Get your rental deposit back

Your deposit: the rules, the deadline, and what it costs to enforce them

What your landlord may hold. On any tenancy signed since 1 July 2023, the deposit may not exceed two months’ kale huur — the basic rent, excluding service costs. Contracts signed before that date could go to three months. If you were asked for more than two months on a recent contract, that alone is a breach the municipality can act on.

When it must come back. Within 14 days of the tenancy ending. If your landlord intends to deduct anything, they get 30 days instead, and they must send you a written, itemised breakdown of what they are keeping and why. A deduction with no written specification is not a lawful deduction.

What may lawfully be deducted — and it is a closed list of four. Unpaid rent. Unpaid service costs. Damage you caused, beyond normal wear. The energy performance fee. That is all. Administration fees, “contract costs”, key fees, agency fees and standard cleaning charges are not on the list and may not be taken from your deposit. Only if you left the home dirty or not as agreed may the landlord deduct the actual cost of cleaning it, and never for normal wear.

The Huurcommissie cannot order your deposit back. This is worth being precise about, because both the over-simple version and the over-broad version mislead. The Huurcommissie decides rent levels, service charges and maintenance. It has no power to order a landlord to repay a waarborgsom — only a court can do that. But it is not irrelevant either: if your landlord has deducted “service costs”, the Huurcommissie can rule on whether those costs were lawful, and if they have deducted “unpaid rent”, a Huurcommissie ruling on what rent was actually owed decides whether that deduction stands. Run it in parallel where either applies. Do not wait for it to hand back your money, because it cannot.

Where the claim goes. A withheld deposit is a civil claim against your landlord, heard by the kantonrechter, the sub-district judge. Tenancy cases are the kantonrechter’s own category of work — you do not need a lawyer, and you file at the court for the district where the property is. Which court that is depends on the address, not on the city name, and it catches people out; the city page for your address says which one and where it sits.

Two things to check before you spend anything

Your insurance may already cover this. A great many Dutch households hold rechtsbijstandverzekering — legal expenses cover — bundled into their contents insurance without ever having used it. A landlord withholding a deposit is a textbook covered dispute. Check your policy, because if you are covered the cost of the claim is not yours at all. This is a more likely route to your money than most of the free advice desks.

Your check-out report decides most of these cases. The opleveringsrapport — the inspection at move-out, compared against the one at move-in — is what a judge looks at. Photograph every room the day you hand back the keys, keep the check-out report, get the handover confirmed in writing, and keep your registration and deregistration dates. A tenant with dated photographs and a signed inspection almost always beats a landlord asserting damage without one.

Reporting your landlord, and what that does not achieve

Every Dutch municipality has been required since 1 January 2024 to run a reporting point for bad landlord conduct. Reporting is free and often anonymous, and the council can investigate, order changes and fine a landlord.

It will not get your deposit back. The council enforces against the landlord; it does not rule on your claim or order repayment. And read the grounds carefully: several municipalities list charging more than two months’ deposit as reportable, but not failing to return one — so a report may not even fit your situation. It costs nothing, it creates a record, and it runs alongside a claim rather than instead of it. Your city page has the local desk and what it accepts.

Proceedings are in Dutch

The courts work in Dutch. Documents in English are not automatically accepted and you may need a translation or an interpreter. Several cities have free advice services that operate in English — those are on the city pages.

Left the Netherlands, rented a student room, or has the home been sold? See getting your deposit back from abroad, student room deposits and who returns your deposit after a sale.

FindLawyer.nl offers tenants in the Netherlands a free 2-minute deposit check. If the deposit looks recoverable, it matches the tenant with an independent tenancy lawyer. FindLawyer is not a law firm.