Our New Home

Our new apartment is on Cornelis Anthoniszstraat.  It's in the Oud Zuid (Old South) and it is a beautiful area of Amsterdam.  It is full of cafes, restaurants and nice bars, and we're only a few minutes walk from amazing Amsterdam features like the Albert Cuypmarkt, the Concertgebouw, the Stadelijk museum and the Vondelpark.  It's also only 2.5km in one direction to my work, and 2.5km in the other direction to the Centre (Dam Square etc.).  It's pretty much the perfect location.

The spaces between the upmarket main streets are criss-crossed with quiet, bicycle-filled laneways that are lined by rows of well maintained early 1900's red brick buildings.  These buildings are typically 4 or 5 levels high and quite narrow, but on the inside much refurbishment has taken place and often multiple adjacent rooms, either horizontally or vertically, have been joined together to make family sized homes.  The space we can call our own for the next while is just a single floor in a single building, but should be plenty for the two of us.

Our place comes fully furnished which reduces the stress of going furniture and appliance shopping, and the greater problem of furniture and appliance selling that we will encounter when the time comes to move home to Australia.  A large storage room on the 4th level has a full set of built-ins for keeping our things as well as the washing machine, and is large enough for it to double as a spare bedroom for when we have guests over.

The only real compromise we've had to make (other than the price) is small bathroom. Put it this way- if you've got long legs, I hope you're happy to use the toilet with the door open, because it's not gonna close while you're sitting in there...

Apartment search completed!

Everything has been finalised with our new apartment! The payments have all been completed, the contract signed and the keys handed over.  After a glass of wine to celebrate in our new living room, it was back to the old apartment though.  We'll stay there as we gradually transfer our things and get utilities set up over the next few days.

Apartment search completed?

Well, hopefully...

We had our meeting with the owner of our potential apartment and he seemed happy for us to rent his place.  He was a bit apprehensive at first because this apartment has been in his family for quite a few years and this is the first time he has rented it out, but after he met us and talked to us (and we assured him that we were low maintenance tenants) he was more than happy.

All that is left to do is sign the contract, and transfer the deposit.  And it is this small addendum that is the source of my slight apprehension.  As I mentioned in a previous post the initial outlay for renting is 2 months rent as a deposit, 1 month rent up front and 1 month + 19% as the agent fee.  We have the money, except it's in our Australian bank account, in Australian dollars.  However, my bank requires that we have a security token on order to transfer money overseas- one of those keyring devices that spits out a number every 30 seconds that is unique to your account.  We've ordered one, but it's not due to arrive for a few weeks, and this moeny needs to be transferred within 48 hours...

So after a late night spent skyping our families back in Australia, we've managed to sort it out (I think).  International transfers have quite a few different fields to fill in compared to domestic transfers.  But the money has disappeared from our account, so fingers crossed that it appears in agent's account soon enough.

Apartment search continues

We might have found our new house!  Sam has been in contact with an agency that deals specifically with helping expats find a place to live and getting set up.  The business is called Expat Help, and Edward is keen to help, having even spent time on Skype with Sam talking about things like utilities and tax.  We saw the place tonight and have officially registered our interest, and we have a meeting with the house owner on Monday.

The apartment is right on the limit of our budget (actually, on the wrong side at the moment...), but as long as Sam can find some work and my 30% tax ruling application is successful then we will be fine.  It's in a perfect location, is newly renovated, and has plenty of room.  The bathroom is a bit of a squeeze but there has to be compromise somewhere.

More details to come if our application is successful...

Search for an apartment

We started seriously looking for an apartment to live today.  We have 6 weeks left in the place provided by my work, and the sooner we can find our own place the better.  The process is proving to be a bit more complicated than looking for a place in Australia, and significantly more expensive. In Australia the apartment search can basically all be done via the internet- log onto realestate.com.au or domain.com.au, look for places you like, schedule inspections via email and wait until you find something suitable.

In the Netherlands, real estate searching is done via an agent (makelaar, literally 'broker').  It seems the most reliable way is to sign up with one or two of these agents, give them your requirements, and they look after the search for you.  This sounds great but like in any field there is a chance of getting a dodgy agent, or one that pushes their own agenda rather than looking for the place that suits the client best.  Finding an agent that has good reviews from friends or on the internet is important.

Also the initial cost is high- the agents charge 1 month rent + 19% tax (only if they fund you a place of course), and the bond is normally 2 months rent.  Even though this bond is refunded at the completion of the tenancy, this still adds up to a fairly sizable outlay.

There are a few websites (e.g. www.funda.nl) but these seem to be listings mostly as fronts to the agents, and also some private listing sites which might agent fees to be avoided (e.g. www.marktplaats.nl) but there often seems to be a reason that the landlord has cut out the middleman.  We are finding that the concept of Registration (''inschrijving") is quite important.  Whenever you move to a different address, you must register with the local council e.g. for tax and electoral purposes.  A number of these private listings have said that that they do not allow the tenant to register at the address, which is illegal and often for some sort of tax dodge.  While the rent price might look good, it is not worth the problems that may arise.

A website with lots of good information for this is expatica nl, and in particular this renter's guide was useful.

We haven't made much progress yet, but have contacted a few agents.  I'll be continuing to post updates on the progress of our house search, and will give a review of the makelaars that we use (in case someone else is looking for a good agent).