Learning Dutch Housing Terms

We’ve been daydreaming about housing in the Netherlands for a number of months now, looking at various websites to see what kind of places might be available to us.

A quick side note: the Dutch (as well as other countries, I’m sure) have a great thing they do where a certain amount of housing must be set aside for people who earn less than around €35,000/~$40,000. So when we’re looking at apartments and such, we know that 80% of anything listed for under around €710/$850 per month is reserved for these folks, and we won’t be eligible.

However, people do rent rooms, and floors of their skinny Dutch houses, and since those are just “rooms”, not full apartments, there’s still places to be found for folks like us who aren’t looking for a spacious home or apartment and don’t want to spend all of our income on housing.

Back to the search. I’ve come to learn a few things. Slaapkamer is bedroom; keuken appears to have appliances (so probably the kitchen); badkamer looks like a bathroom; balkon = balcony. Not sure about overloop, but it seems to be maybe a landing or living room area. But the big ones I didn’t know were initials VK and OH, listed in the slaapkamers.

I found this map in a search on Pararius.com (a website in English for Dutch rentals):

Floorplan of Dutch housing from Pararias website.

I asked a friend, and got this: VK is “vaste kast”, or a fixed closet, and OH is “open haard” aka a fireplace. Thank goodness I have friends who speak Dutch!

Now that you know some Dutch terms, let me know if you see a place for us to rent with a nice slaapkamer, a badkamer and keuken (shared or private), and a balkon for growing things in pots. 😀