Student rooms under 600 euros? Practically impossible to find in Amsterdam
A student room for less than 600 euros is virtually impossible to find in Amsterdam, as a random sample by Folia shows. Mini-rooms for which astronomical amounts of money are asked seem to have become the most normal thing in the world, but how normal should we actually consider this?
It should come as no surprise that students throughout the Netherlands, and certainly in Amsterdam, are struggling with a severe housing shortage. But how bad is it really for those looking for a room? Folia put it to the test and examined a number of advertisements.
Many students looking for a place to live in Amsterdam sooner or later end up on Facebook. In numerous Facebook groups, dozens of calls are posted daily by welcoming housemates, anonymous landlords and desperate house hunters. To illustrate: a membership of over 100,000 is not uncommon for these types of groups.
Sample
To gain some insight into the supply of potential rooms and studios for students, Folia took a small sample. We looked at 100 housing offers posted in various Facebook groups between 10 and 23 February, a period of two weeks. The main conclusion was that a student room for less than 600 euros is virtually untraceable. Only 8 of the 100 rooms were offered for less than 600 euros.
Students who plan to leave the family home and try their luck in Amsterdam must be prepared to spend a lot of money. Our sample showed an average room price of 943 euros per month. This corresponds almost exactly with the figures from Kamernet from 2024, which came to an average room price of 948 euros per month. By comparison: in 2020, the average price for a room in Amsterdam was still 668 euros per month.
A look at the numbers
Can the average student really afford such an amount? Let's look at the numbers: the basic grant for a student living away from home amounts to 314 euros per month. This means that, just to afford the average room price in Amsterdam, a student must earn 634 euros per month in addition to the grant. Based on the minimum wage of 14.06 euros per hour, this means that a student must work more than 45 hours a month to pay the rent, or more than 10 hours a week, in addition to his or her studies. This only applies to students aged 21 or older. An 18-year-old student earns only 7.03 euros per hour, and therefore has to work twice as many hours for the same amount of money.
But not every student is eligible for the basic grant, and older students in particular often have to make do without. They have to earn the 314 euros themselves, which amounts to 22 hours of extra work per month. And that's while the cost of groceries has also risen considerably in recent years. According to figures from the National Institute for Family Finance Information (Nibud), the average adult spends around 8 euros a day on food and drink. That amounts to around 240 euros a month, or in other words: more than 17 hours of labour for the minimum wage per month. In 2020, according to the National Institute for Family Finance Information (Nibud), the average adult paid around 134 euros a month for groceries.
Can we really expect this of students? Most bachelor's and master's programmes have a study load of around 40 hours per week. To be able to pay the average rent and groceries, a student who is not entitled to the basic grant would have to work almost 20 hours per week on top of that. All in all, this amounts to seven days of 8.5 hours of both study and work.
Ridiculous
A ridiculous situation, according to the chairman of the student union Asva, Teun Otte. “Even if students borrow money, these bizarre costs force them to work extremely hard alongside their full-time studies, or often unpaid internships. It is therefore not surprising that so many students suffer from burnout or mental health issues.”
Yet, according to Otte, there are also solutions: “The options are endless. Building more affordable student housing, increasing the housing benefit and making it available for non-self-contained rooms, substantially increasing the basic grant, mandatory and adequate internship allowances, increasing the minimum wage and abolishing the youth wage. Yet we see that our government categorically refuses to help students in any way, meaning that under the current cabinet, students are already losing out to the tune of 113 euros per month. This creates an untenable situation for students.”
Not normal
Marco Bontje, urban geographer at the UvA, also believes that we should not start to see the current situation as the new normal. “It is the reality, because that is just how the market is at the moment, but it is simply impossible for students to afford this. This is also true for many other groups, the housing market as a whole has become far too expensive. Possible solutions have been discussed for years, but apparently they have not yet been found.”
“In part, that will have to do with the high inflation rate,” says Bontje, searching for an explanation, “but if you look at housing policy, too few affordable rental homes have been built in recent years. In the Netherlands and Amsterdam, apparently different choices are being made at the moment.”
According to the geographer, it is not uncommon for students to have a part-time job alongside their studies. “But ideally you would want them to be able to spend the money they earn on things other than rent. This is becoming increasingly difficult due to the high rents. In this way, working can therefore get in the way of studying.”
Bontje does not see the situation improving in the short term. “That would require a radical change in policy, which I don’t think is realistic. We must hope that the market will recover in the long term. If you structurally ask for more than people can pay, there will come a time when no one can afford it anymore, and then prices would have to go down anyway.”
