My wife and I almost overpaid €47k for our flat. Here's what saved us.

“You'll need to bid €47,000 over asking.”

Our buyer's agent said it casually, like he was reading out the weather. My wife was seven months pregnant. That €47k was basically every euro we had saved for the new kitchen, the nursery, and the buffer we'd promised ourselves we'd keep for emergencies.

But we'd already been outside eight times. Eight. And this flat, with its quiet street, park around the corner, and a decent primary school five minutes away, was the first place we'd walked into and both thought yes.

We were going to do it. We were going to hand over the €47k and figure the rest out later.

Then, at about 11pm the night before we were meant to submit the bid, I went down one more research rabbit hole. That's when I found Roofmatch.

We ended up bidding €24k over asking instead of €47k. We got the flat. We kept €23,000 in the bank.

This is what happened.

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Why bidding in the Netherlands is basically guesswork

If you've never bought a house here, it works like this: the asking price is not the price. It's an opening move. The real price is whatever the highest bidder is willing to pay, and you almost never find out what other people bid.

So you guess. Or rather, your agent guesses for you. Five percent over? Ten? Twenty? Most agents go on gut feel and recent comparables, and because many of them charge a percentage of the final price, there's a quiet incentive to nudge you upward.

That's the system we were navigating when our agent came back with €47k.

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The part where I almost made a €23,000 mistake

I'll be honest. I was ready to just pay it. Pregnancy hormones aside (mine, not my wife's), the thought of losing a ninth house while our daughter's due date crept closer was more than I could handle. Another three months of viewings. Another three months of that flat above the bar.

My wife was the one who said, "Let's check one more thing."

Roofmatch came up in a forum thread. It's a buyer's agent that uses AI to calculate how much you should actually bid, based on thousands of data points like recent sales nearby, energy label, maintenance history, and new developments in the area, rather than a gut feeling and a round number.

I was sceptical. "AI" in a property ad usually means "chatbot that wastes your afternoon." But two things got me to book the free intro call.

First, they're run by the same team behind Rentbird, which has been around since 2020 and has thousands of Trustpilot reviews. Not a two-week-old startup trying to ride a trend.

Second, the fee is fixed. €1,799, flat. Whether you buy a €400k flat or an €800k house. No percentage, no incentive to push you higher.

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What actually happened next

The intro call was 30 minutes and genuinely no-pressure. I'd budgeted an hour to get talked into something, and instead spent most of it asking questions. You can walk away at the end. You only pay if they find you a home you actually buy.

We signed up that evening.

Within a day, they'd run their analysis on the flat. Their recommended bid came back at €24,000 over asking. Still a lot of money (this is the Netherlands, after all), but €23,000 less than we'd been about to hand over.

Here's the part that surprised me most. My stomach dropped when I saw the number. It felt too low. After weeks of being told to bid aggressively, €24k felt like we were going to lose this one too.

We submitted it anyway. Two days later, the seller accepted.

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What Roofmatch actually does

The AI is the hook, but honestly it's only part of what we paid for. The rest is a normal, full-service buyer's agent that just happens to have better tools.

They sent us alerts for matching properties before the listings went live on Funda, which meant viewings before most buyers knew the place existed. They ran the numbers on every property we were seriously considering. They handled the bid submission and the back-and-forth with the selling agent. And when we had a dumb question at 9pm (we had many), someone answered.

The AI part just means the bid advice is grounded in data instead of vibes. When your agent says "bid €24k," they can show you why: the comparables, the condition adjustments, the competition signals. You're not taking it on faith.

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The bit I keep coming back to

Our daughter was born two months ago. We had time to decorate her nursery before she arrived, which felt like a small miracle given how close we came to moving in with nothing.

The kitchen is still shabby. We're living with it for now. The €23,000 we saved is sitting in the bank, earmarked for the renovation as soon as she starts sleeping through the night. (Any day now. Please.)

I've since recommended Roofmatch to three friends. One of them signed up after months of losing bids on apartments in Amsterdam, and found a place within a week. That's not going to be everyone's experience, because sometimes the right flat just isn't on the market yet, but the bidding guidance alone is worth the fee for anyone buying in this market.

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If you're house-hunting right now

The Dutch market is strange and stressful and not really designed for buyers. Guessing your way through it with an agent working on percentage commission is how people end up, like we nearly did, wiping out their savings on a round number someone pulled out of the air.

Roofmatch offers a free 30-minute call. No commitment. If it's not for you, you walk away. If it is, you pay nothing until you actually buy a home.

Given what it saved us, I'd make that call again in a heartbeat.
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