Getting Your Deposit Back in Delft
2 months’ bare rent
Back within 14 days of your tenancy ending — 30 days if the landlord deducts something.
Two months' bare rent is the legal maximum deposit, and it must come back within 14 days of your tenancy ending — 30 days if the landlord deducts something.
Your deposit
The rent for the room itself, per month. This is the figure the cap is measured against, and it is usually not the figure in the advert.
These do not count towards the deposit cap:
- Service charges (servicekosten) — cleaning, a caretaker, shared internet, furniture
- Gas, water and electricity billed on a meter of your own
- An energy performance fee (energieprestatievergoeding, EPV)
Leave this blank and the page still shows you the legal maximum.
The day the agreement ended — not the day you handed back the keys.
Nothing you type here is saved, sent anywhere or written down. It stays in this browser window and is gone when you close it.
What the law says about your deposit
Type your monthly rent and the legal maximum appears here.
When does it have to come back?
Add the day your tenancy ended and both deadlines appear here.
Two different questions, and only one of them gets your money back
Delft publishes its tenant-rights route — the reporting point, the free Huurteam, what counts as a breach — only in Dutch. There is no English page about it on delft.nl, and the two figures that decide most of what happens after you move out are not on delft.nl at all: they are in the Civil Code. This page is those two figures, in English, with the article behind each one so you can check it or quote it.
One thing to get right before you start. The cap is measured against the bare rent — the rent for the room itself. On a room advertised at a single all-in figure, the bare rent is lower than the advert, so the highest deposit anyone may ask you for is lower too.
What the landlord may keep — and what they may not
May be deducted
- Rent you still owe
- Service charges you still owe
- An energy performance fee (EPV) you still owe
- Costs the landlord has actually incurred to repair damage you are liable for — the law says aantoonbaar gemaakte kosten, costs demonstrably made
May not be deducted
- Ordinary wear and tear, and anything that has simply perished with age
- A flat cleaning fee, an administration fee or a fee for the keys
- An estimate or a quote with no invoice behind it
- Anything at all, if the written itemised breakdown never arrived
art. 7:261b lid 3 sub a and b BW, with art. 7:218 BW on damage
What your contract says cannot take this away
None of this can be signed away. A clause saying the deposit comes back within two months, or that three months' rent is payable as a deposit, or that a fixed cleaning charge is deducted when you leave, cannot be held against you: the law says the provisions of this part may not be departed from. If your contract says one thing and the article says another, the article is what counts.
Does this apply to your tenancy?
- A room with a shared kitchen or bathroom (onzelfstandige woonruimte)
- A self-contained flat, including one in the liberalised sector — the deposit article is written back in on purpose
- Social housing, including a room or flat from a corporation such as Duwo
- A room in your landlord's own home (hospitaverhuur), from the first day
- A sublet, on a reading of the scope provisions — this one is not a quotation, so treat it as the likely answer rather than a settled one
Where it does not apply
- A let whose use of the home is, by its nature, short-term only — a holiday let. Whether a particular let is that is for a court to say, and the heading on the contract does not decide it.
arts. 7:232, 7:233 and 7:247 BW; Woningwet art. 46a
If your contract is an older one
If your tenancy agreement was signed before 1 July 2023, one half of this page is clear and the other is not, and it is better to know which is which.
The government states that the maximum deposit applies to agreements dated 1 July 2023 onwards, so this page cannot tell you that a larger deposit agreed before that date was unlawful. On the repayment deadline the law contains no transitional provision either way — and the deadline is triggered by the tenancy ending rather than by the day it was signed. Nobody should give you a confident answer in either direction, and this is exactly the question to put to Huurteam Delft, which costs nothing.
Photographs, and who has to prove what
If you and your landlord wrote down the state of the room when you moved in, you have to hand it back in the state that description records — minus changes you were allowed to make, and minus whatever has perished with age. If nobody wrote anything down, the law presumes, unless the landlord proves otherwise, that you received the room in the state it is in now. So having no check-in report usually puts you in a stronger position than people expect, not a weaker one.
Where a description was made, the presumption runs the other way for damage, and your own photographs are what answers it. Gemeente Delft says the same thing on its own page about what you can do yourself: take dated photographs of how you find the home when you move in, and of how you leave it, so that if you are later blamed for damage you can show what it looked like.
- Take dated photographs when you move in, and again on the day you leave
- Keep a log of problems and of when you reported each one
- Keep the messages — if the landlord never replies, you have it in writing that you tried
- Ask in writing for anything you want in writing
- If a landlord has defrauded you, report it to the police as well
Where to report a deposit that is too high
A deposit above the maximum is worth reporting even though the report will not be what gets your money back. It is the half of these rules the municipality actually enforces, the report costs you nothing, and Huurteam Delft is set up for exactly this.
Huurteam Delft
Gemeente Delft's reporting point for private tenants, and the place to report a deposit that is too high — the municipality's own page lists paying too much borg as a reason to get in touch. The team advises, can come and look at the home, and stays your point of contact through whatever follows. It is free, because the municipality pays for it.
- Phone
- 085 273 49 33
- Hours
- Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 16:00
The report form on delft.nl is in Dutch only, and its postcode list covers 2611 to 2629. The team answers the phone in Dutch. Its list of problems to pick from has no entry for the deposit, so use the free-text field for a legal question and say what happened.
- Reporting unwanted landlord behaviour — Gemeente DelftThe municipality's own page on the rules a landlord has to keep to, and where to report a breach. In Dutch.
- The Huurteam Delft report formThe form itself. In Dutch; it asks for your postcode, your house number and your landlord's name, and lets you attach your contract and photographs.
- Huurteam Delft — what the team doesHow the team works and what it can help with. In Dutch.
Gemeente Delft's own advice is to use Huurteam and nothing else. Businesses online offer to handle this for a fee; the municipality says it does not recommend them, because the case takes just as long and you have paid a middleman for it.
What the municipality can impose
This is the part that surprises people, and it is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on it. Charging a deposit above the maximum is a breach of good landlordship, which the municipality enforces and can fine a landlord for. Failing to pay the deposit back is not on that list at all. So the municipality can fine your landlord and cannot order them to pay you — and a fine goes to the state rather than into your account.
The maximum fine for breaching the rules of good landlordship: €27,500.00 (2026)
The Act cites a fine category rather than a figure, and the amounts in that scale are re-set every two years on 1 January. The body of the Criminal Code still prints the previous amount of €16,750, with an editor's note giving this one from 1 January 2026. A repeat within four years moves the landlord up to the next category.
Wet goed verhuurderschap art. 19 lid 1, with art. 23 lid 4 Sr
The body that does not decide this
Not the Huurcommissie. Its tasks are granted by law as a closed list, and the list of Civil Code articles it may rule on does not include the deposit article. Its own index of topics carries rent, rent increases, maintenance and service charges, and no deposit. Taking a deposit there costs you weeks and ends with a body that has no power to decide it.
If it has to go to court
The sub-district court (kantonrechter)
A deposit claim is a tenancy case, and a tenancy case is heard by the kantonrechter whatever it is worth — there is no minimum and no ceiling. For a deposit that has not come back, this is the only body that can order your landlord to pay it.
Going to court costs money, and the fee depends on the amount you claim
| Amount claimed | Court fee |
|---|---|
| Up to €500, or an amount that cannot be put at a figure | €93.00 |
| More than €500 and up to €1,500 — where a room deposit usually lands | €233.00 |
| More than €1,500 and up to €12,500 | €265.00 |
| More than €12,500 | €753.00 |
| Any amount, if you qualify as being of limited means — onvermogenden | €93.00 |
Published fees for 2026. They are re-set every 1 January.
Wet griffierechten burgerlijke zaken, bijlage (in force 1 January 2026)
If you are the one being sued rather than the one suing, you pay no court fee at all in a kantonrechter case (art. 4 lid 1 onder b Wgbz).
The party that loses is ordered to pay the costs, so a landlord who loses is normally ordered to pay yours. That is an order rather than a guarantee that the money arrives.
You do not need a lawyer. In a case before the kantonrechter you are allowed to act for yourself.
The court works in Dutch, and so does everything you file with it. If you do not read Dutch, get help with the paperwork before you start rather than after: the free services above are where to begin.
You have about 5 years to bring the claim, counted from the day the refund fell due.
That is the general rule for a claim to performance of a contract, applied to this one; no provision names deposits in particular. It is not unlimited, and it is not a reason to wait.
Free help
Instituut Sociaal Raadslieden
Free advice on rules, letters and money, through Gemeente Delft. The place to take a contract or a letter you cannot make sense of.
- Website
- delft.nl
The page is in Dutch.
What this page can and cannot tell you
This page does not decide whether your landlord broke the law
This is not legal advice
Also on this site
- Legal maximum rent for a room in DelftThe deposit cap and the rent ceiling are measured against the same bare rent, so if one looks wrong the other is worth checking.
- What do you pay in Delft?Neighbours report what they pay, and they report the room rent and the service costs as two separate figures — which is exactly the split the deposit cap turns on. Useful for checking whether the bare rent you have been quoted is the going rate. It does not collect deposits.
Official pages
- Good landlordship: step-by-step plan for tenantsThe ministry's own guide for tenants, in English. It states the deposit maximum and both deadlines.
- What the Good Landlordship Act means for tenants and people looking for a homeThe ministry's leaflet, published in Dutch, English, Bulgarian, Polish, Romanian and Spanish.
- What you can do yourself — Gemeente DelftDated photographs, keeping a log, asking in writing. In Dutch.
- Civil Code, Book 7 — rentingThe deposit article is 7:261b. The consolidated text, in Dutch.
- The Good Landlordship Act (Wet goed verhuurderschap)What a landlord has to do, what a municipality may fine them for, and the duty to run a reporting point. In Dutch.
About these tools
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Delft and towns around the world. AI researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.