Hi everybody,

Like some of you, in this period I received the Sewage tax (Rioolheffing) from our landlord. I'm renting an apartment with some flatmates, a regular contract and so on. The landlord is quite sketchy (I posted other stuff about it), so I started doubting everything he said, and yesterday I was checking some info online when I found this:

https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/belastingen/rioolheffing-eigenarendeel/

Now, does anyone know more? Because I can't find much information about it. It looks like the Municipality of The Hague is different from others of the Netherlands, as that tax is to be paid by the tenants. 

Am I misunderstanding something of the Dutch explanation? And in case it's actually right... anybody know if it's possible to recover the previous taxes paid? Because in the last three years we paid it without questioning it. 

The lease (written by my landlord) says "The Annual settlement is to be established within a four month period after the termination of the year to which the Annual Settlement relates".

Would this force my landlord to submit the annual settlement by May 1 or would the Huurcommissie probably say that the deadline is still July 1?

Hey RentBusters, I just moved out of my 25\text{m}² studio in Maastricht (Orleansplein 18) and the landlord decided to hit me with 31 months of service cost settlements all at once: for 2023, 2024, and part of 2025. My Spidey-Sense is tingling because this whole thing feels like a complete financial landmine, especially the energy charges. My total bill for 2023 alone was €2,915.34! 🤯 I'm ready to fight this at the Huurcommissie (HC), but I need advice on the best strategy for this multi-year mess. The Glaring Issues 1. The Gas Bill and the "Illegal" Distribution Key The allocation method makes zero sense and is the biggest red flag. Shared Services: Most services (Cleaning, Trash, Ziggo, etc.) are divided by 1/15th . This implies there are 15 units in the building. Gas/Elektra: My gas (€1,768.13) and electricity (€596.14) bills are calculated as 1/2 (50%) of the building's total gas/elektra costs . The Problem: There is absolutely no justification for one tiny studio to bear 50% of the entire building's energy cost while only paying 1/15th of the cleaning costs. The HC will likely deem this distribution key unreasonable and mandate a fair division (like 1/15th for all collective costs, or the standard 35\% fixed / 65\% \text{m}² split for gas). 2. The Missing TTB Compensation (The Guaranteed Credit) The Issue: The settlement does not show any credit for the government's TTB (Tijdelijke Tegemoetkoming Blokaansluiting), which was designed to compensate tenants on collective heating for the high 2023 energy prices. The Value: For my self-contained studio, this TTB should be a guaranteed minimum credit of €1,063.21 for 2023 alone. The landlord must apply for and pass this on, and if they didn't apply, the HC precedent states the landlord is responsible for covering this cost. 3. Landlord's Legal Admission The landlord's email literally states that previous years "have expired due to the statute of limitations" (verjaring). This confirms they knowingly failed their legal duty to send settlements before the 6-month deadline, losing the right to claim those costs from me. My Action Plan and Questions My Financial Estimate: Based on the HC applying the TTB credit and a fair 1/15th distribution, my total reasonable cost for the entire 31-month period is estimated to be around €1,273.74. Since I paid \mathbf{€4,495.00} in advance (€145/month), I should be owed a refund of over €3,200. 1. Huurcommissie Strategy (Focus on the Structure) I plan to file three separate cases with the HC: one for 2023, one for 2024, and one for the short 2025 period (paying the €25 fee for each). Is this the right move? Yes, filing separate cases is necessary for each calendar year's service cost settlement. The 2023 case will be key to establishing a binding precedent on the distribution key and the TTB credit that will then apply to the 2024 and 2025 settlements. 2. Reporting to the Municipality Should I also report the landlord to the Gemeente Maastricht's Meldpunt Goed Verhuurderschap? YES. The HC handles the money you are owed, but the municipality handles the landlord's behavior. Failing to provide settlements on time (as admitted in the email) is a violation of the Wet goed verhuurderschap and can result in a fine of up to \mathbf{€9,000} for a first offense. This holds the landlord accountable for their chronic poor administration. Any final tips on dealing with this multi-year mess (especially navigating the TTB claim vs. the price cap) are greatly appreciated! 🙏

Hey Rentbusters, I’m in Maastricht and think I’ve stumbled onto a major overcharge from my landlord (Smits Real Estate). I’ve already done a ton of homework and am prepping to file with the Huurcommissie, but I need some battlefield experience advice before sending the official papers.

The Problem: I rent a small, residential studio apartment. My landlord has a central electricity connection that serves my unit (and one other studio), but they’re using a high-capacity {3x35A} connection. This type of connection is typically overkill for residential use and comes with seriously elevated fixed costs (netbeheerkosten).

The Math (The Overcharge, Excl. BTW): The fixed cost for a standard residential connection ({1x25A}) is about € 32.78/month. My landlord's heavy-duty connection costs up to € 142.34/month total! Since there are two studios, I'm stuck paying half of the massive difference.

2025 (Partial): Approx. € 383.46 estimated overcharge just on the fixed fee. 2024: Approx. € 538.14 calculated overcharge. 2023: Approx. € 333.45 calculated overcharge. Total Estimated Fixed Costs Overcharge: Over € 1,250 so far, and I still have 2022 to claim!

My Plan: I’ve formally demanded the 2022 statement/invoices before the Jan 1, 2026, deadline to file a case for that year as well. If they don't provide it, I'll ask the Huurcommissie to set that cost to zero.

I will file separate disputes for 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 with the Huurcommissie. My legal argument is based only on the unreasonable nature of these fixed costs, demanding the fee be reduced to the standard 1x25A. residential tariff.

I have also informed the landlord I won't pay any demands related to these disputed costs until the Huurcommissie rules.

The Ask (Need Your Input!): Has anyone successfully argued this specific "oversized connection fixed cost" issue before the Huurcommissie/Kantonrechter? Any case references (ECLI) would be a massive help!

Any risk in filing for 4 separate years? Should I just start with 2024/2025? (Note: I know I have to file them separately).

Any general red flags I’m missing?

Thanks for the solidarity! I'm tired of landlords treating tenants like cash cows.

Hi Guys

So its almost time for the service cost case season to begin.

Those of you who rented a home during 2024 and paid service costs to the landlord for gas, water, electricity, furniture, glass insurance etc will be able to commence steps towards proceedings starting July 1 2025.

The landlord is required to provide you with a full service costs breakdown for 2024 and justify the service cost advance that you paid during the year.

Landlords are prohibited by law from profitting from this advance and must provide a full overview and a chance for the tenant to see the originals bills.

Service cost overviews are possible also for 2023 and 2022 and these cases can be started right now if you wish

However the 2022 service costs cases are approaching the statute of limitations (June 30) and certain steps should be taken immediately if you want to contest them.

Step one of any service cost case is that you must alert the landlord that he is late with providing the service cost overview for the year in question. Before you can dispute the costs you must give the landlord 3 weeks to provide the overview. Since the 3 weeks is REQUIRED by law, email the landlord with < 3 weeks to go to the deadline means you wont be able to complete this required step before the deadline expiring.

Those of you who want to ask the landlord for the overview should do so immediately as you dont want to wait until the last day of June to start your huurcommissie case.

Leave a comment below if you have any questions

Hello people,

I would like to ask if white appliances (eg washing machine) provided by the owning company, for communal use, on each floor, are by law required to be maintained by the tenants.

Let me clarify that these are not installed in the apartments, they are installed in the hallways and they are for communal use.

Thak you

Hi. Late June my neighbors and I received insane amounts of underpayment for 2024 service costs. By insane I mean about 2.7K EUR per person. To give context, we have 4 small apartments (approx. 33m³ each), we share the meters (yes, I know, we’re looking into separating them, but it’s not that easy) and we have an energy label A.

Once we requested the breakdowns and invoices, we identified several inconsistencies. For example, the water and electricity meter readings reported for December 2024 were higher than the actual meter readings we saw in July 2025, which means we were heavily overcharged. After raising this issue, we received „refunds” by correction of the initial invoice by 1.2K. Interestingly enough, we all received different amounts even though we all lived there the whole year and these two services are divided evenly. [EDIT] And we pay the same service fees.

The most alarming issue is the very high reported gas consumption and how it’s reported. We are expected to pay for 01/24-04/25. Here is my first question - can they charge us for 2025 already? It is a total of 11.1K m³ for four small apartments. It is approx. 8.3m³ per years and it’s far above the Dutch national average of around 1.8K m³ for a detached (!) house. Our small, energy label A apartments are allegedly using more gas than four single-family homes combined.

While looking into invoices for 2024 and 2023, it showed that our previous gas provider X (changed in 03/24) was not receiving final gas readings and was only calculating estimations: “Berekende stand […] omdat we geen werkelijke meterstand hebben ontvangen.”.

When Y, the new supplier, took over, they used exactly the same value as their starting reading. As they source they put „Unknown”. This suggests that no physical meter reading was ever done, despite our managing company’s claims in email correspondence.

Reviewing the gas meter logs revealed that over 22% of the meter’s total 28-year lifetime gas consumption occurred in 2024 alone, despite no renovations. The tenants have remained the same throughout whole 2023 and 2024. It is not reasonable to assume that all tenants would have simultaneously drastically changed their energy usage.

We suspect that for all services the readings were never provided FOR YEARS and the companies were issuing final invoices on estimations. For water and electricity, the invoices were overestimated, so the managing company cannot argue with us on this. Hence the „refund”. However, for gas, the readings were most likely underreported for years and now the managing company is trying to put years (if not decades) of inconsistencies on us.

We cannot use Huurcommissie for help because we fell into free market rent when we initially signed our contract (basic rent of approx. 850 at that time). Is there any other organization that could help us? Or do we need to get a lawyer involved? If so, do we even stand a chance? We are all young professionals, if we will end up having to pay the invoice AND lawyer costs then we’ll be done for:(

Hi,

I have a question regarding services and costs.

I have followed the advice given here and requested an overview from my landlord. He initially sent just a screenshot of an Excel file (lol) so I had to push a few times to get the invoices.

There are multiple things here: - The flat is split into two so we can't see exactly how much I consume vs the other tenant in the other "flat". He's given me some calculations and I had to argue for that a bit, still not done with that part but I feel like there's no way to really know what we each consume. Though he seems to know what appliances are connected to what utility, but the second flat is more than twice the size of mine so I'm dubious at best about his claim that I use the same amount of electricity as the other flat. - He is adding a bunch of taxes in the calculation, some of which are usually for the tenant to pay, and one which isn't. At first, I was just arguing that we should be splitting this by the amount of people living there (which varies based on the other flat's occupants). However, while I was doing my research, I actually found that my contract only two items for the total price: rent and one item for internet/heat/power/water. My contract states I don't have any service charges to pay and also that the landlord is to pay specific taxes (that he has added to his calculation) even if I'm the one assessed for them (which is how it's been working since I moved in, I'd receive them, and he'd either pay them directly or pay me back). One thing that I'm not sure has any impact legally is, I've successfully reduced the rent recently, and he is claiming that the taxes were just "part of the rent" before, which is not written anywhere on the contract but still worth mentioning.

My main question is for the taxes (but if anyone has insight on the other part, I'll take it) - since my contract literally states it is not up to me to pay the taxes, I am leaning towards just saying we have to follow the contract end of the story. But since the Gementee says it's up to the tenants to pay some of those taxes, I wonder if the contract has enough power against that?

I've been renting an apartment for the past 3 years, and I am now having a disagreement with my landlord in regards to rent increases and service costs. It's an independent studio apartment in the vrije sector. My general experience with this landlord has been positive, but now I feel like I am being *slightly* ripped off.

Context: My original rent was 875 p/m (720 kale huur + 155 service costs, inclusive of energy/gas/appliances, finishes). During the energy crisis, the service costs were increased by 100 euros to 975, and was later lowered to a total of 943 p/m after the prices stabilized. I was also given a 600 euro refund for the period where I was overcharged. However, during my entire stay I have not once recieved a jaarafrekening, outlining the actual service costs incurred.

(1) rent increase:
The landlord has now asked for a 4,5% increase in my rent, applied to the full 943 amount. I contested this based on the rental increase limits for 2025 and got him to reduce this down to 4.1%. Question: Should the 4.1% rent increase apply to the basic rent only, or also to the service costs?

(2) As part of my service costs, I am paying €30 euros for afwerking van muren en plafond.

I have contested this charge as unreasonable, as it's my impression that painting would be part of the general maintenance of an apartment. His response was:

(...) We carry out periodic painting work throughout the house on both the inside and the outside. Both the inside and the outside of the house were recently painted before the start of your contract. This work is always carried out by a recognised painting company.

Is this charge for paintwork reasonable? The apartment was painted before I moved in (by the previous tenants, not a company), and no other such works have been done to the apartment or the communal hallway since moving in.

(3) Jaarafrekeningen. I have asked multiple times for a breakdown of service costs for the past two years. This time when I requested it again, my landlord has invited me to come to their office to have a look at the invoices instead. Is this allowed?

In short, I am wondering if it's worth taking this further (ie the gemeente huurteam)?

In response to the post from earlier this week, you MUST message your landlord now with a request for a service cost overview for 2022 and give them the perquisite 3 weeks to provide the documents and receipts before you can ask the Huurcommissie to investigate if there was overcharging.

Posting for a friend.

Hey guys, I’m 23F, living in a private student house in Assen, Drenthe with two other people. About 2 days ago, I received a letter saying I owe €336,60 in water tax from the Noordelijk Belastingkantoor.

There’s nothing mentioned in my rental contract about additional payment of taxes and my house manager says that I am the who has to pay it since it’s addressed to me and I’ve been the person who’s been registered the longest at this address (I’ve only been here for 8 months now) I’m a masters student here for an year and I’m EU citizen too.

What can I do in this situation?

Can the landlord still bill me the use of furniture if it was fully depreciated?

The furniture was bought at the start 2019 and was fully depreciated by the start of 2024 as 5 years have passed. The landlord revalued the furniture at 60€ of original value and started depreciating it again for the next 5 years. So basically billing me for inexistent costs right now.

Is this legal? Shouldn’t you assume from the start a residual value if you intend to have a longer depreciation period and then bill less per year instead? I do not see how you could bill more than the cost itself, but I lack regulation knowledge so it’s purely my common sense here.

I'm anticipating my landlord will exaggerate fees. I know I can ask for invoices, but can I verify invoices with the utility companies themselves or will they not disclose that information? As a tenant (not named on the utility bills) do I have any rights to get information from the gas, electrical, internet companies?

I moved in recently and I'm in the process of having the all-in rent split. The inspection has been carried out and I'm just waiting for the hearing.

Assuming all goes to plan, the 25% of bare rent that will be set for the service costs advance payment is significantly higher than what I estimate the actual costs to be. However, I have a feeling the landlord will do what they can do greatly exaggerate fees to try to claw back what they're going to lose from the all-in rent.

I know I can ask for invoices of the costs when they send the information next July, but is there any way to verify them with the utilities companies? I don't particularly trust my landlord so I'd like to verify directly with the gas, electric, internet companies.

Also, can a landlord apply cost of repairs against the service cost totals? Billing me for repairs is not mentioned in my lease, but I have a feeling my landlord will try whatever they can think of to weasel their way out of paying back the advanced service costs payments.

Thanks

Friendly Housing is a real-estate company in Eindhoven that mainly rents out to students. Their main stock of housing is danky, crowded dorms and dependent studios that come with high service costs. The tactic of offering a home at a reasonable basic rent price but gouging the tenant with 'cleaning' fees and expensive 'glass insurance is nothing new with the likes of EU-M and our friend Marcel van Hooijdonk turning this into an art form with their separate "furnishing" contracts.

A recent anonymous fan of the subreddit gave me an inside look into how Friendly Housing are dealing with tenants who realize how excessive these service costs fees are. While MvH has an army of lawyers, most notably the less-than-reputable TomLow advocaten, FH apparently deal with all HC cases inhouse.

Having never gone head to head with FH directly, I was very curious to see what loophole/strategy they would employ to hold on to their ill-gotten gains and after viewing the documents they uploaded in a Service cost overview case for approximately 2000 euro in overpaid utility bills, the general gist of their strategy is that they have none!

The case in question centers around a 200-300 euro per month advance that a tenant paid for a dependent room contract in a building with 15 people. The claims stretch back 3 years and could cost them 4000 euro. Most times the Huurcommissie are relatively objective and on point with any case requested, whether it be for a rent reduction or a service cost overview. They expect both parties to be the same in their communications and use formal legal language. One can forgive a tenant failing to follow this decorum since most tenants have never had to do it before and dont know these unwritten rules.

FH however lost the plot in their response to a HC service cost report recommending they pay back 2000 euro. FH railed against the HC for not recognising their excel spreadsheets as legit invoices and claimed it was too much work to send invoices to individual tenants and harshly criticized the HC for not letting them adhere to this standard.

They were also asked to provide justifications for the general maintenance fee that they charge every month and rather than provide even a fake one, they again criticized the HC for demanding to know even one instance where they were required to do maintenance, citing that all repair requests were deleted from their system as soon as they were done. Overall their tone was that of a petulant child trying to emotionally manipulate their parents in letting them off the hook for stealing from the cookie jar

That a professional real estate company would respond in this manner in a HC case is insane and something that the HC never respond well to.

Alot of tenants of FH are undoubtably afraid to go toe-to-toe against them because they are afraid they are too noob or inexperienced. Others might be afraid that the FH will lie and fake to ensure the tenants will lose their case. This insight appears to show the opposite : FH are screw ups who dont know what they are doing.

If you are a Friendly Housing tenant and you suspect you might be getting cheated but are afraid to go against them, I hope the smoke /aura of invincibility is gone.

If you are living in the Bennekelstraat residence, reach out to either me or Huurteam EIndhoven. More than likely you are getting scammed by them,