It all seems so nice. You see a property with part of it rented out. That could be a rented attic, a rented room, a rented parking space or maybe even a rented storage/garage box.
Then you’ll have a nice extra penny each month right away. Right? Or not! No! Beware of this immensely. There are some very important things that can go wrong if you buy a property of which part or all of it is rented out!
Appraisal report is very difficult
Suppose you purchase a home with a rental attic or a rental garage box. We’ll assume for a moment that you (like 95% of all homebuyers) don’t have that money on hand, so you need to apply for a mortgage. For that mortgage, in most cases you will need an appraisal report of the property sold. However, if part or all of that property is rented out, then a standard appraisal report cannot be made.
An appraisal report must be made that takes into account the partially rented state. This is a valuation report that is quite difficult to make and even more difficult to get ‘validated’. And with the latter we mean to get this appraisal report provided with a necessary ‘stamp’ of the Dutch Housing Value Institute. It will be difficult to find an appraiser for this. If you have found such an appraiser, it is important that he/she writes down in the appraisal report what he/she thinks is the proportion of the rented (sub)part of the house in the whole. This is necessary for the notary and the tax authorities and we will come back to this later.
Banks find hiring very exciting
The selling broker will have to neatly include in the purchase agreement that a (sub)part of the “sold” is rented. The appraiser will also mention this in his/her appraisal report.
Then the purchase agreement and appraisal report are sent to the bank for a mortgage application. Because a (sub)part of the house is rented out, your application will be on a completely different pile. This will not be a standard mortgage application. Because “rentals” are seen by the bank (often rightly) as a much greater risk to their collateral. It may therefore become a lot more difficult to get a mortgage for something that is partially rented out, and the mortgage rate is expected to be a lot more expensive as a result.
Additional transfer tax
Suppose you buy that property with the rental attic for €600,000. For convenience, the appraisal value is also €600,000 and the rental part of the house takes up 1/3rd of the value according to the appraiser. So €200,000,-. Then you owe the high rate of transfer tax on that €200,000 (the rental part). In 2026, that rate is 8%. This is also the reason that the notary will want to read back in an appraisal report what the value share of the rented (sub)part is in the total value, in order to know over which value share higher transfer tax must be levied.
Daughter buys the property and moves in with a fellow student
Ah that’s nice. Her daughter buys a house with a family mortgage from daddy. Pleased, she sits at the notary and while signing she pops out that she will live there together with her fraternity mate Annemijn. Annemijn is going to rent half of the house from her. Nice, to cover the mortgage costs of daddy dearest. The notary hears this and says: “I don’t want to spoil the party, but now that I have heard that you are going to rent out half of the house, I must unfortunately charge you the high transfer tax rate (8% in 2026) on half of the value of the house.”
Oops, then living with your dispuuts mate becomes a bit more unfriendly after all.
Just keep your mouth shut and secretly rent anyway
Ok, suppose you buy that property with that rental garage box or that rental attic. So can’t you just sneak all this in and say you’re going to use the “sold” entirely yourself? Well you can in theory (but obviously shouldn’t), but where it goes wrong in practice is here:
-The fact that something was sold in partially rented condition will be so stated in the bill of sale and this bill of sale will be read by the notary.
-The appraiser may see during the appraisal recording that a property is partially rented out and must then adjust his appraisal report accordingly.
-Many people who secretly rent without the bank’s permission/knowledge have the rent come in to a bank account at the same bank where they have the mortgage. The bank sees this pretty quickly and then starts enforcing it (with dire consequences).
-Also, it may just be that the tax inspector will fish you out after the transfer of ownership if they have any reason anywhere to believe that you bought the property in a partially rented state.
Conclusion
There really is a lot involved in buying a property in partially rented condition. And also if you buy a property rent-free, but later on you are going to rent it (partly) anyway without the bank’s permission to your sorority mate, for example. A good real estate agent should know all this and protect you from this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fast boys in the real estate business who don’t know this. So make sure you are critical when picking a buying agent.