Antwerp apartments & rentals: how to choose
Antwerp’s rental stock is its housing stock: tall, narrow, deep 19th-century houses split into flats, with high ceilings, long staircases and, in Zurenborg and Het Zuid, some genuinely remarkable façades. It is a good city for a week in a flat. It is also a region where the legal status of a short-term let is not a formality — Flanders requires every tourist accommodation to be registered before it can be let at all, and that check should come before you look at the photos.
⚠︎ Book a registered listing
Under the Flemish Tourist Accommodation Decree (the logiesdecreet), anyone in Flanders who lets tourists stay overnight for payment must notify their accommodation to Toerisme Vlaanderen before operating — and that obligation is explicitly not limited to professionals: it covers a private host renting a spare room for a single night through Airbnb, Booking.com or any other platform. Notification issues a unique registration number, and the property must meet baseline standards including fire safety, fire and civil-liability insurance, hygiene, and conformity with planning permission. Separately, the City of Antwerp levies a tourist tax on every overnight stay (€3.20 per person per night excluding VAT for room-based accommodation, €1.20 at campsites, under-12s exempt) which the operator declares quarterly — a compliant host has it priced in or collects it openly. The Flemish framework is being revised during 2026 to line up with new European short-term-rental rules, so confirm the current requirements at the official sources before you book.
Rules change — confirm the current requirements: Vlaanderen.be — notification and recognition of a tourist accommodation.
Who a rental suits
A rental earns its keep for families and groups who want separate bedrooms and a kitchen, for stays of five nights or more where laundry and a fridge start to matter, and for anyone who wants to base in Zurenborg or a residential pocket of Het Zuid where hotels essentially do not exist. For two nights in the centre, a hotel is almost always the simpler trade.
Verify before you book
- That the listing shows a Flemish accommodation registration number, or that the host can produce one on request — this is the first check, not the last.
- Which floor the flat is on and whether there is a lift. Antwerp houses are four and five storeys tall with steep, narrow Flemish staircases, and “second floor” here can mean three flights.
- Whether the building permits short-term letting at all — planning conformity is part of the Flemish requirements, and an entire-flat listing in a residential block is where that most often fails.
- Heating, and whether there is any air conditioning or even cross-ventilation if you are coming in high summer.
- The real walking time to a De Lijn stop and to a supermarket — and, for 2026, whether your route depends on the closed Scheldt tram tunnel.
- Recent reviews mentioning street noise. Bar-lined streets in Het Zuid and around the centre carry sound straight up the façade on warm nights, when everyone’s windows are open.
- How the tourist tax is handled — in the nightly price or collected separately — so the total you compare is the total you pay.
Where to look for rentals
Het Zuid and Zurenborg hold the most characterful supply — big-windowed flats in ornate 19th-century houses, with Zurenborg the quieter and cheaper of the two. Eilandje offers newer dock-side apartments with lifts and parking, which is the practical choice with children or heavy bags. The historic centre has flats in genuinely old buildings, but supply is thin and scrutiny of registration is tightest in the most touristed streets — expect fewer legitimate entire-home listings there than the search filters suggest.
Check live rentals & availability
Browse current Antwerp rentals on Vrbo — then confirm the listing carries a Flemish registration number.
Check Antwerp rentals on Vrbo →Some booking links are affiliate links — if you book through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which options we recommend.
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