Hi all! My husband and I are traveling to Amsterdam in mid-May 2018 and are interested in renting a houseboat for a few nights. I've found the perfect one - "Houseboat Hugo" on the website "Houseboat Rental Amsterdam."
I am skeptical, however, about payment. The owner is requesting at least 25% down (provided me with a bank name, LBAN#, BIC#, and address) and is asking for the remainder in cash. They have also offered a PayPal email address. Does this sound legitimate/typical? All of the correspondence has been through email as opposed to a website, so I am concerned about receipts/paper trail/legitimacy. Thanks!

It's legitimate. We went through the same process, the problem was having enough cash to make the rest of the payment. It was easy enough for us because we had arrived in Amsterdam a week before the rental started and were able to make several ATM withdrawals to have the cash.

We used Xe.com to make transfer--the down side is that registering an account with xe.com is as complicated as setting up a bank account, but my experience is that it is one of the cheapest ways to transfer money.

With all the payment possibilities on various rental sites, I no longer consider direct payments to owners, no recourse should the transaction go south in any number of ways. I use Airbnb but there are others as well. If I'm worried, I just don't do it.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14229674
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/785432
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1078472
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1415279
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/450767

It is probably leit, the houseboat is on lots of sites, but be very careful with any holiday rental in Amsterdam now that the council is clamping down on them, and not only those on AIRBnB - more than 30 days a year is illegal.
Check carefully that your houseboat owner is legit, and registered.
For price of the houseboat you could have a nice hotel, and be sure of things.

No, doesn't sound like regular practice, especially the cash/paypal stuff. Probably dodging taxes in a big way.

Don't use AirBnB in Amsterdam: city gov is clamping down, there are major restrictions in place. Apart from that, it takes housing away from Amsterdam residents.

When we did it, because of questions I asked due to my hesitation similar to the OP, I discovered that I was dealing with a rental agency, not an individual. I stand by my original statement.

The restrictions are 60 days rentals allowed in 2018, reduced to 30 days a year in 2019. I wouldn't avoid renting in the city through Airbnb. I'd also be interested to know if boats are included in the restrictions.

It's not only a limitation on the number of days, but also a clamp down on illegal sub-letting. And as houseboats are regular real estate in Amsterdam, that may also apply to houseboats.

AirBnB is a scourge in Amsterdam, and it's always beyond me why tourists insist on helping in being that scourge instead of being part of the solution to it. Plenty of hotels.

They should be. The "boat" we rented was a concrete bathtub which held two two-bedroom apartments and was a boat only in the sense that it floated on a canal.

they're regular real estate. you can take out a mortgage and buy one, with the houseboat as security.

Excellent, noted and an opportunity for us old people to have an impact by being a scourge. We have so few opportunities for naughtiness.

Yes, on other "old" people who can't make use of housing that was previously there, because now it's all shortlets. The situation used to be that there was a lot of rent controlled housing right in the centre, often people lived there, like in the Jordaan, who had lived their entire life in that location. In the centre: no more, and now neighbourhoods around the centre of town are suffering the same fate. And all that, because tourists like yourself can't be bothered to just book hotels.

There should be a way of controlling the system. I see nothing wrong with renting a room through Airbnb, as we did for our first rental in Amsterdam. In Copenhagen we rented two apartments, and both were owner occupied rentals most of the time; we could tell by the furniture and what was hanging on the walls. In all these instances I do not think that we were eliminating long term rentals from the market place.

A room, or otherwise occupied apartment, does seem the middle ground, Michael, and it's generally what I do, rather than an entire apartment. Since the advent of all the possibilities now on offer a hotel has become my accommodation of last resort. If a city feels it cannot live with these sorts of rentals there are ways to deal with the issue. Berating tourists, like the terminally self righteous one above you, does no good. Just makes me long to misbehave.

Woooow. "Tourists like myself" are looking for authentic experiences - it's not our fault that your city has allowed such a "scourge" upon its residents. Why can't *you locals* be bothered with petitioning your government to have AirBnB and others regulated/banned if it is so damning? Listen, I've grown up/lived in tourist cities all my life - sometimes a city is its own worst enemy. While berating and accusing a lone, random tourist on a travel forum may make you feel big and manly, it's doing nothing for the plight of your precious metropolis.

If nothing was done, there would be very little 'authentic experience' left in Amsterdam in the future. Just endless rows of cheese and waffle shops, and tourists instead of locals in the pretty houses on the canals. Urging the council to do something about Airbnb is exactly what the locals have done, Corbin. I would have thought that it is useful that this forum informs tourists like yourself of the new regulations. Don't be surprised if your 'local experience' gets cancelled on short notice.

" Why can't *you locals* be bothered with petitioning your government to have AirBnB and others regulated/banned if it is so damning?"

That's exactly what they're doing. Get with the program.