Moving Guide & Checklist

Everything to arrange around moving day in the Netherlands — the 5-day registration deadline, meter readings, municipal taxes, and the insurance that must start before you get the keys.

The keys are yours. What follows is mostly administration, and most of it has a deadline attached — miss the registration window and it can hold up your benefits; miss the insurance one and you own an uninsured house.

Before the keys change hands

Two things happen on transfer day that are easy to treat as formalities and shouldn't be. The final inspection (eindinspectie) is your last chance to check the house is in the state you agreed — walk it shortly before the notary appointment, not after. See the final inspection guide for what to look for.

The second is the meter readings. Photograph the electricity, gas and water meters on the day, with the readings legible. This is the single cheapest insurance against a billing dispute, and almost nobody regrets doing it. The key transfer guide covers the rest of the handover.

Registering with the municipality

You must report your new address to the gemeente. The window is from four weeks before your moving date until five days after it — and the five-day limit is the one that matters.

Report it late and the municipality registers you on the date you notified them, not the date you actually moved. That gap can affect toeslagen (benefits such as housing or healthcare allowance), which are tied to your registered address. If you are moving between municipalities you only register with the new one; it deregisters you from the old automatically.

Most gemeenten accept the notification online with DigiD, and it takes about five minutes.

Utilities: what you choose and what you don't

• Energy (electricity and gas) — a free market, so you pick the supplier. Compare before you move rather than inheriting whatever contract the previous owner had; the outgoing supplier will close their account on your meter readings.
• Water — not a free market. Each region has one supplier and you simply register with the one serving your address (Vitens, Waternet, Brabant Water and so on). There is nothing to compare.
• Internet and TV — check what is actually available at the address before you commit, since fibre coverage varies street by street. Installation frequently needs two to four weeks and sometimes an engineer visit, so this is the one to arrange first if you work from home.

The bills that arrive because you now own the place

Renting hides most of these. As an owner you will receive:

• OZB (onroerendezaakbelasting), the municipal property tax, charged on your home's WOZ value.
• Afvalstoffenheffing — the waste levy, plus in many municipalities a waste pass (afvalpas) you need to collect before you can use the communal containers.
• Rioolheffing — the sewerage charge.
• Waterschapsbelasting, levied by the regional water authority.

They usually arrive as one combined municipal assessment early in the year. Budget for them: on an average home they add up to several hundred euros annually, and they are not part of your mortgage payment.

Insurance — and the date it has to start

Buildings insurance (opstalverzekering) covers the structure itself and is mandatory when you have a mortgage. The detail people get wrong: your lender requires cover from the moment of legal transfer at the notary, not from the day you physically move in. If those are three weeks apart, the house is your risk for three weeks. Arrange the policy to start on the transfer date.

Contents insurance (inboedelverzekering) covers your belongings and is optional but sensible. Many people also add liability insurance (aansprakelijkheidsverzekering), which is cheap and covers damage you cause to others.

If you bought an apartment, check what the VvE's collective policy already covers before insuring the same thing twice — see understanding the VvE.

Changing your address everywhere else

Registering with the gemeente updates the government's records, so the Belastingdienst, DigiD, the RDW and your municipality all follow automatically. It does not tell anyone commercial. You still need to notify your bank, employer, health insurer, pension provider, and any subscriptions.

PostNL's redirection service (verhuisservice) forwards post from your old address for a fee and is a useful safety net for the ones you forget — which there will be.

The first week in the house

• Smoke alarms are a legal requirement. Since 1 July 2022 every home must have at least one smoke alarm on every floor with a living room, bedroom or kitchen — existing houses included, and the obligation sits with the owner. Check what is there and whether it still works; alarms expire and should be replaced every ten years.
• Find the meterkast and work out which fuse controls what before you need to know in the dark.
• Locate the main water stopcock.
• Test the heating properly, even in summer. A boiler fault is far easier to resolve while the seller is still reachable.

Track it all in one place

There is a lot here, and it lands in the same fortnight as the move itself. The interactive moving checklist lets you tick these off, add your own notes and export the result — nothing is stored on our servers.

Still earlier in the process? The closing timeline covers what happens between offer and keys.