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About one in five KU Leuven students comes from outside Belgium, and almost everything that governs a kot or a flat here is written only in Dutch. This page is the money part of it in English: what a landlord may lawfully ask you for before you get the keys, and what they may not.
Enter the monthly rent and switch on what applies. The rules underneath are Flemish law — the same in Leuven, Ghent and Antwerp — and each one is linked to the page it comes from. The numbers here are ceilings, not averages: what a landlord may ask, not what a kot costs.
The rent alone, without the advance for water, electricity or internet.
Enter your monthly rent to see the total.
An estimate of common charges, not advice
This adds up the charges you turned on. It’s an estimate of what renters commonly pay, not legal or financial advice — your lease and local law govern, and the actual amounts vary by landlord and apartment.
How this works
Registering the lease is free, and it is not your job
The landlord must register the lease with the tax office within two months of signing, and registration costs nothing. If it is late, the landlord pays the fine, not you. Ask for confirmation that it has been done: an unregistered lease is worse for you than for them, because a registered one binds a new owner if the building is sold.
The plaatsbeschrijving is what gets your deposit back
A written, dated inventory of the state of the room, signed by both of you, before you move in or during the first month. It is free if you do it together — walk round with a phone and photograph everything, including the things that are already broken. Only if you both agree to bring in an expert is there a fee, and then you share it. Without a plaatsbeschrijving you are presumed to have received the place in the state you leave it in, which is an argument you do not want to be having in June.
What can be charged on top of the rent — and what cannot
On a student lease the rent covers everything except water, energy, telecommunications, and the second-residence tax where the contract explicitly says so. A charge for anything else — cleaning of the common parts, an administration fee, a fee for the contract itself — is not something the law provides for. If you are renting through an agency, the agency's commission is the landlord's cost, not yours.
The deposit may be asked for three months early, and no earlier
A landlord may not ask for the deposit more than three months before the lease starts. If someone wants money in February to hold a room for September, that is outside the rule.
Since 1 January 2025 there is one Flemish kotlabel, and Leuven's older green and blue labels no longer count. The label means the room has been inspected for fire safety, electrical and heating certificates, occupancy limits and building permission. Leuven's own version carries a QR code on the door you can scan; the Flemish register at kotlabel.vlaanderen.be lets you look an address up before you visit. A kot with no label is not a bargain — it is a room nobody has checked.
From each anniversary of the lease the landlord may raise the rent in line with the health index, and must tell you in writing. An increase can be applied up to three months back, but no further. An indexation is not a free hand to set a new price: it is a formula, and the federal government publishes the calculator.