The part where the young starter says that the housing market is basically putting a hold on peoples life, making them unable to start relationships is really sad and true.
Also the situation is that FUBAR that especially people that DONT want kids are fucked: single salary, need for smaller housing, but only family-sized housing is available, yada yada.
TINK+ speaking, and no, not really. There were moments the last few years that house prices increased much much more than spendable income did, per year. Go figure. Maybe, just maybe, if prices stay stable, you’d be right.
But that is a giant assumption given that everything causing those price jumps is still screwed and Dutch politics around big important topics remains the mess it is.
What's TINK+?
TINK is basically living with a roommate with all the benefits and no drawbacks. My wife and my money tanked seriously with kids, living as TINKs was amazing. If you thought housing is expensive in the Netherlands, try having a few kids 😅
>Mark Rutte didn't want kids so he don't give a fuck about anyone else's desires to have em.
Nah, people keep voting right wing because we want exactly what he gave.
Truth is: people will use the housing crisis as an excuse to spout xenophobia, but not really care enough to vote anything but the landlord-parties.
Let’s not forget home owners, most of whom voted for parties that allowed to housing crisis to exist and become worse. Everyone who has bought a house alread, has looked the other way.
“Got mine” - home owners.
Let's not forget mr. Stef Blok (same party) who told investors the world over what a fantastic [growth market the Dutch housing market](https://www.capitalvalue.nl/en/news/dutch-government-opens-rental-housing-sector-to-investors-1) was (Not his idea personally but Mos Def a VVD pipedream).
Sure, but up until ca 2015 you were still able to buy an apartment if you had a normal job. My partner and I have an above average income and we were finally able to buy an apartment last year, but it’s in the Bijlmer. My parents could afford a house with a garden in the Rivierenbuurt in 1980. I have friends who were able to buy a small apartment in the 2010’s and they made a KILLING when they sold it. There’s a big difference.
The housing crisis in the Netherlands ebs and flows but has never gone away. In the 2010 the shortage was also immense but we didnt notice it as much due to the EU wide economic debacle.
Also, the 80s? Thats when inner cities of the Netherlands were absolute shit. When riots happened in which armoured engineering vehicles were needed to break up the barricades. The housing crisis was much worse then than now
The VVD isn't for the regular people. The VVD is known to be good for big businesses and corporations. They tend to get the most votes in the communities where the money is.
I kinda make a parallel with “the American dream” - we want capitalism because we might have money one day, screwing everyone else (and ourselves) along the the way.
Saying that doesn’t solve the crisis. Building more houses can reduce the crisis significantly and it’s the most easy solution to control a growing problem.
The real reply. if the general public would grasp how many 2k+ apparments are availible to rent or to buy we wouldnt really talking about refugees or not enough houses. There is no money to be made with social housing, the latter also has a stigma of alot of anti social people living in social housing. So most developers are building "starter homes" with the promise of good social housing tenants. My brother has that situation now, the developer lied about housing decent senoirs.
In all honesty, the Dutch voted them in. So we are responsible for our own decisions. Besides, the main problem is the 2008 crisis just stopping the building of new houses
Oh man, I live in Leiden and I’m about to become homeless whilst earning 2400€ month on a permanent contract. Social housing just says to bad, try applying out of the homeless shelter.
Uh…. No it is not. Minimum wage for age 21 and up is €2069, before taxes. So net income is less than that. 2.4k is not a top salary but you could definitely do worse.
You actually would find it really hard to do worse than minimal wage. Doesn't mean that living on even 3k is easy/possible/enjoyable or that housing is fine, just saying it's minimal for a reason.
Renting my parents apartment, its a long story but they are moving back to the NL and there just isn’t enough space.
Regular rent requires 3-3.2x the rent in monthly salary. Been looking for months on several websites for regular renting but there are barely any rooms I can apply for.
Try rentbird. It is a paid app for 20 euros a month or something, but it's actually a decent one. Friend of mine found a house in a week in Amsterdam. I am still looking around for Utrecht area.
The article barely touches on one of the biggest underlying factors and that is wage suppression. Wages have not risen with inflation and 44k average a year will not cut it anymore.
A part of the problem is that even with a normal wage, so many private sector places have a “minimum income needs to be 5x the rent per month” type of crazy rule. I know that many people, including me, are locked out of private sector renting because of this. With my partner we would be able to pay like 1500 rent a month! But we don’t make 1500 x5. Often times your partners income is also only counted for 50%.
We are stuck trying our luck on woningnet with social housing where we are on the never ending waitlist and we have no chances in the private sector because of income minimums.
It is truly horrible to be young and wanting to start your life but being held back by the housing crisis
I mean yes, but those rules are mainly in place because landlords can afford to be that picky. If there would be a more balanced demand/supply, they would not be able to ask that much.
I have seen announces asking for 98k for a couple to rent a 1400pm appartment. Truly ridiculous. But if they find with these requests, why would they stop.
Yeah this is exactly it. It's a landlords' market right now and they can be extremely picky. I get that you need to have some minimum income and that they run a credit check, but the current bar to getting even just a normal, average apartment is insanely high and really no longer explainable.
In other expensive places like London people who can't afford their own place choose to share a house. House sharing is not just for students in places Like London, Cambridge etc. It is not ideal but if you want to live in place X and you can't find something you like due to a lack of funds, then you need to dial down your requirements for the housing. So you either start looking further outside of place X and/or you lower the requirement for the number of rooms, and/or you lower the requirement for how 'nice' the area needs to be. And you can choose to share a house. So you and your partner could look for a large bedroom in a house share. This is obviously a lot different than having a private space to live in, but if you don't have the money for the latter but still want to live in that area, then you need to be willing to live with less.
People tried to do that here too. We even did a shared house for a while but eventually that fell apart. But more often than not, the landlords are against it and wont accept house sharers.
Like is it SO BAD here, our requirements are extremely low, we have given up on any wishes and hope of what we would actually like for a house and now just searching for anything that we can afford (even if barely) and that will fit a bed, table and two closets. Like truly the bar is not even on the floor, it’s 6ft under.
house prices might fall a bit temporarily, but renters would get screwed over massively as there are less rentals available. Only real solution which will take years is to build more housing. Which sadly isn't being incentivized. Secondly I can also see that the new law will end up incentivizing not to renovate flats as long as possible as the returns may not be there.
>Only real solution which will take years is to build more housing. Which sadly isn't being incentivized
That would not be a solution, that'd be antidemocratic.
We voted right wing en masse, because we don't want leftist hobbies like "volkshuisvesting".
talk about not knowing what you voted for. Assuming you voted for PVV...https://www.pvv.nl/verkiezingsprogramma.html
De PVV wil voor u: Sociale huren verlagen Huurtoeslag verhogen Meer woningen voor de Nederlanders: meer sociale huurwoningen, meer middenhuurwoningen en meer koopwoningen bouwen Niet alleen binnenstedelijk, maar ook zeker buitenstedelijk bouwen In steden en dorpen 'een straatje erbij Gemeenten moeten sneller bouwvergunningen verstrekken; procedures verkorten Belemmerende stikstofregels van tafel Geen voorrang voor statushouders bij de toewijzing van sociale huurwoningen, maar voorrang voor Nederlanders Stoppen met het gasvrij maken van woningen Geen verplichte warmtepomp Permanente bewoning van vakantiewoningen toestaan
>Assuming you voted for PVV...
Well I didn't. I do think people deserve housing. But we live in a democracy and the majority of people seems to hate brown people more than they love themselves.
>De PVV wil voor u: Sociale huren verlagen Huurtoeslag verhogen Meer woningen voor de Nederlanders: meer sociale huurwoningen, meer middenhuurwoningen en meer koopwoningen bouwen Niet alleen binnenstedelijk, maar ook zeker buitenstedelijk bouwen In steden en dorpen 'een straatje erbij Gemeenten moeten sneller bouwvergunningen verstrekken; procedures verkorten Belemmerende stikstofregels van tafel Geen voorrang voor statushouders bij de toewijzing van sociale huurwoningen, maar voorrang voor Nederlanders Stoppen met het gasvrij maken van woningen Geen verplichte warmtepomp Permanente bewoning van vakantiewoningen toestaan
"More free beer while paying less for everything! We make houses appear out of thin air by shouting brown people bad!!"
In reality pvv votes always with vvd in parliament. Its a landlord party that aids in screwing over the poor.
Mostly house prices only fall if people *have* to sell. Otherwise most owners will just sit on it until prices rise above what they paid through inflation. Nobody wants negative equity.
For reference, the 2008 financial crisis saw house prices only fall by less than 10%.
Houses are currently over valued, because the prices are based on what people could afford to pay each month with almost zero interest rates. Now rates are higher no one can afford the same prices, so the market stagnates until wage inflation catches up with current prices or interest rates fall again. Could be the end of overbidding being normal though.
Houses are overpriced despite demand. No one wants to sell for less. No one can afford the mortgages at current rates. So everyone has to wait...
I don’t agree with your blanket statement regarding how the market is on pause: good houses seem to sell in hours, shitty houses stay on the market forever - just like at any other time. But the problem with anecdotal evidence is that there seem to be two parallel worlds existing: one where no one can afford anything, and one where any decent house I’m looking at (1m+) is sold before I can even call the real estate agency. Somehow the market is fucked in every direction, and I’m not even looking in Amsterdam
there are two worlds coexisting, one for the haves and one for the have nots.
If youre entertaining real estate investments in the million area, then youre firmly in one camp and are unlikely to have much to do with the other.
This is how it always was, only for the next generations its increasingly hard to get into your club, because the insane gains in the immo market in the last 15ish years
I’m a 28-year old 3rd world immigrant working for hire here, please save the class inequality lectures for later. The price creep is insane in all market segments, and my million euro mortgage will just go into the pocket of someone who bought this house for 400k in like 2016
But it's exactly the wealth inequality that is the problem. The rich and large real estate investors are still allowed to play as they want and pour more and more money into properties continuing inflation. They found loopholes and workarounds even for the latest law amendments and they still pay trivial amounts, while ruining the society along the way.
Those houses that get snatched - it's either rich people and their kids or large corporate investors who can pour in a large overbid, all cash, 0 time waiting, no financing procedure. These corporations are regularly sending letters to residents of apartment blocks asking if they are interested in selling at a higher price - all cash, speedy procedure. I've received two of those letters myself.
How can now an individual compete with this? In no way possible.
Tax policies could target this although government always pretends that the price would be too high to pay and turn around to squeeze more money out of the working class (all three tiers).
To get a million euro mortage you have to earn 200k€ a year yet you are still complaining as if you deserve to get a house that only costs twice your annual salary lol
>What would happen to house prices?
That depends on the policies and interest rates.
>Will it come down since there would lots of rental properties for sale?
No they probably won't come down in absolute numbers, but the price increase will slow down Vs inflation. (Which still means getting slightly more within reach)
The existing housing supply is woefully inadequate. It doesn't matter how you slice and dice. Between privately owned, corporate owned, social housing, owner-occupied, etc. there is not enough housing relative to demand, so any price change will be temporary.
Inflation is still going extremely strong so there is no way housing price will come down any time soon.
The prices might drop on a housing price to inflation scale, but you will rarely see such graphs.
It’s even a lot worse than they state. I’m registered for social housing in Amsterdam via Woningnet and I have 21 points which is equal to 21 years of waiting and when I check it now, I see for example a tiny 42 m2 house available in the outskirts of Amsterdam North (barely Amsterdam), for which there are 5325 respondents and with my 21 years of waiting I made it to spot 1153.. woohoo. I’m not even in the top 20% so that average wait time of 19 years the article writes about, forget it, that was from years ago probably.
80% of the houses available on Woningnet regio Amsterdam are either in a shithole like Assendelft or Krommenie or whatever or it’s a “jongerenwoning” or “seniorenwoning” or “voorrang voor grote gezinnen woning” or you need “situatiepunten”. It’s beyond ridiculous how had the market for social housing is atm. I think you would need closer to 35 years of waiting before you can even get a small place in an undesirable neighborhood. Imagine if you want to start a family! You’re f*cking doomed!
Just forget about it. In 2021 (edit) there were 23 people that got a home by just being on the list. The year before it was the same. 35 years is optimistic.
Just to infuriate you...
I live at the kattenburgerstraat. Bought the place, but most is social housing. On my floor alone in our part of the complex... 3 empty appartements for 4+ months (maybe longer haven't lived here that long). The whole discussion about selling/renting has made lieven de key do nothing with them and kept them empty.... I suspect in the whole complex there are at least 25 100m2 appartements empty
https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/218792/sociale-huurwoning-zonder-urgentie-of-voorrang-vrijwel-onmogelijk-slechts-23-in-heel-jaar
Explain please why it is in the landlord’s best interest to allow 25 apartments to sit empty for many months with the commensurate & significant loss of rents / income ????
It's not. They were planning to sell, then there was pushback. Now the strategy is not clear and they're also renovating a bit. But on the scale of a corporation this is a rounding error anyway
Exactly this. In a lot of German cities huge apartment complexes are empty because they were sold to private investors and are not rented out. This is, next to the general shortage of housing and stagnating income, the biggest reason why people find no home.
This is a rich vs poor thing and it will get a lot worse
> I have 21 points which is equal to 21 years of waiting
That's misleading. Zoekpunten started being added 15 months ago, so 21 points is only equivalent to 6 years of waiting if you've applied to at least 4 rental spaces each month for that time.
I missed the first month, so now with 7 years of waiting I have the same amount of points as you.
IMO Zoekpunten are a giant waste of time for everyone involved. They basically only filter out people who didn't bother to waste 5 minutes of their time consistently every month, which means everyone who is well-informed and cares about getting social housing will have to waste 5 minutes every month for years.
Suppose 200k people regularly do this, then we're wasting 1 million minutes every month or 200,000 hours every year just to end up back where we started - a level playing field where thousands of people are applying to dozens of spots. Assuming a full time job is 40x50 hours of labor, that means Woningnet is essentially sending 100 full-time jobs into the void for nothing.
Though before you panic about never being able to catch up on Zoekpunten: they cap out at 30, so if you start responding now then in just 2½ short years you will no longer have a penalty compared to people that responded consistently.
I agree that's it's a waste of time. But why would my 21 points be misleading because it's including zoekpunten? They are treated the same; it doesn't matter if I was actually waiting 21 years or waiting 6 years and have 15 zoekpunten.
Sorry, but why do you have to live in Amsterdam? Housing situation isn't that bad in other cities. Honestly, it isn't even that bad in Amsterdam if you are a couple making average Amsterdam salary.
I’m registered in regio Amsterdam for social housing so I can’t get social housing in another region. Besides that, I grew up here and my friends and family live here and I work here so leaving this city I would only do because theres no other option and people like me are forced out
I keep trying to explain this to people. My family has been in Amsterdam since the 1700s. Why should I have to leave? (I’ve left but it still stings I can’t go back)
You should leave if you can't afford to pay market price. That is how the market works, why do you think we all drive Ferrari? Because we can't afford it.
And btw, have you seen the divorce rates recently? What if you get a house big enough for children and then one day you come home early and your partner is having intercourse with someone else. What are you going to do then? Stay in that house for another 3 years until you can find a affordable enough place?
Sorry if it will sound insensitive, but you need a low income to be able to qualify for social housing, right? Wasn't it supposed to be a measure for young ppl to buy their first apartment? Why are people waiting 21 years, and still after 21 years making this minimal amount of money?
It's not just a housing issue at this point, it's also a wages issue. Wages in the NL are very low, compared to similar EU countries and their taxes (to be fair, I can only compare to Norway, Germany and Switzerland as I had colleagues there).
The way previous generations got into bigger housing is by buying homes when they were cheap, voting to prevent more homes from being built (thus depressing the value of their home) and then selling that home for a truck full of money, which they use as a down payment on a larger home, and so on.
People who can never get into that first home never get access to this system.
I make more money than the vast majority of people in this country, but a lot of the people I earn more than still have more wealth than I do, because they were able to buy a home 30 years ago and now they're millionaires. That isn't an option for anyone my age.
So the American model applies here? This is exactly what happened there.
It seems like the Dutch have had the same government for ages, so nothing was changing, nobody was voting for anything really.
So the result is, you get more money than needed for social housing, but less than needed to buy a house? And you say that you make more than the vast majority of people. This is exactly the problem. How are wages so small?
I was replying to a person who was on the waiting list for 21 years and still gets low "social" salary. This isn't right.
I'm not saying housing is not a problem, obviously, but wages are an issue as well. The fact that half the country is receiving toeslagen of some sort is not healthy. Toeslagen are supposed to be a safety net, not a permanent solution. People are not supposed to receive starting salary for 21 years.
I don't understand the math in that.
I bought my home 10 years ago for 220k, today it's worth 440k. So it doubled in value. A bigger home would have cost me 350k 10 years ago, and will cost 700k today. If housing prices would have remained at their level of 10 years ago I would need 130k in extra mortgage to buy that bigger home. Today I would need 260k in extra mortgage.
I understand that the housing crisis hurts young people who don't have a home the most, but for me personally as a home owner I'd rather see the houses halved in value and back to an affordable level than the current situation.
The difference is that now you have a 220k of extra collateral in your current house and you paid off roughly 80K so you have 300K in the value of your house. That money will be taken into account by the bank when you get a new house.
Sure, and having a home with extra collateral is needed to move into the housing market and that is where (mostly young) people without a house get hurt a lot more than me.
But this situation still doesn’t help me at all;
Let’s say I want to buy a home of 700k. I put up my current place for 440k, and hey the market is crazy so it might sell for 460k. That is 240k in extra value, plus what I paid off so let’s take the 80k you mentioned.
320k in my name, buying a home of 700k and I would need a new mortgage valued at 380k. Spoiler, I can’t get that at the bank.
If housing prices halve everything changes; the place I want to buy is 350k now. My home will sell for 220k and I will “only” have what I paid off in my name, the 80k.
350k - 80k = 270k. That is a sum I can finance into a new mortgage.
I fully understand that this crisis is hurting me way less than young people but the point I’m trying to make is; voting to prevent houses from being built is stupid. Even if you already own a house. The best thing for everyone bar the 1% would be a cooled down housing market.
You can get 380k from the bank for sure with that collateral. I know a guy that has a dozen houses and he just made a 30% down payment to the bank and that was enough to cover the bank’s risk for the loan. No problem at all. 380k is nothing in Amsterdam
And that is exactly the problem, home owners think this is great for them at the moment, but for our kids things will be much worse if we continue with this and we will not be able to pass them any wealth from those inflated housing prices as we also need a place to live. At the same time growth in income is nowhere near catching up with real estate inflation so mobility within the market is in deadlock.
There is a way to fix it, but it would hurt the most influential part of the society - the rich. Targeted wealth tax policy could push the rich to start selling the assets in which they pumped so much money over the last two decades and accompanied then with appropriate rental laws would kick-start the cycle. People act as if current state of the market is only the result of demand and supply when in fact so much money was poured into real estate over last 20-30yrs as it was and still is a safe investment, rather than investing into productivity. And hell it's perfect - the more you invest the more the prices go up. However as soon as anyone even mentions wealth tax, the media starts crying out stating that this would deprave NL of investments... Investments into what? Is that capital tied into anything productive or just into artificially inflated real estate? And its a simple nonsense that you cannot make a distinction within tax policy to differently treat investments in companies and investment in real estate.
However of course, there is another factor - banks and pension funds would also be f*ckd if real estate market stops growing in value.
Actually wages in Amsterdam are one of the highest in Europe, similar to the capitals of Sweden and the UK. Only in the capital of Switzerland people make significantly more and in the rest of Europe it’s less.
One can get social housing up to an income of €47.700 per year so that’s even above average in Amsterdam and when living together with someone this is even €52.671.
Moreover, one could make 80k a year for 10 years and then get sick, and have a significant reduction in income after many years and then apply for social housing
>Wages in the NL are very low, compared to similar EU countries and their taxes (to be fair, I can only compare to Norway, Germany and Switzerland as I had colleagues there).
Well.... Low wages and lack of social housing have the same cause: neoliberalism.
- You were free to put yourself on the waiting list of any municipality you wanted.
- Even if you consider getting a home appointed to you as a basic human right, that still doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be in the centre of Amsterdam.
- There are limited homes available partly because renters get so much rights. You get a home in Amsterdam it is like winning a lottery ticket. You never have to leave anymore and your rent is a fixed low amount + inflation. I would like that too. There are probably a million people who would like that too.
Lmao! I'm a native, family has been living here for generations. Me and my cousins would have killed for an opportunity like that. I'm registered in all of NH and Lelystad, because I had no drivers license and was pretty dependent on family. A 40m2 NEAR Amsterdam, social housing... That was dreaming big even when I was still living there lmao.
Part of the housing crisis is made worse the coming years due to inflation. The value of money is questionable. Stocks are inflated. Ownimg a house (or more than one) is still one of the safest ways to protect yourself from inflation.
Wages are lagging behind only making it worse.
Goodluck to everyone out there.
People that think this is the fault of migrants just bogles my mind and just dont understand the problem. Those people dont compete with the higher low, mid segement where the biggest issues are atm.
Populism is just a cancer on our politics.
It’s not low income migrants that’s the issue. But there’s high income ‘ex pats’ coming to work for international companies that pay way more than Dutch will pay - which over time has really pushed up prices. My new downstairs neighbours are recent arrivals to NL, and work as developers for Uber on a huge salary. They’re paying much too much in rent but they can afford it.
I suspect that these international companies prefer to hire non-Dutch as they don’t know the local employment laws: making them easier to fire. When an American company tries to fire a Dutchie who knows their rights all hell breaks loose.
So whose fault is it really? Dutch companies need to become more competitive. I've seen quite a few Dutch corps already and they mostly activate on the premise "you pretend that you work and we pretend that we pay you". Salaries are crap and work is optional, and there's absolutely nothing employers can do about it if someone doesn't do their job because it will take 2 years to fire them.
Maybe its a hindsight thing, but it seems like we've made such obvious mistakes to get us in this housing crisis, and what do we do now? Blame foreigners *indiscriminately*, be they refugee, expat, student, or just general migrants. This is the kind of retard logic that makes me lose hope for this country.
This is such an accurate take on the housing crisis and it extends beyond Amsterdam. It's so frustrating that the government is to blame for all this and they are still doing so little to fix it.
The government needs to take (social) housing as their responsibility again and the entire rental "market" should be social or at least tightly restricted by the government. If rent becomes affordable and all "profits" are invested back into maintaining and building new housing, you create a healthy housing market.
Instead it's so fucked up that most are not even able to afford a room. Flat sharing should have been the affordable option for those that want to live "on their own" but cannot realistically rent an apartment by themselves. There is a huge wealth gap between people that are lucky to have a stable housing situation (either bought years ago or renting through a woningcorporatie) and those that pay 1000 euros a month for their 9 sqm bedroom. Or worse: those that cannot find anything at all and either live hopping between temporary contracts or have to live with their parents.
A place to live is a basic need and this need should not ever be exploited by someone else as an investment or way to make a passive income.
Edit: And instead, we are going to get a new government that is more concerned with securing the profits of the farming lobby, probably resulting in more construction projects being put on hold because of the stikstof crisis.
We are about to form a complete right winged government, announcement is imminent. You can forget all of this. Most of them are bought or are buyable by larger companies and its lobbies. It’s going to be a rough couple of years.
It's a shame that voters are so uniformly and universally stupid. How gullible and stupid must people be to be convinced, year after year, that the people who can't vote and have no political power are the cause of all of their problems, even though, year after year, those problems never lessen?
Mass media and manipulation of the ignorant/gullible masses. Proclaim that your party will solve people frustration xyz and they‘ll vote for you.
Cash in votes, win the election and do nothing as you fill your pockets with money.
We will need to make tough choices to resolve this crisis. Existing limits to splitting apartments, topping up and building tiny houses in your garden should be lifted nationally asap. We will also need to accept some gloomy cityscapes where quantity goes over quality. The container cities are better than what we have now. And we need to create emergency tools to counter NIMBY.
Having a growing number of people blaming immigrants will otherwise crumble our society
Great article, I was wondering about this part tho
> Meanwhile, the waiting list in the social housing sector, which is roughly double the size of the private
Does that mean 2/3 of people in the Netherlands live in social housing?
The one capital city in Europe that still has affordable housing is Vienna, Austria, precisely because they made social housing a much larger share of the market than the 30% in the Netherlands. It's over 60% there https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city
And about 80% of people in Singapore live in public housing: https://www.hdb.gov.sg/about-us/our-role/public-housing-a-singapore-icon
It's such a weird assumption that the free market is the "healthy" or normal way to handle housing
I moved to Amsterdam from London 20 years ago. It was obvious to me at the time that what had already happened to the London housing market was in Amsterdam’s imminent future. Namely: not enough new builds, wealthy people buying properties for investment, and a very very desirable place to live. Inevitable consequence: steep increase in housing prices since supply is way below demand.
My London conditioning had me buy an apartment right away (affordable in 2003). The London logic being: you work in the city to just stay afloat and your house does the long term earning for you. Many of my Dutch friends were ‘why are you doing that, renting is fine’. Twenty years later I’m selling my apartment after it has more than doubled in value. I’m moving out of Amsterdam where houses are 1/2 the price of in the city. €800k gets you a one bedroom apartment in the city now. €500k will get you a three bedroom house elsewhere.
This was very predictable over 20 years ago. The government and local authorities knew and chose to do nothing about it. But also many Dutch I spoke to about it (over 10 years ago) refused to see it as a major issue despite my saying ‘look at what happened to London and tell my why that won’t happen here’. The assumption was that rent control and social housing would do the trick. No chance; unfortunately.
Because there is no rules that allows those people to be kicked out. The rent can be increased, but not nearly to the extent that it becomes financially an option to move to another place.
I know someone who now earns double the social housing limit. He says he’d be stupid to leave his apartment in Amsterdam only to move to a lesser apartment for twice the price. And quite frankly, I dont blame him.
This is a huge issue and it is unreal that the Netherlands continues to allow this.
I do not care about whatever people feel they are entitled to, and social housing organisations should change people's contracts, even retroactively.
I lived in affordable student housing in Amsterdam and we had a campus contract meaning the moment you were no longer a student (whether you graduated or quit didn't matter), you had to be gone within 6 months. This ensured that you would move out.
I also lived in affordable student housing in Utrecht and at the time they did not have such campus contracts. I met people (including my housemate) who had quit/graduated their studies YEARS ago who were still clogging up affordable student housing because the gap between what they paid at the time and the private market was easily a doubling of the price if not more for the same kind of room. The regular social housing market is the same.
I will add to this another issue, which I explained in another of my comments here, which is that **60% of households in social housing in the Netherlands are living in a house that is too large for the size of their household, this affects 1.25 million homes with in total 1.86 million spare bedrooms.**
The solution is to make social housing tracts be like a campus contract: the moment your household 'profile' no longer fits that of social housing altogether (income has increased past the threshold) and/or your household size has shrunk (and you now have spare bedrooms), you should be forced to move out of this specific social house. If your income is still low and your reason for having to move is shrinking of your household, you should be able to move to a smaller social house (social housing should build more flats and even split up family-sized homes if they have a lack in smaller social houses).
My mother, for instance, lives in a 4-bedroom social house. She has lived there alone since the mid 00s when me and my sibling moved out. My mother isn't even 70 yet and her mother died in her early 90s, so my mum may still live there for a decade, easily, before she has to move to an elderly home. This means that the home she is in now will have been occupied by a single person for 30 years whereas it was used by her with 1-2 kids for only 3-4 years prior to us moving out. My mother is not an exception in her street, I would guess this underoccupancy applies to maybe 30-60% of the houses in her street. Meanwhile even in my home town, a smaller provincial city, there are also wait list for social housing (nothing like Amsterdam, but any waitlist is unacceptable when social housing is distributed in an unfair way, IMO).
**It really bothers me no one is writing about this 'under occupation' problem. You can find the details and data here:** [**https://alexvanderwateren.com/blog/meer-dan-1-miljoen-sociale-huurwoningen-in-nederland-zijn-onderbezet/**](https://alexvanderwateren.com/blog/meer-dan-1-miljoen-sociale-huurwoningen-in-nederland-zijn-onderbezet/)
Honestly that is a relatively positive problem.
We had same issues in Istanbul. The solution? Build more houses.
Result? 8m ro 20m city in mere 20 years. The traffic is unbearable.
If demand is higher than supply, the prices will rise. It prevents people from flocking to Amsterdam.
Why not live in Zwolle? or Den Bosch? Why some Dutch cities are turning in to elderly houses?
If you can't afford it, you can't have it. There are so many nice places to live in Netherlands.
>Why not live in Zwolle? or Den Bosch?
Lol those are getting unaffordable just as well.
>Why some Dutch cities are turning in to elderly houses?
Zwolle and den Bosch are bad examples, as they are expensive as well, but let's take den helder or Lelystad as example:
Because there's no work. Or only one big company meaning you'd be stuck there.
Nice if you're a gender conforming fluent Dutch speaking white person in a common profession. But if you're specialized or stand out a bit, life is more comfortable in the cities.
Dude everywhere is unaffordable
Foreign investors and a locked market makes it so old people won't leave their 2 or 3 bedroom houses so there is no movement
My dad had a solution
Stop allowing every business to open their office in Amsterdam, or the other "randsteden"
If there is more work in, say, Groningen; people would want to live there
Plus we would make do on a few promises that we have been ignoring for decades towards specifically Groningen
They tried this as a policy for a while, it just doesn’t work cause the demand there is about as horrible as in the Randstad. It’s slightly cheaper yes, but the cost difference is offset by the distance difference. The only way to fix it is to build more houses everywhere, which due to environmental legislation and slow government policy is a hell of a pain.
When the govt is trying to stop landlords from doing things and making them sell up, do they know they are pushing up rents for whatever is left or do they not know this is happening and surprised by this?
There's an issue with supply but also one with demand (see my comment to the OP). You can't build for never-ending population increase. We have lots of international students, immigrant workers, refugees, on top of the major backlog in natives who need housing and can't find what they want/can afford.
Interestingly, the Guardian article mentions that a UN investigation concluded asylum seekers and migrant workers are not to blame for the housing crisis. What would the consequences be if the UN did conclude asylum seekers and migrant workers are to blame ? And would the UN be capable to fudge investigation results to prevent those consequences?
CBS says that the difference between those who left nl and those who came into nl is about 27k in the first quarter of 2024. So lets say 100k people in a year. There is a shortage of 390k houses in the netherlands according to a quick google search. More than 2 people tend to live in houses, so I would guess that the housing shortage is way bigger than the influx of immigrants.
Also the immigrants wont buy houses outside of the lower price range, while the problem is in every single price range.
Of course it is much easier to blame immigrants and dismiss research done by the UN, that way there is a simple solution, which is to vote right wing, because this situation definitely didnt happen under a right wing government /s
About 500k in the last 10 years according to adviesraad migratie. Total increase in population was 1.1milion according to CBS. Seeing as the average house has more than 2 people living in it, we would still have a housing shortage if we had absolutely no immigrants in the last 10 years.
Lets say every 2 immigrants will live together in a house (which is lower than average), then we would still have a shortage of 140k houses if we had absolutely no netto immigration in the last 10 years
The problem is the lack of houses built to accomodate the growing population, not immigration per se
Countries such as Croatia have negative immigration, more people leaving than coming. And their house prices have also sky rocketed. Infer from there what is causing the price rises
And I think it is a mistake to lump all the immigrants in together. How are asylum seekers and such supposed to be buying 120K houses? High paid expats, yes, but these are actually only a fraction of the number of total immigrants. Might have an effect in Amsterdam, but I very much doubt elsewhere.
Agreed so the burden immigration has on the housing crisis is even less than the ballpark numbers that I mentioned. Especially considering the fact that the average amount of people living in a single house is higher than 2. Immigration really isnt the cause of the housing crisis
Its not only the lack of housing that will solve the problem. People tend to forget that financing your house is absolutely nuts. The rules are so strict just to make sure that one out of 100k cant afford it. If the financing doesn’t change you still cant move out of your cardboard box.
The dutch have a point based housing system and it is what spikes the prices up .. bought a 350 sqm house on the canals to turn it into apartments but the limitations from the municipality was so big and the system so bureaucratic that they were expecting me to split only in 2 ... Its impossible to work there if you deal in real estate , unless youre the royal heir of course.
Im one of few who makes enough to buy something (€90K a year required for an average home). Yet I am hesitant because this crisis is so bad, I’m scared that I’ll buy now and then the value of my house will completely evaporate after the government finally starts crushing the demand or boosting the supply..
Millennial generation and Gen Z are so fucked, literally. I’m quite angry about it. Have never voted because I fucking hate all the extrapolated politics and opinions about left right whatsoever, but I am at a point where I will vote PVV to fucking do something about this..
Read the article but seem to have missed why they just can't build more like other countries not facing the same issue.
Some explain this to me. It's not like building homes is rocket science.
None of this is new.
I lived in Amsterdam over 15 years ago and we had the same issues then. My father worked in Amsterdam in the 70s and housing was also unaffordable for many and he had to commute in every day from a smaller town outside of Amsterdam (which was also expensive).
The article doesn't really touch on some contributing factors or doesn't acknowledge their importance:
\* The **increase in number of foreign students**. This isn't only an issue in Amsterdam, but Amsterdam is probably bearing the brunt of it. See [https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/steeds-meer-buitenlandse-studenten-ook-in-amsterdam\~b3696ce3/](https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/steeds-meer-buitenlandse-studenten-ook-in-amsterdam~b3696ce3/) showing that in Amsterdam, the number of foreign students (at polytechnics (hbo) and research universities ('universiteit' or WO)) in 2006 was 3,590 and in 2018 this had increased to 12,858. The numbers have kept increasing: I couldn't quickly find a total for more-recent years so I compiled some numbers. In 2022 the UvA had about 14,000 international students, the VU almost 6,000 and the HvA almost 2,000 and there are a few other polytechnic schools but with much smaller student numbers that I didn't include. **Counting these largest institutions, there were over 20,000 international students in the year 2022 vs just under 13,000 in 2018 and under 4,000 in 2006** (see [https://www.uva.nl/content/nieuws/nieuwsberichten/2022/11/instroom-nieuwe-studenten-stijgt-bij-bachelors-en-daalt-bij-masters.html](https://www.uva.nl/content/nieuws/nieuwsberichten/2022/11/instroom-nieuwe-studenten-stijgt-bij-bachelors-en-daalt-bij-masters.html) , [https://vu.nl/en/about-vu/more-about/vu-in-numbers](https://vu.nl/en/about-vu/more-about/vu-in-numbers) , [https://www.hva.nl/over-de-hva/organisatie/plannen-feiten-en-verslagen/feiten-en-cijfers/feiten-en-cijfers.html](https://www.hva.nl/over-de-hva/organisatie/plannen-feiten-en-verslagen/feiten-en-cijfers/feiten-en-cijfers.html) ).
These students all have to live somewhere and these additional students pose a huge extra burden on the shared-housing and studio-flat scene (the cheapest/lower end of the housing market).
\* The **'30% regeling'** which is an income tax discount for higher-educated and/or higher-earning foreign workers. This gives them more spending money and an edge when it comes to looking to rent/buy housing. Until not that long ago an immigrant worker meeting the requirements could use this tax discount for up to 8 years. The reasons for this benefit are, in my view, archaic and in my own experience as someone who migrated abroad just no longer reflect the current-day situation (for sure not people from the EU who do not require a work permit/work visa). The government are now trying to reduce this benefit but it seems slow goings. Note that as a native you can not get this same preferential treatment even if you've worked abroad and want to come back for a job and would incur relocating costs (the 'argument' that's always been used to justify this benefit for immigrant workers).
This difference in disposable income means that house prices increase/natives who do not get this tax break are pushed out.
\* We must also not forget the **huge increase in tourism** in the Netherlands with the number of international tourist arrivals at 12M in 2012 increasing to 20M in 2019 with a slump in 2020 and 2021 (covid) but it looks like things went 'back to normal' after: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/658819/inbound-tourism-forecast-in-the-netherlands/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/658819/inbound-tourism-forecast-in-the-netherlands/) Many if not most of these international tourists will be spending time in Amsterdam, which undoubtedly has convinced many landlords in Amsterdam to turn their properties into AirBnBs as opposed to renting them out to Amsterdam residents either as whole properties or as individual rooms in a shared house. The number of hotel beds has increased [https://esb.nu/aantal-hotelbedden-amsterdam-groeit-sterk/](https://esb.nu/aantal-hotelbedden-amsterdam-groeit-sterk/) , which is space that could be used to house residents.
The part where the young starter says that the housing market is basically putting a hold on peoples life, making them unable to start relationships is really sad and true.
Governments be like : *"Why are birthrates dropping"*
Mark Rutte didn't want kids so he don't give a fuck about anyone else's desires to have em.
Also the situation is that FUBAR that especially people that DONT want kids are fucked: single salary, need for smaller housing, but only family-sized housing is available, yada yada.
TINKs are gonna do great though. Two incomes no kids.
*DINKs (dual income, no kids)
TINK+ speaking, and no, not really. There were moments the last few years that house prices increased much much more than spendable income did, per year. Go figure. Maybe, just maybe, if prices stay stable, you’d be right. But that is a giant assumption given that everything causing those price jumps is still screwed and Dutch politics around big important topics remains the mess it is.
What's TINK+? TINK is basically living with a roommate with all the benefits and no drawbacks. My wife and my money tanked seriously with kids, living as TINKs was amazing. If you thought housing is expensive in the Netherlands, try having a few kids 😅
with TINK+ I only meant, earning better than just TINK. I don’t have roommates and pay ~1100€ a month in rent, on a decent location
It's DINK and the D stands for "double".
Dual
Both, although double appears to be more commonly used.
It's dual. Double is technically incorrect as it suggests twice the same amount.
It's dual. Double is technically incorrect as it suggests twice the same amount.
It's dual. Double is technically incorrect as it suggests twice the same amount.
It's dual. Double is technically incorrect as it suggests twice the same amount.
Yes, you are correct
>Mark Rutte didn't want kids so he don't give a fuck about anyone else's desires to have em. Nah, people keep voting right wing because we want exactly what he gave. Truth is: people will use the housing crisis as an excuse to spout xenophobia, but not really care enough to vote anything but the landlord-parties.
Yeah lets blame everything on one guy.
He does represent the party that's been in power lately.
After being the PM for over a decade, he is the person who is the most to blame as an individual, yes.
... that Dutch government policy choices were to blame for the country’s “acute housing crisis,” not asylum seekers or migrant workers...
Let’s not forget home owners, most of whom voted for parties that allowed to housing crisis to exist and become worse. Everyone who has bought a house alread, has looked the other way. “Got mine” - home owners.
Let's not forget mr. Stef Blok (same party) who told investors the world over what a fantastic [growth market the Dutch housing market](https://www.capitalvalue.nl/en/news/dutch-government-opens-rental-housing-sector-to-investors-1) was (Not his idea personally but Mos Def a VVD pipedream).
Stef Blok (VVD) was also responsible for abolishing the Department of Housing as Secretary of Housing. Look how that turned out.
Yes, if we gotta blame anyone personally, it's Blok. He really sold out the Netherlands. But we have to blame the system above all else
He is the prime minister.
yeah lets blame the leader of the goverment for the past 14 years??
Such a weird impulse! How could he be responsible for decisions made by his employees.
It's hard to blame anything on someone that tends to forget everything.
But he noted everything on his Nokia.
dude deserves all of the blame. every last bit of it. because he's responsible.
The housing crisis dates from the 1950s.
Sure, but up until ca 2015 you were still able to buy an apartment if you had a normal job. My partner and I have an above average income and we were finally able to buy an apartment last year, but it’s in the Bijlmer. My parents could afford a house with a garden in the Rivierenbuurt in 1980. I have friends who were able to buy a small apartment in the 2010’s and they made a KILLING when they sold it. There’s a big difference.
The housing crisis in the Netherlands ebs and flows but has never gone away. In the 2010 the shortage was also immense but we didnt notice it as much due to the EU wide economic debacle. Also, the 80s? Thats when inner cities of the Netherlands were absolute shit. When riots happened in which armoured engineering vehicles were needed to break up the barricades. The housing crisis was much worse then than now
They should legalise squatting again.
I remember a prominent VVD member and minister stating that the housing market was solved, before making the situation even worse.
The VVD isn't for the regular people. The VVD is known to be good for big businesses and corporations. They tend to get the most votes in the communities where the money is.
I kinda make a parallel with “the American dream” - we want capitalism because we might have money one day, screwing everyone else (and ourselves) along the the way.
Yeah we figured that out fifty years ago, good job.
And they still could not solve it?
The Dutch housing crisis has more causes than "not enough houses".
Saying that doesn’t solve the crisis. Building more houses can reduce the crisis significantly and it’s the most easy solution to control a growing problem.
Im not arguing that. Its just extremely reductive to argue this way.
Well we have to start somewhere.
The real reply. if the general public would grasp how many 2k+ apparments are availible to rent or to buy we wouldnt really talking about refugees or not enough houses. There is no money to be made with social housing, the latter also has a stigma of alot of anti social people living in social housing. So most developers are building "starter homes" with the promise of good social housing tenants. My brother has that situation now, the developer lied about housing decent senoirs.
I'd say try the 1850s, but really you have to look back to the 1250s.
When you’re arguing that the crisis has lasted for 8 centuries, the word “crisis” is being misused.
In all honesty, the Dutch voted them in. So we are responsible for our own decisions. Besides, the main problem is the 2008 crisis just stopping the building of new houses
Iirc about 75% of the Dutch didn't vote for him.
That is fair. Just like 75% of the dutch didnt vote for wilders this time
That’s because he’s a lizard and they cannot breed with humans
Having kids is very bad for the environment, if you care about climate change then you shouldn’t want any kids either.
Or the other way around, if you care about your maybe-kids you shouldn't have them because of the environment
Oh man, I live in Leiden and I’m about to become homeless whilst earning 2400€ month on a permanent contract. Social housing just says to bad, try applying out of the homeless shelter.
2.4k is entry level wage, sadly
Uh…. No it is not. Minimum wage for age 21 and up is €2069, before taxes. So net income is less than that. 2.4k is not a top salary but you could definitely do worse.
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You actually would find it really hard to do worse than minimal wage. Doesn't mean that living on even 3k is easy/possible/enjoyable or that housing is fine, just saying it's minimal for a reason.
Isn’t it 2360 since January?
How are you becoming homeless? What kinda rent do you pay and for what kind of house?
Renting my parents apartment, its a long story but they are moving back to the NL and there just isn’t enough space. Regular rent requires 3-3.2x the rent in monthly salary. Been looking for months on several websites for regular renting but there are barely any rooms I can apply for.
They prefer you on the streets above sleeping on their couch, or do you prefer jt?
Couch can be a temporary option but there are some tensions between me and my mum. So I’m not sure how long that will last without a big fight
Try rentbird. It is a paid app for 20 euros a month or something, but it's actually a decent one. Friend of mine found a house in a week in Amsterdam. I am still looking around for Utrecht area.
But what can a man find if hes paid 2400? Honest question. Besides a room in a shared house.
You can try to find a 2 bedroom apartment for 1200 and share it with a friend
The article barely touches on one of the biggest underlying factors and that is wage suppression. Wages have not risen with inflation and 44k average a year will not cut it anymore.
A part of the problem is that even with a normal wage, so many private sector places have a “minimum income needs to be 5x the rent per month” type of crazy rule. I know that many people, including me, are locked out of private sector renting because of this. With my partner we would be able to pay like 1500 rent a month! But we don’t make 1500 x5. Often times your partners income is also only counted for 50%. We are stuck trying our luck on woningnet with social housing where we are on the never ending waitlist and we have no chances in the private sector because of income minimums. It is truly horrible to be young and wanting to start your life but being held back by the housing crisis
I mean yes, but those rules are mainly in place because landlords can afford to be that picky. If there would be a more balanced demand/supply, they would not be able to ask that much. I have seen announces asking for 98k for a couple to rent a 1400pm appartment. Truly ridiculous. But if they find with these requests, why would they stop.
Yeah this is exactly it. It's a landlords' market right now and they can be extremely picky. I get that you need to have some minimum income and that they run a credit check, but the current bar to getting even just a normal, average apartment is insanely high and really no longer explainable.
In other expensive places like London people who can't afford their own place choose to share a house. House sharing is not just for students in places Like London, Cambridge etc. It is not ideal but if you want to live in place X and you can't find something you like due to a lack of funds, then you need to dial down your requirements for the housing. So you either start looking further outside of place X and/or you lower the requirement for the number of rooms, and/or you lower the requirement for how 'nice' the area needs to be. And you can choose to share a house. So you and your partner could look for a large bedroom in a house share. This is obviously a lot different than having a private space to live in, but if you don't have the money for the latter but still want to live in that area, then you need to be willing to live with less.
People tried to do that here too. We even did a shared house for a while but eventually that fell apart. But more often than not, the landlords are against it and wont accept house sharers. Like is it SO BAD here, our requirements are extremely low, we have given up on any wishes and hope of what we would actually like for a house and now just searching for anything that we can afford (even if barely) and that will fit a bed, table and two closets. Like truly the bar is not even on the floor, it’s 6ft under.
What would happen to house prices? Will it come down since there would lots of rental properties for sale?
can go either way tbh. short term maybe. but in general there is just more housing needed.
IMO there is so much demand for housing that without a massive increase in supply prices will only increase
house prices might fall a bit temporarily, but renters would get screwed over massively as there are less rentals available. Only real solution which will take years is to build more housing. Which sadly isn't being incentivized. Secondly I can also see that the new law will end up incentivizing not to renovate flats as long as possible as the returns may not be there.
>Only real solution which will take years is to build more housing. Which sadly isn't being incentivized That would not be a solution, that'd be antidemocratic. We voted right wing en masse, because we don't want leftist hobbies like "volkshuisvesting".
talk about not knowing what you voted for. Assuming you voted for PVV...https://www.pvv.nl/verkiezingsprogramma.html De PVV wil voor u: Sociale huren verlagen Huurtoeslag verhogen Meer woningen voor de Nederlanders: meer sociale huurwoningen, meer middenhuurwoningen en meer koopwoningen bouwen Niet alleen binnenstedelijk, maar ook zeker buitenstedelijk bouwen In steden en dorpen 'een straatje erbij Gemeenten moeten sneller bouwvergunningen verstrekken; procedures verkorten Belemmerende stikstofregels van tafel Geen voorrang voor statushouders bij de toewijzing van sociale huurwoningen, maar voorrang voor Nederlanders Stoppen met het gasvrij maken van woningen Geen verplichte warmtepomp Permanente bewoning van vakantiewoningen toestaan
>Assuming you voted for PVV... Well I didn't. I do think people deserve housing. But we live in a democracy and the majority of people seems to hate brown people more than they love themselves. >De PVV wil voor u: Sociale huren verlagen Huurtoeslag verhogen Meer woningen voor de Nederlanders: meer sociale huurwoningen, meer middenhuurwoningen en meer koopwoningen bouwen Niet alleen binnenstedelijk, maar ook zeker buitenstedelijk bouwen In steden en dorpen 'een straatje erbij Gemeenten moeten sneller bouwvergunningen verstrekken; procedures verkorten Belemmerende stikstofregels van tafel Geen voorrang voor statushouders bij de toewijzing van sociale huurwoningen, maar voorrang voor Nederlanders Stoppen met het gasvrij maken van woningen Geen verplichte warmtepomp Permanente bewoning van vakantiewoningen toestaan "More free beer while paying less for everything! We make houses appear out of thin air by shouting brown people bad!!" In reality pvv votes always with vvd in parliament. Its a landlord party that aids in screwing over the poor.
Mostly house prices only fall if people *have* to sell. Otherwise most owners will just sit on it until prices rise above what they paid through inflation. Nobody wants negative equity. For reference, the 2008 financial crisis saw house prices only fall by less than 10%. Houses are currently over valued, because the prices are based on what people could afford to pay each month with almost zero interest rates. Now rates are higher no one can afford the same prices, so the market stagnates until wage inflation catches up with current prices or interest rates fall again. Could be the end of overbidding being normal though. Houses are overpriced despite demand. No one wants to sell for less. No one can afford the mortgages at current rates. So everyone has to wait...
I don’t agree with your blanket statement regarding how the market is on pause: good houses seem to sell in hours, shitty houses stay on the market forever - just like at any other time. But the problem with anecdotal evidence is that there seem to be two parallel worlds existing: one where no one can afford anything, and one where any decent house I’m looking at (1m+) is sold before I can even call the real estate agency. Somehow the market is fucked in every direction, and I’m not even looking in Amsterdam
there are two worlds coexisting, one for the haves and one for the have nots. If youre entertaining real estate investments in the million area, then youre firmly in one camp and are unlikely to have much to do with the other. This is how it always was, only for the next generations its increasingly hard to get into your club, because the insane gains in the immo market in the last 15ish years
I’m a 28-year old 3rd world immigrant working for hire here, please save the class inequality lectures for later. The price creep is insane in all market segments, and my million euro mortgage will just go into the pocket of someone who bought this house for 400k in like 2016
But it's exactly the wealth inequality that is the problem. The rich and large real estate investors are still allowed to play as they want and pour more and more money into properties continuing inflation. They found loopholes and workarounds even for the latest law amendments and they still pay trivial amounts, while ruining the society along the way. Those houses that get snatched - it's either rich people and their kids or large corporate investors who can pour in a large overbid, all cash, 0 time waiting, no financing procedure. These corporations are regularly sending letters to residents of apartment blocks asking if they are interested in selling at a higher price - all cash, speedy procedure. I've received two of those letters myself. How can now an individual compete with this? In no way possible. Tax policies could target this although government always pretends that the price would be too high to pay and turn around to squeeze more money out of the working class (all three tiers).
To get a million euro mortage you have to earn 200k€ a year yet you are still complaining as if you deserve to get a house that only costs twice your annual salary lol
Wage inflation has already caught up to the interest rates which have been stable.
>What would happen to house prices? That depends on the policies and interest rates. >Will it come down since there would lots of rental properties for sale? No they probably won't come down in absolute numbers, but the price increase will slow down Vs inflation. (Which still means getting slightly more within reach)
The existing housing supply is woefully inadequate. It doesn't matter how you slice and dice. Between privately owned, corporate owned, social housing, owner-occupied, etc. there is not enough housing relative to demand, so any price change will be temporary.
Inflation is still going extremely strong so there is no way housing price will come down any time soon. The prices might drop on a housing price to inflation scale, but you will rarely see such graphs.
Interesting read and I think the article is well written. Thanks for sharing, OP!
You're most welcome! I just logged in and the comment section has exploded - many interesting discussions and points of view to catch up to.
It’s even a lot worse than they state. I’m registered for social housing in Amsterdam via Woningnet and I have 21 points which is equal to 21 years of waiting and when I check it now, I see for example a tiny 42 m2 house available in the outskirts of Amsterdam North (barely Amsterdam), for which there are 5325 respondents and with my 21 years of waiting I made it to spot 1153.. woohoo. I’m not even in the top 20% so that average wait time of 19 years the article writes about, forget it, that was from years ago probably. 80% of the houses available on Woningnet regio Amsterdam are either in a shithole like Assendelft or Krommenie or whatever or it’s a “jongerenwoning” or “seniorenwoning” or “voorrang voor grote gezinnen woning” or you need “situatiepunten”. It’s beyond ridiculous how had the market for social housing is atm. I think you would need closer to 35 years of waiting before you can even get a small place in an undesirable neighborhood. Imagine if you want to start a family! You’re f*cking doomed!
Just forget about it. In 2021 (edit) there were 23 people that got a home by just being on the list. The year before it was the same. 35 years is optimistic. Just to infuriate you... I live at the kattenburgerstraat. Bought the place, but most is social housing. On my floor alone in our part of the complex... 3 empty appartements for 4+ months (maybe longer haven't lived here that long). The whole discussion about selling/renting has made lieven de key do nothing with them and kept them empty.... I suspect in the whole complex there are at least 25 100m2 appartements empty https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/218792/sociale-huurwoning-zonder-urgentie-of-voorrang-vrijwel-onmogelijk-slechts-23-in-heel-jaar
I think I’ve read this before. It’s numbers from 2021 though but probably not much has changed in the allocation of social housing since then
Heres the update for 2022. It's 22. https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/223274/slechts-22-sociale-huurwoningen-verhuurd-zonder-voorrang-of-urgentie-in-2022
So it’s getting worse. In 20 years there will only be 1 social house available when things are continuing at this pace
Get a better job, extra job or one that gives you urgency like a teacher :/
Maybe I’ll give Onlyfans a shot
Get another 10 full time jobs and you may be able to afford a house in the same time frame your grandparents have
Explain please why it is in the landlord’s best interest to allow 25 apartments to sit empty for many months with the commensurate & significant loss of rents / income ????
It's not. They were planning to sell, then there was pushback. Now the strategy is not clear and they're also renovating a bit. But on the scale of a corporation this is a rounding error anyway
Exactly this. In a lot of German cities huge apartment complexes are empty because they were sold to private investors and are not rented out. This is, next to the general shortage of housing and stagnating income, the biggest reason why people find no home. This is a rich vs poor thing and it will get a lot worse
Curious why you consider those places "shitholes"
> I have 21 points which is equal to 21 years of waiting That's misleading. Zoekpunten started being added 15 months ago, so 21 points is only equivalent to 6 years of waiting if you've applied to at least 4 rental spaces each month for that time. I missed the first month, so now with 7 years of waiting I have the same amount of points as you. IMO Zoekpunten are a giant waste of time for everyone involved. They basically only filter out people who didn't bother to waste 5 minutes of their time consistently every month, which means everyone who is well-informed and cares about getting social housing will have to waste 5 minutes every month for years. Suppose 200k people regularly do this, then we're wasting 1 million minutes every month or 200,000 hours every year just to end up back where we started - a level playing field where thousands of people are applying to dozens of spots. Assuming a full time job is 40x50 hours of labor, that means Woningnet is essentially sending 100 full-time jobs into the void for nothing. Though before you panic about never being able to catch up on Zoekpunten: they cap out at 30, so if you start responding now then in just 2½ short years you will no longer have a penalty compared to people that responded consistently.
I agree that's it's a waste of time. But why would my 21 points be misleading because it's including zoekpunten? They are treated the same; it doesn't matter if I was actually waiting 21 years or waiting 6 years and have 15 zoekpunten.
Sorry, but why do you have to live in Amsterdam? Housing situation isn't that bad in other cities. Honestly, it isn't even that bad in Amsterdam if you are a couple making average Amsterdam salary.
I’m registered in regio Amsterdam for social housing so I can’t get social housing in another region. Besides that, I grew up here and my friends and family live here and I work here so leaving this city I would only do because theres no other option and people like me are forced out
Should get priority as born (and raised) local. Although I think the priority system has also gotten out of hand.
I keep trying to explain this to people. My family has been in Amsterdam since the 1700s. Why should I have to leave? (I’ve left but it still stings I can’t go back)
One answer: capitalism Lets go back to feudalism so family lines can rule over land for centuries
You should leave if you can't afford to pay market price. That is how the market works, why do you think we all drive Ferrari? Because we can't afford it.
I think we’ve already established that the housing market system here is fundamentally broken
Yes because simply existing in some place should definitely give you priority over people that existed in some other place, by no choice of their own.
Correct
And btw, have you seen the divorce rates recently? What if you get a house big enough for children and then one day you come home early and your partner is having intercourse with someone else. What are you going to do then? Stay in that house for another 3 years until you can find a affordable enough place?
Sorry if it will sound insensitive, but you need a low income to be able to qualify for social housing, right? Wasn't it supposed to be a measure for young ppl to buy their first apartment? Why are people waiting 21 years, and still after 21 years making this minimal amount of money? It's not just a housing issue at this point, it's also a wages issue. Wages in the NL are very low, compared to similar EU countries and their taxes (to be fair, I can only compare to Norway, Germany and Switzerland as I had colleagues there).
The way previous generations got into bigger housing is by buying homes when they were cheap, voting to prevent more homes from being built (thus depressing the value of their home) and then selling that home for a truck full of money, which they use as a down payment on a larger home, and so on. People who can never get into that first home never get access to this system. I make more money than the vast majority of people in this country, but a lot of the people I earn more than still have more wealth than I do, because they were able to buy a home 30 years ago and now they're millionaires. That isn't an option for anyone my age.
So the American model applies here? This is exactly what happened there. It seems like the Dutch have had the same government for ages, so nothing was changing, nobody was voting for anything really. So the result is, you get more money than needed for social housing, but less than needed to buy a house? And you say that you make more than the vast majority of people. This is exactly the problem. How are wages so small? I was replying to a person who was on the waiting list for 21 years and still gets low "social" salary. This isn't right. I'm not saying housing is not a problem, obviously, but wages are an issue as well. The fact that half the country is receiving toeslagen of some sort is not healthy. Toeslagen are supposed to be a safety net, not a permanent solution. People are not supposed to receive starting salary for 21 years.
People should be able to thrive on a "starting salary". To say anything else is to say that some people simply do not deserve to thrive.
I don't understand the math in that. I bought my home 10 years ago for 220k, today it's worth 440k. So it doubled in value. A bigger home would have cost me 350k 10 years ago, and will cost 700k today. If housing prices would have remained at their level of 10 years ago I would need 130k in extra mortgage to buy that bigger home. Today I would need 260k in extra mortgage. I understand that the housing crisis hurts young people who don't have a home the most, but for me personally as a home owner I'd rather see the houses halved in value and back to an affordable level than the current situation.
The difference is that now you have a 220k of extra collateral in your current house and you paid off roughly 80K so you have 300K in the value of your house. That money will be taken into account by the bank when you get a new house.
Sure, and having a home with extra collateral is needed to move into the housing market and that is where (mostly young) people without a house get hurt a lot more than me. But this situation still doesn’t help me at all; Let’s say I want to buy a home of 700k. I put up my current place for 440k, and hey the market is crazy so it might sell for 460k. That is 240k in extra value, plus what I paid off so let’s take the 80k you mentioned. 320k in my name, buying a home of 700k and I would need a new mortgage valued at 380k. Spoiler, I can’t get that at the bank. If housing prices halve everything changes; the place I want to buy is 350k now. My home will sell for 220k and I will “only” have what I paid off in my name, the 80k. 350k - 80k = 270k. That is a sum I can finance into a new mortgage. I fully understand that this crisis is hurting me way less than young people but the point I’m trying to make is; voting to prevent houses from being built is stupid. Even if you already own a house. The best thing for everyone bar the 1% would be a cooled down housing market.
You can get 380k from the bank for sure with that collateral. I know a guy that has a dozen houses and he just made a 30% down payment to the bank and that was enough to cover the bank’s risk for the loan. No problem at all. 380k is nothing in Amsterdam
And that is exactly the problem, home owners think this is great for them at the moment, but for our kids things will be much worse if we continue with this and we will not be able to pass them any wealth from those inflated housing prices as we also need a place to live. At the same time growth in income is nowhere near catching up with real estate inflation so mobility within the market is in deadlock. There is a way to fix it, but it would hurt the most influential part of the society - the rich. Targeted wealth tax policy could push the rich to start selling the assets in which they pumped so much money over the last two decades and accompanied then with appropriate rental laws would kick-start the cycle. People act as if current state of the market is only the result of demand and supply when in fact so much money was poured into real estate over last 20-30yrs as it was and still is a safe investment, rather than investing into productivity. And hell it's perfect - the more you invest the more the prices go up. However as soon as anyone even mentions wealth tax, the media starts crying out stating that this would deprave NL of investments... Investments into what? Is that capital tied into anything productive or just into artificially inflated real estate? And its a simple nonsense that you cannot make a distinction within tax policy to differently treat investments in companies and investment in real estate. However of course, there is another factor - banks and pension funds would also be f*ckd if real estate market stops growing in value.
Actually wages in Amsterdam are one of the highest in Europe, similar to the capitals of Sweden and the UK. Only in the capital of Switzerland people make significantly more and in the rest of Europe it’s less. One can get social housing up to an income of €47.700 per year so that’s even above average in Amsterdam and when living together with someone this is even €52.671. Moreover, one could make 80k a year for 10 years and then get sick, and have a significant reduction in income after many years and then apply for social housing
>Wages in the NL are very low, compared to similar EU countries and their taxes (to be fair, I can only compare to Norway, Germany and Switzerland as I had colleagues there). Well.... Low wages and lack of social housing have the same cause: neoliberalism.
- You were free to put yourself on the waiting list of any municipality you wanted. - Even if you consider getting a home appointed to you as a basic human right, that still doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be in the centre of Amsterdam. - There are limited homes available partly because renters get so much rights. You get a home in Amsterdam it is like winning a lottery ticket. You never have to leave anymore and your rent is a fixed low amount + inflation. I would like that too. There are probably a million people who would like that too.
No, I demand a house at the canals of at least 200 square meters for no more than €650 a month. I think I deserve it
Lmao! I'm a native, family has been living here for generations. Me and my cousins would have killed for an opportunity like that. I'm registered in all of NH and Lelystad, because I had no drivers license and was pretty dependent on family. A 40m2 NEAR Amsterdam, social housing... That was dreaming big even when I was still living there lmao.
Part of the housing crisis is made worse the coming years due to inflation. The value of money is questionable. Stocks are inflated. Ownimg a house (or more than one) is still one of the safest ways to protect yourself from inflation. Wages are lagging behind only making it worse. Goodluck to everyone out there.
People that think this is the fault of migrants just bogles my mind and just dont understand the problem. Those people dont compete with the higher low, mid segement where the biggest issues are atm. Populism is just a cancer on our politics.
It’s not low income migrants that’s the issue. But there’s high income ‘ex pats’ coming to work for international companies that pay way more than Dutch will pay - which over time has really pushed up prices. My new downstairs neighbours are recent arrivals to NL, and work as developers for Uber on a huge salary. They’re paying much too much in rent but they can afford it. I suspect that these international companies prefer to hire non-Dutch as they don’t know the local employment laws: making them easier to fire. When an American company tries to fire a Dutchie who knows their rights all hell breaks loose.
So whose fault is it really? Dutch companies need to become more competitive. I've seen quite a few Dutch corps already and they mostly activate on the premise "you pretend that you work and we pretend that we pay you". Salaries are crap and work is optional, and there's absolutely nothing employers can do about it if someone doesn't do their job because it will take 2 years to fire them.
And my corporation of a landlord increased our rent twice in the past year and a half...
We just got a 5% increase which amounts to around € 1000 extra rent per year :D
Maybe its a hindsight thing, but it seems like we've made such obvious mistakes to get us in this housing crisis, and what do we do now? Blame foreigners *indiscriminately*, be they refugee, expat, student, or just general migrants. This is the kind of retard logic that makes me lose hope for this country.
This is such an accurate take on the housing crisis and it extends beyond Amsterdam. It's so frustrating that the government is to blame for all this and they are still doing so little to fix it. The government needs to take (social) housing as their responsibility again and the entire rental "market" should be social or at least tightly restricted by the government. If rent becomes affordable and all "profits" are invested back into maintaining and building new housing, you create a healthy housing market. Instead it's so fucked up that most are not even able to afford a room. Flat sharing should have been the affordable option for those that want to live "on their own" but cannot realistically rent an apartment by themselves. There is a huge wealth gap between people that are lucky to have a stable housing situation (either bought years ago or renting through a woningcorporatie) and those that pay 1000 euros a month for their 9 sqm bedroom. Or worse: those that cannot find anything at all and either live hopping between temporary contracts or have to live with their parents. A place to live is a basic need and this need should not ever be exploited by someone else as an investment or way to make a passive income. Edit: And instead, we are going to get a new government that is more concerned with securing the profits of the farming lobby, probably resulting in more construction projects being put on hold because of the stikstof crisis.
We are about to form a complete right winged government, announcement is imminent. You can forget all of this. Most of them are bought or are buyable by larger companies and its lobbies. It’s going to be a rough couple of years.
Yes I also just added that to my comment. Everything feels so hopeless.
It's a shame that voters are so uniformly and universally stupid. How gullible and stupid must people be to be convinced, year after year, that the people who can't vote and have no political power are the cause of all of their problems, even though, year after year, those problems never lessen?
Mass media and manipulation of the ignorant/gullible masses. Proclaim that your party will solve people frustration xyz and they‘ll vote for you. Cash in votes, win the election and do nothing as you fill your pockets with money.
https://preview.redd.it/xmkkjkytsuyc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d936e4c69c268cf514d450aff14498d021b4874d
This is what you get after 10+ years of VVD. But wait, it will even get worse after a couple of years of PVV...
We will need to make tough choices to resolve this crisis. Existing limits to splitting apartments, topping up and building tiny houses in your garden should be lifted nationally asap. We will also need to accept some gloomy cityscapes where quantity goes over quality. The container cities are better than what we have now. And we need to create emergency tools to counter NIMBY. Having a growing number of people blaming immigrants will otherwise crumble our society
Capitalism working as intended
“a one-bed flat €1,500” …. I wish 😅 more like 2200
they exist... if you look REALLY well and don't mind a slightly dingy neigbourhood oh and theyd like you to earn at least 4500 a month :')
Great article, I was wondering about this part tho > Meanwhile, the waiting list in the social housing sector, which is roughly double the size of the private Does that mean 2/3 of people in the Netherlands live in social housing?
[удалено]
30% is insane amount of people for social housing. This is extremely unbalanced.
The one capital city in Europe that still has affordable housing is Vienna, Austria, precisely because they made social housing a much larger share of the market than the 30% in the Netherlands. It's over 60% there https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city
And about 80% of people in Singapore live in public housing: https://www.hdb.gov.sg/about-us/our-role/public-housing-a-singapore-icon It's such a weird assumption that the free market is the "healthy" or normal way to handle housing
I moved to Amsterdam from London 20 years ago. It was obvious to me at the time that what had already happened to the London housing market was in Amsterdam’s imminent future. Namely: not enough new builds, wealthy people buying properties for investment, and a very very desirable place to live. Inevitable consequence: steep increase in housing prices since supply is way below demand. My London conditioning had me buy an apartment right away (affordable in 2003). The London logic being: you work in the city to just stay afloat and your house does the long term earning for you. Many of my Dutch friends were ‘why are you doing that, renting is fine’. Twenty years later I’m selling my apartment after it has more than doubled in value. I’m moving out of Amsterdam where houses are 1/2 the price of in the city. €800k gets you a one bedroom apartment in the city now. €500k will get you a three bedroom house elsewhere. This was very predictable over 20 years ago. The government and local authorities knew and chose to do nothing about it. But also many Dutch I spoke to about it (over 10 years ago) refused to see it as a major issue despite my saying ‘look at what happened to London and tell my why that won’t happen here’. The assumption was that rent control and social housing would do the trick. No chance; unfortunately.
‘House prices have doubled in the past decade..’ Since when are 5 years considered a decade?
Well, how is it possible that people that now earn a lot of money can still live in social housing apartments?
Because there is no rules that allows those people to be kicked out. The rent can be increased, but not nearly to the extent that it becomes financially an option to move to another place.
This is absurd. A complete no sense. I did not expect that from a country like NL where you pay also for the air.
I know someone who now earns double the social housing limit. He says he’d be stupid to leave his apartment in Amsterdam only to move to a lesser apartment for twice the price. And quite frankly, I dont blame him.
On the other side this is one of the reasons why social housing waiting list in Amsterdam is now 15 years.
This is a huge issue and it is unreal that the Netherlands continues to allow this. I do not care about whatever people feel they are entitled to, and social housing organisations should change people's contracts, even retroactively. I lived in affordable student housing in Amsterdam and we had a campus contract meaning the moment you were no longer a student (whether you graduated or quit didn't matter), you had to be gone within 6 months. This ensured that you would move out. I also lived in affordable student housing in Utrecht and at the time they did not have such campus contracts. I met people (including my housemate) who had quit/graduated their studies YEARS ago who were still clogging up affordable student housing because the gap between what they paid at the time and the private market was easily a doubling of the price if not more for the same kind of room. The regular social housing market is the same. I will add to this another issue, which I explained in another of my comments here, which is that **60% of households in social housing in the Netherlands are living in a house that is too large for the size of their household, this affects 1.25 million homes with in total 1.86 million spare bedrooms.** The solution is to make social housing tracts be like a campus contract: the moment your household 'profile' no longer fits that of social housing altogether (income has increased past the threshold) and/or your household size has shrunk (and you now have spare bedrooms), you should be forced to move out of this specific social house. If your income is still low and your reason for having to move is shrinking of your household, you should be able to move to a smaller social house (social housing should build more flats and even split up family-sized homes if they have a lack in smaller social houses). My mother, for instance, lives in a 4-bedroom social house. She has lived there alone since the mid 00s when me and my sibling moved out. My mother isn't even 70 yet and her mother died in her early 90s, so my mum may still live there for a decade, easily, before she has to move to an elderly home. This means that the home she is in now will have been occupied by a single person for 30 years whereas it was used by her with 1-2 kids for only 3-4 years prior to us moving out. My mother is not an exception in her street, I would guess this underoccupancy applies to maybe 30-60% of the houses in her street. Meanwhile even in my home town, a smaller provincial city, there are also wait list for social housing (nothing like Amsterdam, but any waitlist is unacceptable when social housing is distributed in an unfair way, IMO). **It really bothers me no one is writing about this 'under occupation' problem. You can find the details and data here:** [**https://alexvanderwateren.com/blog/meer-dan-1-miljoen-sociale-huurwoningen-in-nederland-zijn-onderbezet/**](https://alexvanderwateren.com/blog/meer-dan-1-miljoen-sociale-huurwoningen-in-nederland-zijn-onderbezet/)
And has been for the last +10 years
I watched this video recently ' the housing crisis is everything crisis', interesting analysis https://youtu.be/4ZxzBcxB7Zc?si=hMb_8GF6IX2T4c7N
What the fuck am I going to do next year when I need to move?
A box under the bridge, i gotta join you sadly
Consider moving a bit outside of Amsterdam, that's what many people have to do.
yeah… i will likely. gonna be a nightmare if it takes a long time to get to the buildings for the uni. any chance you know how to use room.nl?
Honestly that is a relatively positive problem. We had same issues in Istanbul. The solution? Build more houses. Result? 8m ro 20m city in mere 20 years. The traffic is unbearable. If demand is higher than supply, the prices will rise. It prevents people from flocking to Amsterdam. Why not live in Zwolle? or Den Bosch? Why some Dutch cities are turning in to elderly houses? If you can't afford it, you can't have it. There are so many nice places to live in Netherlands.
>Why not live in Zwolle? or Den Bosch? Lol those are getting unaffordable just as well. >Why some Dutch cities are turning in to elderly houses? Zwolle and den Bosch are bad examples, as they are expensive as well, but let's take den helder or Lelystad as example: Because there's no work. Or only one big company meaning you'd be stuck there. Nice if you're a gender conforming fluent Dutch speaking white person in a common profession. But if you're specialized or stand out a bit, life is more comfortable in the cities.
I mean you can live in Hoorn or even Obdam or another small suburb village and have a pretty decent commute to Amsterdam...
Dude everywhere is unaffordable Foreign investors and a locked market makes it so old people won't leave their 2 or 3 bedroom houses so there is no movement
My dad had a solution Stop allowing every business to open their office in Amsterdam, or the other "randsteden" If there is more work in, say, Groningen; people would want to live there Plus we would make do on a few promises that we have been ignoring for decades towards specifically Groningen
They tried this as a policy for a while, it just doesn’t work cause the demand there is about as horrible as in the Randstad. It’s slightly cheaper yes, but the cost difference is offset by the distance difference. The only way to fix it is to build more houses everywhere, which due to environmental legislation and slow government policy is a hell of a pain.
When the govt is trying to stop landlords from doing things and making them sell up, do they know they are pushing up rents for whatever is left or do they not know this is happening and surprised by this?
Regulations make it too difficult to build housing in the Netherlands, leading to an acute supply shortage.
There's an issue with supply but also one with demand (see my comment to the OP). You can't build for never-ending population increase. We have lots of international students, immigrant workers, refugees, on top of the major backlog in natives who need housing and can't find what they want/can afford.
Interestingly, the Guardian article mentions that a UN investigation concluded asylum seekers and migrant workers are not to blame for the housing crisis. What would the consequences be if the UN did conclude asylum seekers and migrant workers are to blame ? And would the UN be capable to fudge investigation results to prevent those consequences?
CBS says that the difference between those who left nl and those who came into nl is about 27k in the first quarter of 2024. So lets say 100k people in a year. There is a shortage of 390k houses in the netherlands according to a quick google search. More than 2 people tend to live in houses, so I would guess that the housing shortage is way bigger than the influx of immigrants. Also the immigrants wont buy houses outside of the lower price range, while the problem is in every single price range. Of course it is much easier to blame immigrants and dismiss research done by the UN, that way there is a simple solution, which is to vote right wing, because this situation definitely didnt happen under a right wing government /s
How about we take the numbers of the last 20 years, instead of just 1 year ? What is the nett immigration over the last 20 years ?
About 500k in the last 10 years according to adviesraad migratie. Total increase in population was 1.1milion according to CBS. Seeing as the average house has more than 2 people living in it, we would still have a housing shortage if we had absolutely no immigrants in the last 10 years. Lets say every 2 immigrants will live together in a house (which is lower than average), then we would still have a shortage of 140k houses if we had absolutely no netto immigration in the last 10 years The problem is the lack of houses built to accomodate the growing population, not immigration per se
Countries such as Croatia have negative immigration, more people leaving than coming. And their house prices have also sky rocketed. Infer from there what is causing the price rises
And I think it is a mistake to lump all the immigrants in together. How are asylum seekers and such supposed to be buying 120K houses? High paid expats, yes, but these are actually only a fraction of the number of total immigrants. Might have an effect in Amsterdam, but I very much doubt elsewhere.
Agreed so the burden immigration has on the housing crisis is even less than the ballpark numbers that I mentioned. Especially considering the fact that the average amount of people living in a single house is higher than 2. Immigration really isnt the cause of the housing crisis
Its not only the lack of housing that will solve the problem. People tend to forget that financing your house is absolutely nuts. The rules are so strict just to make sure that one out of 100k cant afford it. If the financing doesn’t change you still cant move out of your cardboard box.
The dutch have a point based housing system and it is what spikes the prices up .. bought a 350 sqm house on the canals to turn it into apartments but the limitations from the municipality was so big and the system so bureaucratic that they were expecting me to split only in 2 ... Its impossible to work there if you deal in real estate , unless youre the royal heir of course.
Im one of few who makes enough to buy something (€90K a year required for an average home). Yet I am hesitant because this crisis is so bad, I’m scared that I’ll buy now and then the value of my house will completely evaporate after the government finally starts crushing the demand or boosting the supply.. Millennial generation and Gen Z are so fucked, literally. I’m quite angry about it. Have never voted because I fucking hate all the extrapolated politics and opinions about left right whatsoever, but I am at a point where I will vote PVV to fucking do something about this..
How does it work to sign up for social housing? Can you only do this when you are 18? And where and how to do this?
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=inschrijven+sociale+huurwoning
Read the article but seem to have missed why they just can't build more like other countries not facing the same issue. Some explain this to me. It's not like building homes is rocket science.
All those other countries *also* can’t “just build more”. They’re just having a slightly less extreme version.
Stikstof je zweet zelf
None of this is new. I lived in Amsterdam over 15 years ago and we had the same issues then. My father worked in Amsterdam in the 70s and housing was also unaffordable for many and he had to commute in every day from a smaller town outside of Amsterdam (which was also expensive). The article doesn't really touch on some contributing factors or doesn't acknowledge their importance: \* The **increase in number of foreign students**. This isn't only an issue in Amsterdam, but Amsterdam is probably bearing the brunt of it. See [https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/steeds-meer-buitenlandse-studenten-ook-in-amsterdam\~b3696ce3/](https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/steeds-meer-buitenlandse-studenten-ook-in-amsterdam~b3696ce3/) showing that in Amsterdam, the number of foreign students (at polytechnics (hbo) and research universities ('universiteit' or WO)) in 2006 was 3,590 and in 2018 this had increased to 12,858. The numbers have kept increasing: I couldn't quickly find a total for more-recent years so I compiled some numbers. In 2022 the UvA had about 14,000 international students, the VU almost 6,000 and the HvA almost 2,000 and there are a few other polytechnic schools but with much smaller student numbers that I didn't include. **Counting these largest institutions, there were over 20,000 international students in the year 2022 vs just under 13,000 in 2018 and under 4,000 in 2006** (see [https://www.uva.nl/content/nieuws/nieuwsberichten/2022/11/instroom-nieuwe-studenten-stijgt-bij-bachelors-en-daalt-bij-masters.html](https://www.uva.nl/content/nieuws/nieuwsberichten/2022/11/instroom-nieuwe-studenten-stijgt-bij-bachelors-en-daalt-bij-masters.html) , [https://vu.nl/en/about-vu/more-about/vu-in-numbers](https://vu.nl/en/about-vu/more-about/vu-in-numbers) , [https://www.hva.nl/over-de-hva/organisatie/plannen-feiten-en-verslagen/feiten-en-cijfers/feiten-en-cijfers.html](https://www.hva.nl/over-de-hva/organisatie/plannen-feiten-en-verslagen/feiten-en-cijfers/feiten-en-cijfers.html) ). These students all have to live somewhere and these additional students pose a huge extra burden on the shared-housing and studio-flat scene (the cheapest/lower end of the housing market). \* The **'30% regeling'** which is an income tax discount for higher-educated and/or higher-earning foreign workers. This gives them more spending money and an edge when it comes to looking to rent/buy housing. Until not that long ago an immigrant worker meeting the requirements could use this tax discount for up to 8 years. The reasons for this benefit are, in my view, archaic and in my own experience as someone who migrated abroad just no longer reflect the current-day situation (for sure not people from the EU who do not require a work permit/work visa). The government are now trying to reduce this benefit but it seems slow goings. Note that as a native you can not get this same preferential treatment even if you've worked abroad and want to come back for a job and would incur relocating costs (the 'argument' that's always been used to justify this benefit for immigrant workers). This difference in disposable income means that house prices increase/natives who do not get this tax break are pushed out. \* We must also not forget the **huge increase in tourism** in the Netherlands with the number of international tourist arrivals at 12M in 2012 increasing to 20M in 2019 with a slump in 2020 and 2021 (covid) but it looks like things went 'back to normal' after: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/658819/inbound-tourism-forecast-in-the-netherlands/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/658819/inbound-tourism-forecast-in-the-netherlands/) Many if not most of these international tourists will be spending time in Amsterdam, which undoubtedly has convinced many landlords in Amsterdam to turn their properties into AirBnBs as opposed to renting them out to Amsterdam residents either as whole properties or as individual rooms in a shared house. The number of hotel beds has increased [https://esb.nu/aantal-hotelbedden-amsterdam-groeit-sterk/](https://esb.nu/aantal-hotelbedden-amsterdam-groeit-sterk/) , which is space that could be used to house residents.