Your first days in your home in the Netherlands

I was really lucky that I got a lot of help from my company, friends, and coworkers. Being an American, there's been a lot of adjustment in my expectations (big, well-appointed apartments are fairly standard there). It took me quite a while to find a good place, some because my standards were too high and some because finding an apartment in the Amsterdam city limits is difficult in general. Some advice I'd give:

There's always going to be a trade-off between price and general quality of place, distance to the center of town, closeness to transit, etc. Everyone is going to make different choices, but when researching I did a lot of "google-stalking" and also visiting different neighborhoods to see what's available, etc. As an example I really liked the Rivierenbuurt area for various reasons but especially it was close to a lot of restaurants, but when I looked closer, those restaurants are really pricey likely because they are down the street from the RAI convention center.

You can investigate different places and prices on Pararius or Funda - a few important things I'd like to call out. In the US we have 'furnished' or 'unfurnished' places, but in NL they also have 'shell' apartments, where the apartment may come in a not-yet complete state and you have to pay for flooring or light fixtures yourself (occasionally it won't come with a kitchen, needs painting, etc).

In my opinion, knowing what the energy rating for an apartment is and whether you have a gas or electric/induction stove are key items these days given the cost of natural gas. I'm paying more for my apt than some of my coworkers but because my energy level is better I spent a lot less on heating this last winter, so I likely broke even.

I'd also learn as much as you can about the move in and out process as well as all the different components in a house, preferably before you sign a lease. I found it a little strange (compared to my experience in the US) that building owners don't do a lot of preparation on an apartment before new tenant move in, such as fixing walls, doing a deep clean, etc, so you will also want to document this and set the expectation that you'll leave it as you found it (many owners demand that you pay many hundreds of euros to professionally clean a place, etc). There's also simply different technologies in use from different countries. My mechanical ventilation unit was making noise last year, and I didn't even know what that device was. It's not tough to figure out with Google/asking friends/coworkers, but not being familiar with it AND not knowing Dutch can make it difficult.

Good luck out there!

Thank you so much for your detailed post, @ 3Josh

I hope members will pay special attention to details you mentioned.

All the very best

Bhavna

@3Josh

Thank you for the shared your experience.