How students looking for rooms are being scammed (and what to look out for)
Once again this year, the housing crisis is making students a prime target for scammers. Fake adverts circulating on social media are not always easy to distinguish from real ones. An increasing number of students are reporting that they have fallen victim to scams, with internationals being particularly vulnerable.
Anyone looking for a room in Amsterdam knows that the capital’s housing market can be difficult to navigate, largely because of the severe shortage of housing. Students increasingly have to make their way through a jungle of vague adverts and unreliable landlords, putting them at greater risk of being scammed in the process. Figures from the Dutch National Student Union (LSVb) illustrate the problem: in 2025, 11 per cent of the reports received by the union’s Housing Hotline concerned housing scams, compared with just 2 per cent in 2023.
These cases often involve fake adverts of varying degrees of credibility, in which “the landlord” asks the prospective tenant to transfer money in advance, supposedly as a deposit, for insurance or registration fees, or as the first month’s rent. Desperate to find somewhere to live, some students go along with these demands, only to discover that the room in question does not exist at all and that the supposed landlord is no longer responding.
Red flags
Adham Abdeldayem (19) is now something of an expert when it comes to this type of scam. He fell victim to one this summer. The economics and business student was offered a room in the Jordaan for €850 a month. “At first glance, it already seemed too good to be true,” he says. The landlord’s Facebook account had no friends and the profile picture appeared to have been AI-generated, but Abdeldayem decided to take a chance anyway.
“I had to fill in a form and transfer €90 to a bank account in Lithuania,” the Egyptian student continues. “By that point, I was already very suspicious, but I was still willing to take the risk for that amount of money. Once I had transferred it, I was told that I would have to pay another €200 to reserve a viewing. That’s when I knew for sure that I was dealing with a scam.”
Despite this, Abdeldayem continued to play along with the scammer for a while. He wanted to see what other red flags would emerge during the conversation, in order to get a better idea of how these scammers operate. “I was sent a photo of an ID, but I noticed that the name listed in the Land Registry for the address in question did not match. I was then pressured to transfer the money quickly, and when I didn’t, I was offered the option of paying half the amount instead.” After exchanging a few more messages, he asked for his €90 back. From that point onwards, “the landlord” no longer responded.
International students
Abdeldayem – who has since managed to find a room that actually exists – is far from the only student to have been swindled out of money in this way. NOS Stories found that hundreds of similar fake adverts are circulating on TikTok alone, while according to the LSVb, Facebook groups are also frequently used by scammers. Rental platform Pararius is also struggling with housing scams, as demonstrated by the legal action it has taken against TikTok. According to Pararius, the platform is not doing enough to tackle the fake adverts being posted there.
Although he has lost the €90, Abdeldayem thinks that, in the long run, it may actually prove useful to have experienced this common type of housing scam, “because I’m learning to recognise the patterns”. That is not such a strange thought: figures from the LSVb’s Housing Hotline show that international students in particular are especially vulnerable to this type of fraud, partly because they are less familiar with Dutch tenancy law and the housing market. They are also more likely to depend on the private rental sector because they lack a support network in the Netherlands. The large number of fake adverts therefore appears to cause a particularly strong sense of distrust and stress among international students.
It therefore pays off, particularly for international students, to understand what is and is not normal when looking for a room. The LSVb is calling for educational institutions to provide more information to this group. And although some of the advice may seem obvious, there are indeed guidelines for spotting fake adverts. Gijsbert Mul, a spokesperson for DUWO, sums it up in three tips: “Never respond to a request to transfer money for, for example, a viewing; if an offer seems too good to be true, it usually is; and be wary if you come across an offer that has little additional information available about it.”
