Buying a house in Delft as an expat: the TU, the canals, and the towns next door

I am Jiri, an estate agent in Maastricht. Delft is a small city with a large technical university, and the two do not fit: every autumn more engineers and researchers arrive than the old centre has houses, and the ones who decide to stay all look at the same canals. Here is what I would tell a friend who has just signed a contract at the TU and wants to buy.

What homes cost

Average sale price, Delft

€453,866

2025, +10.7% on 2024

Province of Zuid-Holland

€469,137

2025

The Netherlands

€479,527

2025

That average covers the whole municipality, from the seventeenth-century canal houses in the centre to the post-war flats and the new districts in the south. The homes international staff ask about most, a canal house or a 1930s family house within cycling distance of the campus, sit above it. Bidding above the asking price is normal there: in the second quarter of 2026, 71 percent of existing homes in the Netherlands sold above the asking price (NVM), and the province of South Holland is not where that figure is lowest. What that means in euros, and how to decide what you bid, is in overbidding in the Netherlands.

A Dutch bank lends at most the market value that an independent valuer puts on the home, so what you bid above it, and the buyer's costs, come from savings. Ask a mortgage adviser who works with international clients for your maximum first.

Delft, or Rijswijk, Den Hoorn and The Hague

Delft sits between The Hague and Rotterdam, and both are a short train ride away, so your search does not have to stop at the municipal boundary. Rijswijk and Den Hoorn are next door and often offer a family house with a garden for the price of a Delft apartment; The Hague's southern neighbourhoods are a tram ride from the campus. The trade-off is the centre itself: Delft's old town is one of the best-preserved in the country, it is where everyone wants to be, and that is priced in. If your partner works in Rotterdam, look at the south of the city and at Schiedam; if in The Hague, at the north and at Rijswijk.

A mortgage on a research contract

Many people who come to Delft arrive on a fixed-term contract: a PhD position, a postdoc, a project. Dutch lenders differ in how they treat that. Most accept a fixed-term contract with a written statement from your employer that it intends to extend it; some count a PhD salary, some do not; and for non-EU citizens the residence permit matters too. Ask an adviser which lender takes your situation before you view, not after.

Old houses: monuments, foundations and the association

In the centre you buy history, and a large part of it is protected. A monument limits what you may change, including window frames, double glazing and solar panels, and the municipality has a say in the facade and the roof; ask before you plan anything. Ask about the foundation of any house built before about 1970: Delft stands on soft ground, and a house on wooden piles can need expensive repair. And if the house is split into flats, as many canal houses are, ask for the papers of the owners' association, the VvE, which is legally required to save for maintenance of the roof, the facade and the foundation you now share with two or three neighbours.

Where homes change hands before Funda

In the streets people want most, a good share of the homes never reach Funda. They go to a colleague at the university, to a neighbour, or to the person who wrote to the owner a year earlier. I have not yet written neighbourhood pages for Delft; the closest ones are those of The Hague, such as the Statenkwartier and the Zeeheldenkwartier, where the same rules apply. In Delft itself the streets to look at are the canals of the old centre, the 1930s streets around the Agnetapark and the Hof van Delft west of the station, and the Wippolder next to the campus, where many houses are owned by people who once worked at the TU themselves.

There are two ways in. The first is to get onto the lists of the selling agents whose boards you see in those streets: email a few of them with who you are, where you want to live, your budget and your adviser's confirmation, and call a week later. The second goes one step further back, to the owner before any agent is involved. How both work is in how to buy an off-market house in the Netherlands.

Writing to owners in Delft

Few Dutch cities have as many international residents per head as Delft, and an English letter is read without surprise. The owners of the houses you want are often people who came for the university decades ago and stayed, so say in the first lines that you came here for work and are staying. Keep it personal: who you are, why this street, that you will live there yourself. No price and no deadline. A short Dutch version on the back is a courtesy the older owners notice.

A letter you can send as it is, in English and in Dutch, is in the letter to a Dutch homeowner. With DoorLetter the first letter is free, printed and delivered by PostNL, and the owner can reply anonymously with the code in the letter, also months later.

The steps after a yes

When an owner replies and you agree on the outlines, the route is the ordinary Dutch one, described in buying a house in the Netherlands as an expat: an independent valuer values the home for your mortgage, your adviser arranges the loan, and a notary draws up the written purchase agreement. Only when both of you have signed it is there a sale, and as a private buyer you then have three days to withdraw. A verbal yes binds nobody.