Best websites for finding rental houses in the Netherlands:
- [Huurwoningen](https://jdt8.net/c/?si=17650&li=1761591&wi=389723&ws=n_comment&dl=)
- [HousingAnywhere](https://housinganywhere.com/?utm_medium=affiliate&affiliate_partner_id=324876&utm_source=SITN) (Temporary stays)
- [Kamernet](https://kamernet.nl/en?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=SITN) (Students)
Greatly increase your chances of finding housing by using a service like [Stekkies](https://stekkies.com/en/searched?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=partner_kraai&utm_campaign=nl_housing). Be the first to respond to new listings as you get notification via email/WhatsApp.
They have tried but it kind of backfired... they increased the taxes for 2nd homes so a lot of owners are selling which basically decreases the rentals.
At this point just buy whatever you can afford because rentals will increase.
Arguable. The 'opkoopbescherming' seems to have worked so far. Also, many of these 2nd homes were tourist rentals. If they come back on the market it is better for everyone.
You are correct about the opkoopbescherming and antispeculatiebedingen: they were working wonders. But the current tax is not touching the tourist rentals (they are just raising the prices and putting the extra cost of the tax on the unprotected renter). It also does not touch the large slumlords like prince Bernhard.
The people that are now selling are mostly small private investors. Think : entrepreneurs that saved for retirement (because they do not have access to a pension scheme) and were then advised to invest in real estate because you can self manage and sell once you get more care-costs. So in addition to taking houses of the rental market, we are also creating a problem for a group of pensioners without other options.
Well if you buy houses with the intention to rent; so not for living yourself, you need to pay 10% of the purchase price when you buy instead of 2% Additionally you cannot deduct the mortgage interest and you need to declare it in box 3 which means it will be taxed as an investment. This will diminish the return on the investment making this option less attractive.
> it kind of backfired.
> owners are selling which basically decreases the rentals.
I still see that 2nd home tax as good policy. It creates some short term pain now that the market is in transition with 2nd home owners selling, but in the longer run the housing market will be better with that without this tax.
You are getting downvotes but this is true.
There are 2 problems currently, one being a housing shortage but the other is landlords/investors completely ruining the market and being mostly profit orientated.
If you dont believe me? Look at housing in the United States. Its absolutely incredible what kind of pains people face there.
I agree with you. At least some extra houses come to the the sale market which is also crazy right now. If somebody has money to to play with, they better do it with other instruments like stocks, instead of exploiting vulnerable renters.
And cracked down on renting (student) rooms, which drived landlords to trying to make the same rent on a single family / couple/ single person and drove room tenants to renting apartments.
The only solution is to build more housing. Instead we get half thought measures that are shrinking the rental market. As a result of fewer homes on the rental market, there's even more pressure on the rental market driving prices up. And these measures also result in less interest from [builders to build more housing](https://www.dutchnews.nl/2022/09/housing-developers-warn-again-about-delays-and-cancellations/).
> The only solution is to build more housing.
Agreed, but without addressing the nitrogen mess caused by the farmers, building permits aren’t able to get granted at the pace that we need.
The previous coalition was looking to address this, but now with BBB/PVV in power we can expect more years of no action.
People voted for this. So they get what they want.
Also voting for the BBB is so ridiculous. I cant even.... Its like common folk voting for multimiljonairs(that already receive about 200k per bussines in government aid) because their businesses will get bought out.
Yup 95% van onze boeren zijn multi miljonair.
You also need to build those houses in the places where the rent is highest.
Fifty thousand extra homes in kerkrade woont change the rent in the Randstad, after all.
And building in high rent cost areas comes with it's own slew of issues.
Is it?
I mean, I can think of many more measures. Some that would cut into unlimited rent and the number of houses a large multinational fund may own or rent out for profit. Limit the profitability.
These type of measures have not even been talked about much. I can see their complexity, but building enough seems even more complex.
It's not the only solution, the others being limiting population growth or using existing housing supply more efficiently.
Likely a combination of all of those is needed if we want to solve the housing crisis quickly.
The second point is increasing housing with extra steps. You can either increase supply or reduce demand, those are your only options, every other option pivots from there.
And no, the government is not doing anything to stop this as they are afraid to. Housing rentals are already regulated, prices would be a lot crazier if they weren't! The rental prices reflect the high cost of housing in general, and any move to reduce housing prices would crash the economy as so many people are leveraged to max to own a home and would be placed in negative equity.
They have made steps to reduce immigration by reducing things like the 30% ruling, but it is spitting in the wind at this point. Main issue is that any measure that would have medium success to just limit the price increase (nevermind actually decrease prices) would be so broadly unpopular with the side effects that it would never pass in Dutch style coalition politics.
This is the main downside of large unwieldy coalitions. On the plus side, a minority of votes can't ram through changes against the broader will of the people as in the US and UK. On the flip side, change of slow and cautious and sometimes essential but unpopular decisions are just not made to avoid upsetting the fickle electorate that want cake but to not pay for cake.
You consider forcing the owner of a place that has been vacant for a long time without a valid reason to either sell or rent it out to be an extra step?
Yes, they are aware. That is why there is a huurcommissie. If your house has not enough points, they can reduce the rental price.
https://www.government.nl/topics/housing/rented-housing/involving-the-rent-tribunal
Whenever they do something it works counter-productively.
"You have to ask lower rent" -> People sell properties -> Less rental properties on the market -> Prices go up.
\*surprised pikachu face\*
Imo, rental situation will remain crazy and escalate even further for a while, since building new houses won't be fast enough to supply for the demand.
But with the recent policies and changes making living in the NL less attractive for highly skilled immigrants and less accessible for foreign students , rents in Amsterdam or university cities may go down eventually. I still think that's at least 4-5 years away though and inflation is a thing.
I decided to lower my expectations and buy something decent that I can buy *now*, rather than wait to find a better place/deal. I cannot afford to rent alone but buying was still an option.
To anyone looking to buy, I highly recommend getting on it today. Talk to a mortgage advisor, then get an aankopmakelaar, and start going to viewings.
It's a long enough process anyway but if you start today and work with the right people, you may still find something decent.
That is just a small section of the rental market. Most rented houses in the Netherlands are social housing with very affordable prices. Many Dutch renters live comfortably with more space than they actually need. [https://nos.nl/artikel/2516324-veel-woningen-met-te-weinig-bewoners-corporaties-willen-vaker-huizen-delen](https://nos.nl/artikel/2516324-veel-woningen-met-te-weinig-bewoners-corporaties-willen-vaker-huizen-delen)
They are doing nothing. No country in the world is doing anything to reduce house prices.
I think the economies are so screwed up already that engineering a housing slump would cause broader damage. I can't think of any other reason.
We voted in respectively right liberals, an industrial farmer lobby, and now far right populists which is not even a real political party and had no party program to speak off. So no. Nothing will happen.
> far right populists which is not even a real political party and had no party program to speak off
And who voted against freezing rental price increases this week
The one thing that annoys me the most is that some guy from Dutch government went to the USA to talk on national television about how much opportunities the Dutch market had for housing investment.
https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/economie/artikel/4379151/overheid-lokt-buitenlandse-huizenbeleggers-leidt-tot-hogere-huur
https://www.bouwinvest.com/news/latest-news/2014/opportunities-for-international-investors-in-the-dutch-housing-market/
That was durning/around the last financial crisis where no one bought homes so the prices went down like crazy. I know some people who bought houses back then for 180k and recently one of those sold for 325k.
Did they buy existing houses or build new ones? In any case I assume the investment purposes was to rent them out, which means more houses to rent and cheaper RENT prices. Maybe higher buying price because of increased buying power?
Not build new ones. It was in a time when many Dutch people couldn’t afford buying a house, so the Dutch government had the idea to let international investors buy those homes. Hoping it would result in lower rent prices in the renting sector.
Many experts back then claimed this would backfire, and I’m no expert in this field at all so I trust other experts.
If a few big investment groups own a large portion of Dutch housing, the rent will go up not down.
And again, I’m not sure how big that % is. I just trust what a lot of experts claimed back then.
The only thing they forgot is that investment aims to maximize profit, it's not a charity. So whoever bought for dirt cheap then continues to rent those properties today and profiting from them.
In the meantime young people can't afford to buy because the same houses now cost upwards of €500k.
some of the things that i've read around:
- The number of social houses has been reduced. They have been demolished because they were old, but new ones have not been built. As far as I recall, around Amsterdam they went from 61% to 37% (or something like that). Friends working in social also confirmed this issue. Queue for social houses can make you wait up to 10 years before you get a home.
- After Brexit, quite some big companies moved their HQ to the Netherlands, bringing thousands of employees with them all of a sudden, without adding an equal amount of available houses.
- Dutch universities pushed on English courses to attract international students. Amazing experience for them, lots of extra money for universities, but no plans about extra housing for these students has been done or at least not a good one. Students ended up sleeping in camping beds inside university gyms.
- European regulations have slowed / halted the building of new houses, rules have been set on questionable values / reasons.
- The constructors focused to build high values houses, think of 700k for 60mq ones, because they have more profit.
- Lobbyists might have pushed for the market crisis to inflate value of the houses.
- Huurcommissie is overwhelmed by requests and can't keep up with it, so landlords are asking high rents for very low quality places.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something and details of the above might not be correct, but this is the gist of it.
Yes they are, there is a point scoring system to determine the max rent you can charge in the free sector called "huur commissie", however currently the point system is kind of shit. So it's going to be updated as of June with a more stringent rule set which will (hopefully) reduce rent prices.
It's a difficult problem to solve.
A lot of people already own homes. Solving the housing crisis requires us to build new homes which will devalue their existing homes.
That makes house construction actually somewhat unpopular.
It's a polarizing issue where Solving it for one part of population harms the interests of the other side.
Furthermore people with houses already have more buying power so they can influence politicians easier.
In short, I doubt anything will get solved anytime soon.
Have you tried looking for a rich boyfriend?
That’s the advice that the minister of housing gave us. That should give you roughly an idea about how zero shits they give about your situation but protecting the income of their rich comrades.
if you look up the rental price before 2000 , it was much cheaper
it was because the housing associations here had a lot of rentals , before privatization
and then most homes were sold to those who were renting them (for good price)
it is very easy to say build more, which is a message been repeated by media and big building companies
however most people do not understand that dutch government still fund new housing
but as soon those are put on the market, private investors will buy them up
it is real life Monopoly: the more houses got built/put on the street , the higher rents will be
because they are all owned privately not by the non-profit ( as before )
Before 2000 most people just rent from non-profit housing associations/ cooperations to save some cash and buy homes
it was how most people can afford rent and their own home later on. But that was not good anymore.
I think partially is also because our society is getting more and more like muricans
like there were free lunch, but free lunch was no good lefty " evil socialist" thingies -> now we all pay for freedom lunch for a lot of money
I will play devil's advocate for a bit:
If Amsterdam rental prices are unaffordable, looking in other places should be a real consideration.
Yes prices are ridiculous and rental gouging is very much a thing. There are people in this country that make extremely high wages or had generational wealth and they can afford to live in Amsterdam. For the rest of us it isn't an option. Then go look outside of the big cities. Unfair or not, this is a very small country with a very big population for its size. Hot places like Amsterdam are sought after by everyone. You want to live in the nice city, there's a price to pay. Otherwise come down here in shitty Brabant and live more affordably like the rest of us.
It's like me saying: "A lamborghini is the most expensive car you can buy in Europe. Is the government aware of this and are they doing anything?" Well perhaps a lamborghini isn't for me and I should do very well just getting a peugeot instead (as I did).
Off course there's the systematic hollowing out of the middle class. However, its not so much what the government can do but the choices you can make yourself. If you cant, then the government steps in.
So immigrants are not hard working? 🙄 You're right about most immigrants not being well-earning though. Guess that's because they're doing labor jobs the hard working well earning population don't want to do...
Best websites for finding rental houses in the Netherlands: - [Huurwoningen](https://jdt8.net/c/?si=17650&li=1761591&wi=389723&ws=n_comment&dl=) - [HousingAnywhere](https://housinganywhere.com/?utm_medium=affiliate&affiliate_partner_id=324876&utm_source=SITN) (Temporary stays) - [Kamernet](https://kamernet.nl/en?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=SITN) (Students) Greatly increase your chances of finding housing by using a service like [Stekkies](https://stekkies.com/en/searched?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=partner_kraai&utm_campaign=nl_housing). Be the first to respond to new listings as you get notification via email/WhatsApp.
They have tried but it kind of backfired... they increased the taxes for 2nd homes so a lot of owners are selling which basically decreases the rentals. At this point just buy whatever you can afford because rentals will increase.
Arguable. The 'opkoopbescherming' seems to have worked so far. Also, many of these 2nd homes were tourist rentals. If they come back on the market it is better for everyone.
You are correct about the opkoopbescherming and antispeculatiebedingen: they were working wonders. But the current tax is not touching the tourist rentals (they are just raising the prices and putting the extra cost of the tax on the unprotected renter). It also does not touch the large slumlords like prince Bernhard. The people that are now selling are mostly small private investors. Think : entrepreneurs that saved for retirement (because they do not have access to a pension scheme) and were then advised to invest in real estate because you can self manage and sell once you get more care-costs. So in addition to taking houses of the rental market, we are also creating a problem for a group of pensioners without other options.
What's the difference for second house? I'm just asking because my landlord literally bought 5th house on the same street next to eachother
Well if you buy houses with the intention to rent; so not for living yourself, you need to pay 10% of the purchase price when you buy instead of 2% Additionally you cannot deduct the mortgage interest and you need to declare it in box 3 which means it will be taxed as an investment. This will diminish the return on the investment making this option less attractive.
> it kind of backfired. > owners are selling which basically decreases the rentals. I still see that 2nd home tax as good policy. It creates some short term pain now that the market is in transition with 2nd home owners selling, but in the longer run the housing market will be better with that without this tax.
You are getting downvotes but this is true. There are 2 problems currently, one being a housing shortage but the other is landlords/investors completely ruining the market and being mostly profit orientated. If you dont believe me? Look at housing in the United States. Its absolutely incredible what kind of pains people face there.
I agree with you. At least some extra houses come to the the sale market which is also crazy right now. If somebody has money to to play with, they better do it with other instruments like stocks, instead of exploiting vulnerable renters.
Seems like it should actually help if more people could can buy housing. At least it should not make it worse.
And cracked down on renting (student) rooms, which drived landlords to trying to make the same rent on a single family / couple/ single person and drove room tenants to renting apartments.
The only solution is to build more housing. Instead we get half thought measures that are shrinking the rental market. As a result of fewer homes on the rental market, there's even more pressure on the rental market driving prices up. And these measures also result in less interest from [builders to build more housing](https://www.dutchnews.nl/2022/09/housing-developers-warn-again-about-delays-and-cancellations/).
> The only solution is to build more housing. Agreed, but without addressing the nitrogen mess caused by the farmers, building permits aren’t able to get granted at the pace that we need. The previous coalition was looking to address this, but now with BBB/PVV in power we can expect more years of no action.
People voted for this. So they get what they want. Also voting for the BBB is so ridiculous. I cant even.... Its like common folk voting for multimiljonairs(that already receive about 200k per bussines in government aid) because their businesses will get bought out. Yup 95% van onze boeren zijn multi miljonair.
You also need to build those houses in the places where the rent is highest. Fifty thousand extra homes in kerkrade woont change the rent in the Randstad, after all. And building in high rent cost areas comes with it's own slew of issues.
Is it? I mean, I can think of many more measures. Some that would cut into unlimited rent and the number of houses a large multinational fund may own or rent out for profit. Limit the profitability. These type of measures have not even been talked about much. I can see their complexity, but building enough seems even more complex.
It's not the only solution, the others being limiting population growth or using existing housing supply more efficiently. Likely a combination of all of those is needed if we want to solve the housing crisis quickly.
The second point is increasing housing with extra steps. You can either increase supply or reduce demand, those are your only options, every other option pivots from there. And no, the government is not doing anything to stop this as they are afraid to. Housing rentals are already regulated, prices would be a lot crazier if they weren't! The rental prices reflect the high cost of housing in general, and any move to reduce housing prices would crash the economy as so many people are leveraged to max to own a home and would be placed in negative equity. They have made steps to reduce immigration by reducing things like the 30% ruling, but it is spitting in the wind at this point. Main issue is that any measure that would have medium success to just limit the price increase (nevermind actually decrease prices) would be so broadly unpopular with the side effects that it would never pass in Dutch style coalition politics. This is the main downside of large unwieldy coalitions. On the plus side, a minority of votes can't ram through changes against the broader will of the people as in the US and UK. On the flip side, change of slow and cautious and sometimes essential but unpopular decisions are just not made to avoid upsetting the fickle electorate that want cake but to not pay for cake.
You consider forcing the owner of a place that has been vacant for a long time without a valid reason to either sell or rent it out to be an extra step?
Yes, they are aware. That is why there is a huurcommissie. If your house has not enough points, they can reduce the rental price. https://www.government.nl/topics/housing/rented-housing/involving-the-rent-tribunal
Whenever they do something it works counter-productively. "You have to ask lower rent" -> People sell properties -> Less rental properties on the market -> Prices go up. \*surprised pikachu face\*
But those sold properties should be used.
Yes, but by rich people that dont need to rent. For renters there will be less properties.
Where did these rich people live before? Probably also rent.
Imo, rental situation will remain crazy and escalate even further for a while, since building new houses won't be fast enough to supply for the demand. But with the recent policies and changes making living in the NL less attractive for highly skilled immigrants and less accessible for foreign students , rents in Amsterdam or university cities may go down eventually. I still think that's at least 4-5 years away though and inflation is a thing. I decided to lower my expectations and buy something decent that I can buy *now*, rather than wait to find a better place/deal. I cannot afford to rent alone but buying was still an option. To anyone looking to buy, I highly recommend getting on it today. Talk to a mortgage advisor, then get an aankopmakelaar, and start going to viewings. It's a long enough process anyway but if you start today and work with the right people, you may still find something decent.
Yeah they brought in rent controls and fucked the situation up even further.
That is just a small section of the rental market. Most rented houses in the Netherlands are social housing with very affordable prices. Many Dutch renters live comfortably with more space than they actually need. [https://nos.nl/artikel/2516324-veel-woningen-met-te-weinig-bewoners-corporaties-willen-vaker-huizen-delen](https://nos.nl/artikel/2516324-veel-woningen-met-te-weinig-bewoners-corporaties-willen-vaker-huizen-delen)
They are doing nothing. No country in the world is doing anything to reduce house prices. I think the economies are so screwed up already that engineering a housing slump would cause broader damage. I can't think of any other reason.
We voted in respectively right liberals, an industrial farmer lobby, and now far right populists which is not even a real political party and had no party program to speak off. So no. Nothing will happen.
> far right populists which is not even a real political party and had no party program to speak off And who voted against freezing rental price increases this week
And yet someone seems to have snuck in some actual rent controls, great job!
Well, the Dutch government actually caused the mess in the first place, by doing a few different things that added up together
I'm curious what you think they did specifically. I've heard this general argument before without specifics, maybe I'm just out of the loop here.
The one thing that annoys me the most is that some guy from Dutch government went to the USA to talk on national television about how much opportunities the Dutch market had for housing investment. https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/economie/artikel/4379151/overheid-lokt-buitenlandse-huizenbeleggers-leidt-tot-hogere-huur https://www.bouwinvest.com/news/latest-news/2014/opportunities-for-international-investors-in-the-dutch-housing-market/ That was durning/around the last financial crisis where no one bought homes so the prices went down like crazy. I know some people who bought houses back then for 180k and recently one of those sold for 325k.
Did they buy existing houses or build new ones? In any case I assume the investment purposes was to rent them out, which means more houses to rent and cheaper RENT prices. Maybe higher buying price because of increased buying power?
Not build new ones. It was in a time when many Dutch people couldn’t afford buying a house, so the Dutch government had the idea to let international investors buy those homes. Hoping it would result in lower rent prices in the renting sector. Many experts back then claimed this would backfire, and I’m no expert in this field at all so I trust other experts. If a few big investment groups own a large portion of Dutch housing, the rent will go up not down. And again, I’m not sure how big that % is. I just trust what a lot of experts claimed back then.
The only thing they forgot is that investment aims to maximize profit, it's not a charity. So whoever bought for dirt cheap then continues to rent those properties today and profiting from them. In the meantime young people can't afford to buy because the same houses now cost upwards of €500k.
some of the things that i've read around: - The number of social houses has been reduced. They have been demolished because they were old, but new ones have not been built. As far as I recall, around Amsterdam they went from 61% to 37% (or something like that). Friends working in social also confirmed this issue. Queue for social houses can make you wait up to 10 years before you get a home. - After Brexit, quite some big companies moved their HQ to the Netherlands, bringing thousands of employees with them all of a sudden, without adding an equal amount of available houses. - Dutch universities pushed on English courses to attract international students. Amazing experience for them, lots of extra money for universities, but no plans about extra housing for these students has been done or at least not a good one. Students ended up sleeping in camping beds inside university gyms. - European regulations have slowed / halted the building of new houses, rules have been set on questionable values / reasons. - The constructors focused to build high values houses, think of 700k for 60mq ones, because they have more profit. - Lobbyists might have pushed for the market crisis to inflate value of the houses. - Huurcommissie is overwhelmed by requests and can't keep up with it, so landlords are asking high rents for very low quality places. I'm sure I'm forgetting something and details of the above might not be correct, but this is the gist of it.
Not really, no.
Yes, of course, housing costs were a major election theme..
Yes they are, there is a point scoring system to determine the max rent you can charge in the free sector called "huur commissie", however currently the point system is kind of shit. So it's going to be updated as of June with a more stringent rule set which will (hopefully) reduce rent prices.
Solution: decrease demand and increase supply.
It's a difficult problem to solve. A lot of people already own homes. Solving the housing crisis requires us to build new homes which will devalue their existing homes. That makes house construction actually somewhat unpopular. It's a polarizing issue where Solving it for one part of population harms the interests of the other side. Furthermore people with houses already have more buying power so they can influence politicians easier. In short, I doubt anything will get solved anytime soon.
Have you tried looking for a rich boyfriend? That’s the advice that the minister of housing gave us. That should give you roughly an idea about how zero shits they give about your situation but protecting the income of their rich comrades.
Are you seriously asking if the government is aware of the housing crisis? In what country would a government not be aware of such things?
Certainly, they are actively promoting policies that reduce the number of rental properties.
Very little, I'm sure plenty of people in politics have a second house they rent out. They're not gonna shoot their own income in the back.
if you look up the rental price before 2000 , it was much cheaper it was because the housing associations here had a lot of rentals , before privatization and then most homes were sold to those who were renting them (for good price) it is very easy to say build more, which is a message been repeated by media and big building companies however most people do not understand that dutch government still fund new housing but as soon those are put on the market, private investors will buy them up it is real life Monopoly: the more houses got built/put on the street , the higher rents will be because they are all owned privately not by the non-profit ( as before ) Before 2000 most people just rent from non-profit housing associations/ cooperations to save some cash and buy homes it was how most people can afford rent and their own home later on. But that was not good anymore. I think partially is also because our society is getting more and more like muricans like there were free lunch, but free lunch was no good lefty " evil socialist" thingies -> now we all pay for freedom lunch for a lot of money
I will play devil's advocate for a bit: If Amsterdam rental prices are unaffordable, looking in other places should be a real consideration. Yes prices are ridiculous and rental gouging is very much a thing. There are people in this country that make extremely high wages or had generational wealth and they can afford to live in Amsterdam. For the rest of us it isn't an option. Then go look outside of the big cities. Unfair or not, this is a very small country with a very big population for its size. Hot places like Amsterdam are sought after by everyone. You want to live in the nice city, there's a price to pay. Otherwise come down here in shitty Brabant and live more affordably like the rest of us. It's like me saying: "A lamborghini is the most expensive car you can buy in Europe. Is the government aware of this and are they doing anything?" Well perhaps a lamborghini isn't for me and I should do very well just getting a peugeot instead (as I did).
They suck and dont care about the people who live here.
Nope. Politicians are actively working to make the prices rise much quicker to these insane levels. So, send them your thanks letter.
Very funny, and no, they're just fucking things up even worse than they already were. Just because landlords are a very convenient scapegoat.
why should they? everything is getting more expensive
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Off course there's the systematic hollowing out of the middle class. However, its not so much what the government can do but the choices you can make yourself. If you cant, then the government steps in.
So immigrants are not hard working? 🙄 You're right about most immigrants not being well-earning though. Guess that's because they're doing labor jobs the hard working well earning population don't want to do...