As promised, to celebrate one month here in Amsterdam we’re releasing a series of posts on our first impressions— the delightful, surprising, annoying, and whimsical things we’ve noticed about Amsterdam, Holland, the Netherlands, and Dutch life since we’ve arrived.
Our apartment complex from across the street
1. Furnished or unfurnished?
In the U.S., when we sign a contract for an apartment that’s “unfurnished,” we plan to bring our own… furnishings. Couches, cooking accoutrements, bed linens, that sort of thing.
Here… much to our surprise, unfurnished actually means completely empty.
So, no large appliances like stoves, refrigerators, or washing machines, for starters… but also no outlets, curtains, shower heads, or floors, either.
Yes, you read that right. It’s common here for people to take the FLOOR with them when they leave. One of Tegan’s new colleagues confirmed neatly stacking up his linoleum tiles in a friend’s car to transport to his new place just a few months ago.
This has boggled our minds!
Rightly, we assumed that it would be a bridge too far to try to move into an apartment with no floor and try to purchase a stove, bed, etc. right upon moving in, to say nothing about learning enough Dutch on the fly to organize getting outlets installed.
Thankfully, there’s another option that’s popular in expat-heavy Amsterdam– furnished apartments! Our realtor recommended this route, which was definitely our best bet.
In the U.S., furnished apartments have the reputation of being a bit shabby. More than one person joked that perhaps we were moving into a “divorced dad” setup. However, it’s perfectly normal here, and the furnishings are actually super nice.
2. Realtor or DIY?
Speaking of realtors, that’s another decision to make prior to the big move. As we said in our one month anniversary post, we decided to use a realtor/broker, or makelaar, to help us with our housing search here.
Anyone who knows us knows we are pretty fierce about doing things ourselves, even the really frustrating or difficult ones. This is definitely stereotypical of American culture, but we’ve always put a bit of a premium on being as independent as possible.
We ended up doing most of our move ourselves– we didn’t pay for any expat services for finding jobs or doing our immigration paperwork, and we sold or donated most of our belongings prior to leaving. But after a lot of discussion, we thought it was for the best to hand over the reins to someone who actually knows what they’re doing for housing.
If you’re just starting out, there are lots of places to look for housing online– Pararius, Funda, and other housing conglomerators are just as common as in the U.S. We’ve always found our housing on Craigslist or something similar, so we thought we would go this route initially… but the housing market here is insane.
We thought we would never see anything crazier than Boston– having to sign a contract 8 months prior to moving in– but here it’s crazy in the exact opposite way, with most housing turning over mere days between tenants.
Reaching out to independent brokers seemed to be a fool’s errand with how fast the turnover is, and after reading horror stories on Facebook expat groups about scams, failed searches, and beyond, we reached out to some well-reviewed brokers via email.
Cavan from HousingNet was by far the most professional that we spoke with. He set up a FaceTime call, sent us a really detailed form to gauge what we were looking for, and truly handled everything.
We told him we were interested in a place with a washing machine, lots of natural light, and a terrace, preferably on an upper floor. We decided on the western side of the city somewhat at random, and turned everything over to him.
He took care of finding places that fit our criteria, arranging viewings and sending video remarks to us in the U.S., negotiating with the agents and landlords, and getting us across the finish line.
Contracts here are (naturally) in Dutch, so he also took care of translating the documents, arranging utilities, and making sure the place was move-in ready when we arrived from the airport.
We can’t even explain the relief that we felt in having our own place to land, rather than a hotel or Airbnb!
It was the easiest move-in we’ve ever had.
Our place!
Move-in day, freshly arrived from an overnight flight
We ended up in a fully-furnished, 3rd floor walkup on a busy main street with gorgeous floor-to-ceiling windows, an idyllic terrace looking out over interior courtyards, and yes, floors included.
Ironically, it has loads of storage space, which is quite a premium in this city… but not necessarily something at the top of our priority list given that we arrived here with 2 suitcases each.
We are obsessed with having our own terrace— which is apparently a common thing here, but feels like a total luxury to us. We love having meals out there and enjoying the afternoon sun.
Since we’re on the top floor, the stairs are a bit of a doozy, more like a ladder than a staircase, in our opinion— so we were naturally quite charmed when Cavan exclaimed “you would never get stairs as nice as this in the city center!”
We don’t have a freezer (so we’ve been saving a decent chunk of grocery money on our ice cream habit), and don’t really have an oven– instead it’s like a combined microwave-Easy Bake mini-oven that we’re slightly trepidatious about– but are so thrilled to FINALLY (after 5 years!) have our own washing machine!
The floor-to-ceiling windows in the bedroom (within full view of everyone across the courtyard…) are also something to adjust to, but as Tegan’s boss said, “Dutch people love looking into everyone else’s windows.” Hmm…
We couldn’t be happier in our place, truly– we really feel we lucked out!
3. Where in the city is best?
We are certainly not authorities on the topic of where to live in Amsterdam. As many of you know, we moved here sight-unseen– we’d never been to The Netherlands before and really didn’t know what to expect.
After some brief research, it seemed the western side of the city was similar to what we were used to back in the U.S., so we told Cavan to focus his search in the Bos and Lommer, Oud West, and de Baarsjes areas of the city.
We knew we weren’t interested in living in the city center— the apartments are really small and really expensive, and after living in 2 heavily-touristed cities in the U.S., we have a fairly short fuse for rowdy tourists.
Another area popular with students and expats in Amsterdam is de Pijp, south of the city center. We contemplated living there, but also decided that we didn’t want to move to the “expat neighborhood” right away, as we’d like to make Dutch friends and be able to speak Dutch in our day-to-day lives.
If money were no issue, the Jordaan area next to the city center is absolutely dreamy. But we really wanted to stay within a reasonable budget, and we’re glad that we stuck to our guns. While it’s super cute there, the apartments are also quite small and expensive, similar to the city center.
When we travel, we like to “live like the locals do” whenever possible, and an integral part of Why Not Walk is discovering the local side of things. With that in mind, the western side of the city seemed like our best bet.
Ultimately, we ended up in de Baarsjes, a 10-minute bike ride from the city center. The neighborhood has been described to us as “hipster,” “up-and-coming,” and “not very pretty, but a great place for young people.”
While there may not be historic canal houses here, we love it. Much of the neighborhood was built in the postwar years, so it’s more of a Brutalist style, which is… admittedly, not cute. But, we have much more space than we would in the city center, and we’re paying much less for it. Best of all, we are really close to the city center, and sandwiched between two huge, gorgeous parks– Erasmuspark and Rembrandtpark.
The neighborhood is a great mix of foreigners and Dutch people, with loads of Turkish and Moroccan restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores. We may never leave! Or we may learn Turkish before Dutch– we’ll see.
4. Cost of living?
The salaries are much lower in Europe than what we’re used to in the urban U.S., and the taxes are much higher. With that in mind, we were hoping that we would get some reprieve on cost of living.
In Boston, we got an absolute steal on our apartment– $2000 USD per month in a very desirable area, Brookline. Most of the apartments in our neighborhood were $2400 to $3000 per month and were much smaller and shabbier, though ours could definitely use quite a bit of TLC as well.
All in all, the housing crisis in Boston meant that you had to be content with overpriced and very low-quality housing stock, and buying was absolutely out of the question, even for a double-income/no kid household like ours, with two well-paying jobs.
In Amsterdam, there are similar issues. We pay 1500 euros per month (about $1700 USD) for a slightly smaller but much nicer place, which is fully-furnished. Unfurnished apartments were somewhat cheaper, but as mentioned above, not a good fit for our situation.
We’ve been joking that our apartment in Boston looked like a fraternity house, and our apartment in Amsterdam looks like “adults live here.” The owners clearly put a lot of thought and care into furnishing the place, and it shows. We’re thrilled!
As for utilities, we would often pay around $25 to $40 USD per month for electricity and gas in Boston. We didn’t have air conditioning, and our apartment complex paid for water and heat– which is standard in Boston. Wifi was a highly-annoying $75 per month for a basic package (no cable or add-ons), but we really tried to be conscientious about keeping the electricity low. Our cell phones cost about $60 per month for unlimited data on a 5G network.
Here, the utilities are jaw-droppingly expensive in comparison. We pay a flat rate of 126 euros per month for gas and electricity, calculated based on the last tenants’ usage. The Netherlands has one of the highest utilities levies in the world, unfortunately. We are hoping to use less than this and get reimbursed at the end of the year. Wifi is 35 euros per month, and there are taxes levied on polders (water) and trash. Our cell phone plans are only 10 euros per month, but we only get 5GB of 4G data per month.
5. Trash and recycling?
Apparently, the government doesn’t trust people to recycle correctly (to be fair, almost no one does…), so they’ve taken over.
This means that you put your waste and plastics into the same trash bag, and take it out to the street to throw into an underground trash bin. When the city comes to pick it up each week, they then take it to their sorting facilities and fill it with water, at which point, the plastic rises to the surface and is removed to be recycled. The rest of the trash is then compacted.
Glass has its own underground bin, as does corrugated cardboard, like pizza boxes and delivery boxes. These are also at street level, so minor sorting is involved. It’s overall a great system, and the trash doesn’t smell as bad because it’s contained underground.
What questions do you have about life as expats in Amsterdam? In honor of our first month, we’ll be releasing more “first impressions” content shortly– office culture, biking, grocery shopping, and more! But as always, feel free to let us know in the comments if there’s anything you’d like us to cover, and you can follow along on Instagram or Facebook!
