Student housing management in Leuven

Leuven in numbers: a city of student rooms

At the start of the 2026-2027 academic year, Leuven had about 60,000 students at KU Leuven, UCLL university college and LUCA School of Arts, according to VRT NWS. Around 42,000 students rent a room in the city. Compared with Leuven's 105,233 registered residents (1 January 2026), no other Flemish student city has a larger share.

Roughly one in five students comes from abroad. This academic year, students pay between 490 and 575 euros a month for an average room without a private bathroom. For a landlord, that means large and steady demand, but also a demanding audience that compares prices, quality and labels before signing.

The Flemish and the Leuven kotlabel

Since 1 January 2025, there is a single Flemish kotlabel (Vlaams kotlabel) for all of Flanders. A room qualifies when it meets three conditions: it has a conformity certificate (housing quality), a positive fire safety certificate, and the correct permit for dividing the building into rooms. Leuven's former green labels were converted automatically, and the blue label no longer exists.

The City of Leuven issues the Flemish kotlabel, but it is not mandatory in Leuven. There is also a Leuven kotlabel: your room must meet all criteria of the Flemish label and your second-residence tax must be in order. You request the inspection online from the city or from the Flemish government, but the city always carries it out. If everything is in order, you receive a favourable decision, a conformity certificate (usually free of charge), the Flemish label and the Leuven label, the latter with a QR sticker.

• Students can check a label themselves in the search tool on kotlabel.vlaanderen.be.
• The Flemish kotlabel has no fixed validity of its own: it stays valid as long as the underlying certificates are valid.

The student lease in Leuven

Leuven falls under the Flemish Residential Tenancy Decree (Vlaams Woninghuurdecreet), which has a separate chapter on student leases. The key rules: the deposit is capped at two months' rent, may not be paid in cash and can be requested at the earliest three months before the start. Tacit renewal is not allowed: the lease ends on the agreed end date.

A student can cancel before the lease starts: free of charge up to three months before the start date, after that with a fee of two months' rent. If the student stops studying, or a parent who supports them dies, a two-month notice period applies. You draw up a detailed inspection report together, before the start or within the first month, and you register the lease free of charge within two months via MyRent. Read more in our guides on the student room lease and the deposit.

Typical challenges for landlords in Leuven

With so many international students, you will get more questions about Erasmus periods and subletting. Under Flemish rules, a student on an exchange programme or internship may sublet the room to another student without your consent. In other cases, they need your prior written consent. Clear agreements and an accurate overview of who lives in which room, and when, are therefore essential.

If a student lease runs over several years, you may index the rent annually based on the health index. This is not automatic: you have to notify the student in writing, and you can index retroactively for at most three months. Our guide on calculating rent indexation shows how to do it correctly.

Preparing your room for the City of Leuven inspection

You can request the kotlabel inspection in two ways. Through the City of Leuven you do not need an eID or itsme®, which is convenient when a building has several owners. Through the Flemish government you sign in with your eID or itsme® and follow your file online. Either way, your request ends up with the city, which carries out the inspection.

You may already attach some documents to your request. It is not required, and you can also send them later, but it speeds up your file. Think of:

• the latest electrical inspection certificate;
• the latest maintenance certificate for the central heating boiler;
• the latest gas tightness inspection certificate;
• photos of the internal unit numbering, for example on the letterboxes.

How Kotmaster supports student housing management in Leuven

Kotmaster has an office in Leuven and is built for landlords with one room or hundreds. You create digital leases from your own templates and have them signed with itsme®. You do the inspection report on your smartphone, with photos, at move-in and move-out. Leases and inspection reports are registered with one click via MyRent.

Kotmaster also follows up payments automatically with reminders, indexes rent by the health index and prepares cost settlements. Repair requests, documents such as your conformity and fire safety certificates, and your whole portfolio sit together in one dashboard. Explore all Kotmaster features or request a demo.