Diego Lerina

What a makelaar does, for those new to the Dutch market

In the Netherlands, a makelaar is an estate agent who guides people through buying and renting homes. In a letting, the makelaar publishes the home, sets out the selection criteria, assesses applicants and decides who is offered the lease.

Why renting here feels unfamiliar

In many countries, renting runs on guarantees: a deposit, a guarantor, or rent insurance, and if you can offer enough security, the home is yours. The Dutch market works differently. Homes are divided into segments (social, mid-rent and free sector) by a points system, the woningwaarderingsstelsel (WWS), which scores each home on its size, quality and energy performance. Each segment has its own rules, and within a segment every household is assessed on its own circumstances: its income, its composition, its situation. Two applicants for the same home can meet different rules. A strong guarantee doesn't change that, and the reason for a refusal is rarely explained.

I work as a makelaar with Livin Makelaars in Utrecht, in both buying and letting, for clients who are often new to the country.

A market under pressure

The Netherlands has too few homes for the people who need them. Demand far outstrips supply, waiting lists for social housing run for years, and a single free-sector listing can draw dozens of applicants within hours.

That pressure has consequences for all sides. Renters send passports, payslips and bank statements to every listing they answer, often to people they have never met. Scammers exploit this with phantom listings: homes that don't exist, or aren't theirs to let, advertised to collect documents or deposits. And agents carry an impossible load. A single listing can bring 200 requests in less than 24 hours, each one to assess by hand against rules that differ by segment and by household. Good agents end up with their reputation stained, not for doing the job badly, but because no one can reply to everyone in time.

Why I built it

Much of my work with newcomers is explaining a system nobody told them about: segments instead of guarantees, and rules that apply to their household in particular. The law behind it is clear, but the process that applies it runs on memory, habit and paperwork.

I built Tenon for three things the Dutch market values highly: productivity, so agencies spend less time rebuilding assessments by hand; trust, so every decision rests on rules that cite the law; and transparency, so a renter can see which rules applied to them and why, and anyone can verify that the procedure was followed.

How Tenon answers it

• A credential instead of a document pile.Tacit gives a renter a verdict on which segments they qualify for, and a buyer a sealed answer on whether their financing covers a bid, each in a credential they carry. They show the answer, not their passport and payslips, to each listing.
• The Wgv, automated.Ravel runs the Rental procedure the law requires, so an agency can handle hundreds of applicants fairly and in order, and every one of them gets an answer.
• A sale that follows its law.Ravel runs a sale the same way: the seller's declaration, the bids, the client checks, the seller's own acceptance, the buyer's reflection period, the notary's handover — in order, and on the record.
• Listings you can check.RESOnance records published listings in a public register that anyone can verify, so a renter or a buyer can check a listing before sending anything — and closed sales are published with their price.
• Compliance people can trust.Every rule cites the article of law it comes from, and the procedures follow the obligations the Wet goed verhuurderschap and the Civil Code set and the standards professional associations hold their members to. The rulebook is open for review, so an association, a municipality or a renter can check it rather than take it on trust.

Together, that makes for a healthier market: less wasted time on both sides, fewer scams, and decisions everyone can see and trust.

What I brought to it

My training is in technology, and I've spent years in the Ethereum ecosystem, where wallets, credentials, zero-knowledge proofs, layers and privacy aren't advanced ideas but everyday foundations. Tenon brings them to renting and buying a home:

• Wallets.In Ethereum, you hold your own keys and assets. Tenon is designed so the renter holds their own eligibility, in an EU digital identity wallet, and takes it from listing to listing.
• Credentials.A verifiable credential proves something without a phone call or a document check. Tacit's verdict is one: signed, checkable, and carried by the renter.
• Proving without revealing.Zero-knowledge proofs show that a statement is true without exposing the data behind it. Tenon follows the same principle through selective disclosure: a renter can show that they qualify for a segment without handing over their payslips.
• Layers.Ethereum scales by building layers on top of a base, without replacing it. Tenon is a layer above the systems agencies already use, adding decisions and a verifiable record without replacing their CRM or their listings.
• Privacy by design.The public register can be checked by anyone, yet holds no personal data. What is public is what happened, not who it happened to.

I'm a Spanish citizen with extensive experience in the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian real estate markets. I know from the inside both the guarantee-based markets many newcomers come from and the Dutch system they arrive in. And I see the Dutch market as a European one: the EU digital identity wallet and the standards Tenon uses are shared across member states, so what works here is built to travel.

Built by one person, openly

I built Tenon myself, with an AI assistant, and every claim on this site is published with the evidence behind it.