Expert expat housing & relocation services in Delft

Why students and young couples choose Delft

Delft is defined by TU Delft - one of the top technical universities in Europe. The city attracts PhD researchers, engineers, and young professionals working at TNO, the Dutch Institute for Applied Scientific Research, or commuting to The Hague or Rotterdam.

For young couples, Delft offers a rare combination: a historic canal-lined center, affordable rents compared to neighboring cities, and excellent train connections (8 minutes to The Hague, 12 minutes to Rotterdam).

The Delft rental market

Delft is small - about 103,000 residents, a significant portion of whom are students. This creates two distinct markets: the student housing market (often through DUWO) and the private sector where working professionals compete for a limited supply of quality apartments.

Average search time is 5 weeks. The challenge in Delft isn't price - it's availability. New listings in the private sector are rare, and well-maintained apartments in the center go fast.

27% of our Delft placements happen off-market. In a city this small, knowing the right landlords makes all the difference. See how we operate.

Where to look

Centrum

Canal-side living at its best. Small but beautiful apartments in historic buildings. Walking distance to everything. Highly competitive - expect €1,300 to €1,800.

Voorhof & Buitenhof

More modern, more affordable, and close to the TU Delft campus. Popular with researchers and young professionals. Rents from €1,000 to €1,400.

Tanthof

A residential neighborhood south of the center. Spacious apartments, quieter atmosphere, and family-friendly. Good value at €1,000 to €1,300.

What to know before you sign

Dutch lease contracts in Delft follow the same rules as everywhere in the Netherlands, but student-area landlords sometimes include restrictive clauses about subletting or registration. We review every contract to protect you. View our relocation packages.

Housing for TU Delft PhDs, postdocs, and staff

A large share of the internationals we help in Delft come through TU Delft. PhD candidates in the Netherlands are university employees with a salary, which means landlords treat them as working professionals rather than students - on paper. In practice, many arrive at the same moment as a wave of new students, right when the market is tightest. If your contract starts with the academic year, begin searching earlier than feels necessary.

The university's short-stay housing, arranged through DUWO, buys you time - but it is temporary by design. The hard step is the one after: moving from short-stay into the private sector. Because so much of Delft's stock is built around students (rooms, shared flats, small studios), the pool of self-contained apartments that suits a postdoc couple or a staff member with a family is thin. That, more than price, is the real bottleneck.

Two things to watch. First, registration: you need to register at your address to get your BSN, and some rooms in student houses do not allow it. Never sign for a place where you cannot register. Second, leases near campus often carry the restrictive clauses we mentioned above - subletting bans, registration limits. Read them, or have someone read them for you.

Also be honest about whether Delft itself is the right base. The trains change the math: The Hague is 8 minutes away, Rotterdam 12. Rijswijk sits quietly between Delft and The Hague, and Delfgauw borders the TU campus on the east side. For a four-year PhD or a longer staff contract, a slightly longer bike ride to campus in exchange for a significantly better home is often the trade worth making. We will tell you when that is the case - even if it means searching outside Delft.

What clients say about working with us

They did a great job helping to find our house. They were always prompt and responsive. The place we got wasn't on the market so we wouldn't have gotten it without them!

— Latisha Allen, via Trustpilot

The home in this review was never publicly listed - the kind of off-market placement described earlier on this page.

Looking for a home in Delft? Book a free consultation - we'll give you an honest picture of what's available.