Renting Out a Room in Utrecht Without an Agent (2026)
You have a spare room, or a house you want to let room by room, and you would rather not hand a month's rent to an agent to find someone. You do not need one. What you do need is to know the handful of rules an agent would otherwise quietly take care of, because since 2023 most of them are yours by law, whoever finds the tenant.
This guide is for private owners in Utrecht: people letting one room in the home they live in, and people letting a whole house by the room. Every rule below links to the government page or the law it comes from. Where something is still a bill, it says so.
It is not legal advice, and your situation may have a detail that changes the answer. The links are there so you can read the rule yourself.
First question: do you need a permit?
In Utrecht, splitting a home into rooms is regulated by the gemeente's own housing ordinance. Article 49 of the Huisvestingsverordening gemeente Utrecht says a home may not be turned from self-contained (zelfstandige) into non-self-contained (onzelfstandige) living space without a permit, and then exempts two situations:
- A home used by a maximum of three people.
- Hospitaverhuur. The ordinance defines it as letting to a maximum of two people, by a landlord who owns at least 50% of the home and keeps living there with their own household.
From four people upward, the gemeente's loket page for letting rooms asks for two permits at once: one to rent out rooms (the omzettingsvergunning) and an omgevingsvergunning. That page also lists the conditions a permit application is tested against, including at least 18 m² of usable floor area per resident after the conversion, sound insulation and fire safety. It links to the Hospitawijzer, a short questionnaire that tells you what applies to your address.
One thing to watch. The gemeente has two pages on this subject, and they do not say the same thing. The woningdelen page says only that letting to more than three people needs a permit, and does not mention the hospita exemption at all. The loket page gives the full rule, including the 50% ownership condition. The ordinance itself is the one that binds, and it matches the loket page.
And if you bought the home recently, read the same loket page on opkoopbescherming before anything else. For a home it covers, that page says you may not let it within four years of purchase.
What the Wet goed verhuurderschap asks of you
Since 1 July 2023 the Wet goed verhuurderschap applies to every landlord, including a private owner letting one room. Article 2 lid 2 lists what "good landlordship" means. For a room, five of its parts matter in practice.
A clear selection procedure (onderdeel a). You must use a clear and transparent selection procedure, use and communicate objective selection criteria when you offer the room publicly, and explain your choice to the candidates you turn down. The law puts this duty on the landlord or letting agent, so it stays with whoever lets the room, also in a shared house where the housemates choose the new resident. Write your criteria in the listing, and send each candidate you turn down a line on why.
A deposit of at most two months (onderdeel c). The law points to article 7:261b BW. On the government's deposit page: at most two months of kale huur for contracts from 1 July 2023. You pay it back within 14 days after the tenancy ends if you deduct nothing. If you do deduct something, you pay the rest within 30 days and send a full written specification of the costs.
A written contract (onderdeel d). Every tenancy is put in writing.
Written information for the tenant (onderdeel e). When the contract is signed, you give the tenant, in writing: their rights and duties, the deposit and how and when it comes back, a contact point for questions, the contact details of the gemeente's meldpunt, how service costs work, and the valuation of the room's quality and its maximum rent. In Utrecht that meldpunt is Klacht over huren, at utrecht.nl/klachtoverhuren. A complaint there may be made anonymously, which is worth knowing from your side of the table too.
Service costs by the rules (onderdeel f). Service costs follow articles 7:259 and 7:261 BW, with a yearly specification.
The government's overview of rules for landlords covers the same list in plain Dutch. The gemeente supervises all of this and can enforce it.
The rent follows the points
A room is valued with the points system for non-self-contained housing (the woningwaarderingsstelsel onzelfstandige woonruimte). On the government's hospita page the rule is direct: the tenant may pay at most the rent that system gives.
The Huurcommissie's Huurprijscheck for rooms calculates the maximum kale huur. You need the home's WOZ value, the floor area of the room, the shared spaces, and how many people share them. The same page says that since 1 January 2025 the landlord must attach a points calculation to every new contract.
Run the check before you write the listing. The government's room page tells tenants that they can ask the Huurcommissie to assess the rent within six months if it is above the maximum. A price you set above the points total is one a tenant can have lowered.
If you live there yourself: the hospita rules today
Letting a room in the home you live in has its own tenancy rules. From the government's hospita page:
- The first nine months are a trial period. In that time you can end the tenancy without giving a reason, with three months' notice.
- If you do not end it in time, the tenant gets an open-ended contract automatically.
- The same page describes the kamerverhuurvrijstelling: if you own the home and your yearly rental income stays under a limit the page states, you do not have to declare it. The limit changes, so read it there.
The government also keeps a hospita checklist that walks through the rest, such as your mortgage lender and insurer.
Registration at the address
Anyone who comes to live in the Netherlands for longer than four months must register in the Basisregistratie Personen (BRP), and a new arrival does it within five days, per the government's BRP page. Someone who moves within the country passes the new address to the gemeente. For hospita letting, the government's page assumes that you and the tenant are both registered at the address.
Settle it before the contract is signed.
The tenant does not pay the agent
If you do hire an agent, the agent works for you, and the tenant pays nothing for it. That is article 7:417 lid 4 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek, confirmed by the Hoge Raad in 2015. The government's page on bemiddelingskosten says it applies to social housing, private sector homes and rooms, and names the disguises: administration costs, registration costs, contract costs, letting costs.
This matters to you even without an agent. If a party that works for you charges your tenant, the tenant can reclaim it from that party, and it happened on your listing.
What is pending: the hospita bill
On 7 July 2026 the government sent bill 36992 to the Tweede Kamer to change the rules for hospitaverhuur. According to the government's announcement, it proposes a temporary contract of up to five years with a nine-month trial period, new grounds to end the tenancy (when the home is sold, including a forced sale, when the hospita dies, and, for a hospita who rents their own home, when they move), and that the room tenant's income no longer counts toward an income-dependent rent increase on a hospita's own rented home.
It is still a bill. It aims to take effect on 1 January 2027 and would only apply to contracts concluded after it does. The Kamer can still change it or vote it down. A contract you sign this year follows today's rules.
A short checklist
- Check whether you need a permit: the Hospitawijzer, or article 49 of the ordinance.
- Run the Huurprijscheck for the room and attach the points calculation to the contract.
- Write your selection criteria into the listing.
- Ask a deposit of at most two months' kale huur.
- Put the contract in writing, with the written information from the Wet goed verhuurderschap attached.
- Explain your choice to the candidates you turn down.
- Make sure the tenant can register at the address.
Where Vond fits
Vond opens in Utrecht with rooms listed by the people who let them. If you let a room in the home you live in, listing is free during the beta. Otherwise listing is free and you pay a flat fee only when a tenant who first contacted you through Vond moves in; the amount is on the pricing page. Tenants pay nothing. We speak to whoever is letting the place and build the listing with them. We do not verify identity, we do not check a register, and we do not claim to. We also do not write your contract, run your selection, or tell you the rules above are met; those stay yours.
If you want your room to be among the first on it, tell us what you have.