France is the only destination on this desk that wrote the gap into law. A bail mobilite runs a minimum of one month and a maximum of ten, the home must be furnished, and the landlord is forbidden to ask for a security deposit (Service-Public fiche F34759, verified by the administration 2025-06-06, checked 2026-08-26). Everywhere else, the months between landing and signing are something your family improvises.
Almost no family signs a twelve-month lease from another country. Landlords want documents you do not have yet, and you do not know which street you want until your children have a school. So there is a bridge, usually one to six months of furnished housing, and budgets leave it out.
Do it in this order
Temporary base, then school place, then neighbourhood, then lease.
Reverse any two and you pay for it. The clearest case is France. Your child is enrolled at the school of the secteur covering your address, the mairie registers the child and issues a certificat d’inscription naming the assigned school, and a place at a school in another sector requires a derogation that “n’est pas automatique” (F1865, verified 2025-01-10). If the lease you signed sits in a different commune, you also need the agreement of the mayor of the receiving commune. A twelve-month lease signed before you knew that is not a mistake you can correct in September.
Sign in Spain and you hand over one month of fianza, and the landlord may lawfully add a guarantee worth up to two months’ rent (Ley 29/1994 articles 36.1 and 36.5, Boletin Oficial del Estado consolidated text, checked 2026-08-26). Sign a furnished French lease and the deposit ceiling is two months’ rent excluding charges, against one month unfurnished (F31269). Ireland caps the entry cost at two months: one month’s rent in advance plus a one-month deposit. Section 19B of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 bars “any payment other than” those two, so holding fees and agency fees are unlawful as well (Irish Statute Book, checked 2026-08-26).
What a landlord asks a family with no local income history
France publishes the answer, and the list is closed. A landlord may ask for one identity document, one proof of current residence, one or more proofs of professional situation, and one or more proofs of resources. Nothing else. Demanding a document outside the list is punishable by a fine of up to EUR 3,000, or EUR 15,000 for a company (F1169, verified 2025-04-10, legal basis decret n. 2015-1437 and loi n. 89-462). The rule that catches arriving families is on the same page: a foreign document must be written or translated into French, with amounts converted to euros. Budget for a translator before you budget for a deposit.
Ireland names the item you cannot produce on day one: the RTB’s tenant checklist expects “references” plus “contact number and PPS number”, and the PPS number is issued after you arrive.
The Netherlands regulates the landlord instead. Since 1 July 2023 the Wet goed verhuurderschap caps the deposit at two months’ bare rent and obliges landlords to publish a non-discriminatory selection procedure. Income, income evidence and household composition may be asked for. Ethnicity, religion, politics, sexual orientation and health may not (Rijksoverheid, checked 2026-08-26).
Spain has a trap worth naming. A lease described as de temporada, a seasonal let, is not a housing lease at all. Article 3 of Ley 29/1994 classifies seasonal rentals as “uso distinto del de vivienda”, which raises the compulsory deposit to two months and puts the contract outside the protections that attach to a home. Plenty of furnished medium-term stock in Spain sits on exactly that footing. It can be the right contract for a bridge, and the wrong one to mistake for your family’s lease.
The rent rules that change the arithmetic
Three destinations cap what a landlord may charge. The caps matter before a bridge turns into a permanent lease.
Ireland changed most recently, and Rent Pressure Zones no longer exist. “From 1 March 2026, a new national system of rent control applies to all private tenancies and Student Specific Accommodation”, with the standard annual increase held to 2 percent or the rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower (RTB, checked 2026-08-26). Re-setting to market rent between tenancies is now limited to defined cases.
In the Netherlands the number to know is EUR 1,228.07 a month, the rent liberalisation threshold from 1 January 2026 (Huurcommissie policy book, annexe 2, checked 2026-08-26). Below it, rent is capped by the points a home scores, not by what the market will bear. The social sector ceiling from the same date is EUR 932.93, and the maximum increase from 1 July 2026 is 4.1 percent where the bare rent is EUR 350 or more.
In Paris, the base rent may not exceed the loyer de reference majore, the lease must state both reference figures, and the rule covers furnished lettings and the bail mobilite (F34407, verified 2026-07-01).
Why the furnished middle is thin
Amsterdam is the clearest published case of a city squeezing that supply. Under the Huisvestingsverordening Amsterdam 2024, a registration number must appear in every tourist listing and holiday rental is capped at thirty nights per calendar year. The article that matters most to you: letting a home for payment for a period of at most six months is defined as “short stay”, and doing it without a permit from the council is prohibited (articles 3.7.2, 3.7.3 and 3.7.6, consolidated text at lokaleregelgeving.overheid.nl, checked 2026-08-26). A three-month furnished let in Amsterdam is a licensed activity, and the council grants that permit only where it judges the stay serves a desired social function or strengthens the neighbourhood economy. That is why so little of it exists.
The school calendar decides the map
Address binds hardest in France, above, and in Amsterdam. Elsewhere it is one score among several.
Amsterdam gives your child priority at the eight schools nearest the registered home address, measured as walking distance to the school gate by the city’s statistics office. The preference form arrives by post around the child’s third birthday, and the 2026 deadlines run by birth quarter: 12 March, 28 May and 5 November. Valid address proof is required, a rental contract or a BRP extract among them. A child arriving from abroad with no Dutch skips the lottery, approaches a school directly, and is registered for a nieuwkomersgroep for roughly forty weeks.
Madrid works the opposite way, and families overpay because they assume otherwise. In the Comunidad de Madrid’s 2026/2027 scale, a home or a parent’s workplace in the same municipality as the school is worth 12 points, and inside Madrid city the same municipal district adds exactly 1 more. A sibling already at the school is worth 15. Applications ran 11 to 25 March 2026. Families who can document a planned move may apply on the address they intend to have, not the one they hold.
Portugal ranks residence sixth in its priority order, behind previous attendance at the same agrupamento and behind siblings; the enrolment window for pre-school and the first year runs 22 April to 31 May. Late applications are ranked after everyone who filed on time. Ireland has no national deadline: schools may not open admissions before 1 October of the preceding year, and date-ordered waiting lists are prohibited, the one rule here that protects families who move in.
What the medium-term providers publish
Expat Family Living is paid a commission when a reader books through some of the providers named below, and that payment does not change a word of what follows.
Blueground describes itself as built for “individuals and corporate clients seeking 30+ day stays”, and its Paris page states apartments are “rented for the short-term (starting at 30 days) and the long-term (by the month and by the year)”. Apartments arrive with “utilities up and running” and pet-friendly units exist. It publishes no item-by-item inventory, and we did not verify family fittings such as cots.
HousingAnywhere publishes its tenant fee, which most of this market does not. Outside the Netherlands the one-off booking fee is “approximately 25%-40% of the first month’s rent (minimum of €175)”; in the Netherlands the site states “No fees”. In return, “we protect your rent and transfer it to the landlord only 48 hours after you’ve moved in”.
Spotahome states it “focuses on finding you a home for stays of a minimum of 30 days, dependent on city regulations”, holds the first month’s rent until 48 hours after move-in, and publishes a cancellation ladder: full refund at 60 or more days before move-in, 50 percent at 30 to 59 days, nothing at 29 or fewer. Its own fee is non-refundable once confirmed, and it does not publish the amount, which we will not estimate.
None of the three publishes whether its contract satisfies a municipality that requires a registrable address, or a policy on housing a family of four. If your residence application depends on registering an address, get that in writing before you pay.
Who should not
Skip this if your employer pays a housing allowance and assigns a relocation agent. Corporate housing is procured against a company account, the deposit and document problem is the employer’s, and this sequence is being run for you.
Skip it too if you are moving somewhere a relative has already rented and registered an address for you. Your bridge exists, and your work is the school calendar above, not the housing search.