girlfriend's got her place.

- sometimes they allow you to hand over a rental place to friends/colleagues, although that's not the proper procedure. So if someone is leaving their place anyway it's worth a shot.

[Rick Schoffelen]

Nieuwe Academie

- these rooms are generally used by the students from the RUG or the Hanze. You can reach the concerned personnel at +31 (0)50 316 29 55.

Nijestee

- from my experiences about the housing offices: they all offer you places that are double price of their value/rent. However I used one of them to find my place where I have many problems.

I have been looking for a better place since I arrive so I would like to get to be informed.

There is one office called Nijstee. They provide normal price houses but they ask for points which you should gather for years. It is a no-go situation when you are a foreigner. How can you start gathering points when you are not even in the nederlands???and there is no priority for foreigners. Maybe BCN can make an agreement with it? since every year you receive some amount of foreign students.

Kamers in Nederland (Rooms in Holland)
- Offer services for free. Without costs it is possible to place a room and/or contact the person advertising the room.

Kappenburg - Van Prooijen
- A brokersoffice for housing and commercial estates. Also housing for students.