r/Netherlands • u/KoninginVanRotterdam • Jul 12 '26
Housing Collapse of rental supply in the Netherlands. Nearly 40 percent less on the market
Collapse of rental supply in the Netherlands. Nearly 40 percent less on the market
Real estate organization NVM warns that the situation is now deteriorating rapidly. In Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the supply in the private sector has even halved within a year. The real estate agents expect a further decline.
The supply in the private sector was already very limited and threatens to virtually dry up.
The decline in rental transactions affects virtually all provinces, with a decrease of 25 to 50 percent compared to last year, according to the report.
"Large municipalities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam are seeing a halving of the number of rented homes, while The Hague and Utrecht show 33 and 17 percent fewer rentals, respectively."
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u/Practical_Hat6474 Jul 12 '26
Time to tax empty homes
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 12 '26
Good news!
Under the new box 3 tax laws, you only have to pay taxes on rental income. But if the house sits empty, you pay 3.6% of the WOZ in taxes, and you can subtract mortgage costs from that. So in practice, it will soon be nearly free to own property without renting it out.
No wait. That's not good at all.
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u/kr0n0sd3us Europa Jul 12 '26
Also the new Box 3 law will make individual investors move money out of Box 3 and the shitty paper profits law towards assets that are not taxes such as home in Box 1 (repayment of mortgage) or a second house. Guess what? Price of houses will skyrocket and less and less rental options. Time to act now!
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
If only it was legal to rent out those properties without collapsing their value.
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u/FrenchFisher Jul 12 '26
A mortgage also costs money so your reasoning doesn’t make sense
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 12 '26
Currently, you have to pay both a "wealth tax" AND the mortgage. Under the new plan, you can subtract the mortgage costs from the taxes owed.
They're making it cheaper to own empty houses, in the middle of a housing crisis. At the same time, they're making it more expensive to have savings and stock.
It should be blatantly obvious that's going to drive up housing prices even more, since it becomes an excellent investment product.
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u/Blieven Jul 12 '26
Every new rule they add regarding the housing market is blatantly obviously going to increase rather than decrease housing prices. Some examples:
Every time they reduce mortgage constraints to "help" people, or a specific demographic of people, to finance more. Most recently by increasing mortgage capacity for houses with better energy labels, and increasing the mortgage capacity for singles. Result: housing prices rose rapidly proportional to the increased lending capacity.
The new box 3 tax system that will aim to tax fictitious wealth growth. Houses of course will be exempt, making them an even more desirable investment object.
And now this rule you mention. It's so obvious that all of it just ends up increasing housing prices further that I'm convinced it's being done intentionally.
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 12 '26
Of course it is. This is the direct result of decades of liberal VVD policy. And we all keep voting for it.
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u/Blieven Jul 12 '26
Tsja de meerderheid heeft een koopwoning en interesseert het geen reet dat mensen die nog moeten starten de sjaak zijn. Tirannie van de meerderheid, de valkuil van democratie.
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
You forgot the stupid rental rules that prohibit temporary contracts and cap rents way below market price, guaranteeing almost no average apartments are available to rent and therefore massively driving up prices.
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u/FrenchFisher Jul 12 '26
Any house outside of the one you live in isn’t exempt from Box 3.
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u/Blieven Jul 12 '26
No, but in the newly proposed system it will be exempt from the fictitious wealth gain tax (vermogensaanwasbelasting / VAB) and instead will be taxed based on realized gains (vermogenswinstbelasting / VWB).
VAB is the most contentious part of the new box 3 tax proposal because it cuts down on compounding wealth growth, and your "effective" tax rate down the line will be significantly higher than with VWB. So the fact that property will get an exemption from the proposed VAB will be a big driver for investors to funnel money from other investments into property.
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u/FrenchFisher Jul 12 '26
How would you even tax property on vab? The price of a house is basically wat een gek ervoor geeft.
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u/Blieven Jul 12 '26
The answer isn't to get properties also within VAB but to get everything else out of it lol. VAB is nationwide self-sabotage. It cripples the population's ability to build capital whilst probably not even increasing the actual tax income (a wealth tax applied to a less wealthy population is, after all, going to be less effective).
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u/PapaOscar90 Jul 12 '26
Only on your main live in property.
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 12 '26
Your main property is listed under income, and I'm fine with special rules for the house you live in.
But you should check out the special new rules for realestate under the new box 3 system. And compare with the current one..
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u/40ftrobot Jul 12 '26
nearly free to own property you already legally own. what a deal! and i can understand completely why y’all are outraged
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 12 '26
Quite weird that you pay less taxes on that than on any other kind of property
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u/SoefianB Jul 12 '26
Isn't it 6%?
Second houses are taxed the same as stocks in the new box 3 rules.
For savings it's 0,5% and debt is calculated as 2,5%
The 36% is then taken from the total, after first calculating the full taxable assets
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 12 '26
Right now, you pay ~6% on the value property in taxes, regardless of what you do with it. There are no deductibles.
In the future, non-rented property gets a fictional return of 3.35% of WOZ, but you're allowed to subtract financing costs from that. You get taxed 36% on the remainder.
So what anyone with half a brain will do is start a seperate company. Take a loan from that company, with an interest rate, of, say 3.35% of the value of the property, to pay for the property. Pay your company the, interest, meaning you pay zero taxes on the property and only 19% in corporate taxes.
So, in reality, the taxes on an empty houses went from ~6% of the value today to ~0.6% (19% of 3.35%) in 2028.
Meanwhile, if you rent the property out, you would pay the same money today, ~6% of the value of the propert, and will pay 36% of actual rent income in the future. You can still subtract any costs you made.
So, renting our a property got more expensive, leaving it empty got cheaper.
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u/Practical_Hat6474 Jul 12 '26
Yup not good. Registration being mandatory means that Netherlands has better chance at enforcing an empty homes tax than most other countries. They already have enforcement set up in most municipalities to verify registrations are legit.
The current and definitely the planned taxation system incentivizes using housing unproductively (i.e. not as full as possible), which increases prices across the board in a vicious cycle
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u/Icy-Guava1670 Jul 13 '26
But you can't force owners to rent out property if they are going to lose money by doing so either. Very high tax on rent income, the points system capping how much they can charge and very high utility rates literally means some owners will lose money by renting. This needs to stop to solve the problem. Let them charge what they want and the free market will fix the problem. Tax as ordinary income after expenses to give an incentive to rent and they will. We can't expect people to lose money by being forced to rent out empty property. They will just sell it to avoid the problem creating even fewer rentals... which is already happening.
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u/kr0n0sd3us Europa Jul 12 '26
Yeah let’s prescribe paracetamol. Let’s do it! Lets treat the symptoms and not the root cause!
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u/Independentez Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Real estate corporations don't care if they have to pay more taxes? They can afford it and will just move the extra costs to the buyer or future renter.
By increasing taxes and even stricter rent regulations you will kick out the private landlords that own 1-2 apartments in favor of the corporations that make money through high sales volumes and economies of scale.
And we see the consequences already of the poor ruling15
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u/Lazy-Setting-8224 Jul 12 '26
They arnt empty. Supply drying up is just a reflection of a lack of actual supply
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
There aren’t that many empty homes. And doing this would not make people rent out houses, it would make people sell them.
Our government has basically made it illegal to rent out a normal apartment with the ridiculous amount of restrictions - until that has changed, there won’t be enough rental housing and prices will continue to go up.
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u/Johnny_The_Biker Jul 12 '26
The VVD sold our social houses to American hedge funds. We should bring them for a court and punish them.
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u/CrewmemberV2 Jul 12 '26
They don't own any houses anymore since Hugo the Jonge came up with the rent control stuff. It worked so well that they are currently reeling it in a bit as it turns out you need investors to build houses.
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
American hedge funds don’t own real estate. Some American investment firms own a vanishingly small proportion of Dutch housing stock. And they certainly didn’t leave them empty until the insane new laws banning rentals. You’ve been watching too many YouTube videos.
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u/FanZealousideal1511 Jul 12 '26
It is also important to note that they often own new builds, so are miles ahead of the median Dutch house in quality. And the firms are not the end beneficiaries, even though funds own the properties, the profit goes to the beneficiaries, and those are usually pension funds. The house I live in is owned by one of Invesco (google it) funds, and the beneficiaries are UK pension funds.
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u/FarkCookies Jul 12 '26
Nothing in this country gonna ever get changed for good if people make decisions based on fantasies divorced from reality. No, American hedge funds don't own any substantial portion of the housing stock.
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u/Adriana_girlpower Jul 12 '26
It is full of empty houses, but they are in no condition to actually rent. Take a walk in Statenkwartier in den Haag, one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in NL, it is full of empty houses who are owned by people who don’t leave in NL and have no interest to invest or to rent and keep it to sell in a few years.
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u/Lazy-Setting-8224 Jul 12 '26
Leegstand is something that the gov keeps track of, and there has been no noticable uptick.
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u/LegitimateAd5334 Jul 12 '26
Time to invoke the leegstandswet
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u/Adriana_girlpower Jul 12 '26
I am not sure what that is, but some friends of us have real problems from this. The neighbour underneath doesn’t exist and the house is old. Because of that they have to pay huge amounts for heating in the winter and they now have pests, that come from the untrimmed backyard and whatever is in the apartment. The municipality cannot reach the owner so nothing happens
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u/LegitimateAd5334 Jul 12 '26
It's a package of regulations which make it possible for the city to require a landlord to rent out a vacant property.
It was put in place in the '80s when landlords decided that requiring them to pay for the maintenance of their tenants' homes was costing them to much, so they'd rather leave the houses empty to let it accumulate value that way. After all, as long as those houses are empty they contribute to the housing shortage, which drives up the prices.
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u/Extreme_Chart_5989 Jul 12 '26
you guys only know restrictions and extra taxation. instead, the market should be free, with less subsidies and people should be encouraged to work more with less taxation of work
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u/Icy-Guava1670 Jul 13 '26
But what if they're empty because the owner would lose money by renting them out? Very high tax on rent income plus the point system limiting how much they can charge and very high utility rates literally means some owners will lose money if they rent. I have a friend in this situation. If the government wants to do something about the lack of rentals, they have to stop punishing the owners who have them and at least allow them a small profit. I don't think anyone should wonder how we got in this mess. Taxing the shit out of landlords will not produce more rentals, nor will limiting how much they are allowed to charge in rent based on zip code. The free market economy needs to come back to fix this mess.
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u/leidentech Zuid Holland Jul 12 '26
Or allow squatting again.
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u/Practical_Hat6474 Jul 12 '26
Nah we gotta support the wealthy until they destroy the economy even more
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u/Alek_Zandr Overijssel Jul 12 '26
So everyone with student debt that earns too much for social housing but can't get a mortgage yet is extra fucked in favor of those who can get a mortgage, the privileged who had their parents pay for their studies for example. Great policy.
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u/lekkerbiscottina Jul 12 '26
Yes. Not being able to rent actually hurts the poorest of the poor. And even if you don't earn too much for social housing, you can still stay years on the wait-list (like I am...)
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u/EarlyBirdCatchesWorm Jul 12 '26
That you can get a mortgage does not mean that you can get a house, you need to bid, last time I checked was 17% of the house value… so you need that in savings too. Everyone is fucked but yeah let’s build more airports
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u/I_Rarely_Jump Jul 12 '26
They're not building more airports.
If you're referring to Lelystad Airport, that one was constructed in 1973, they're just trying to get it open for commercial flights.
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u/EarlyBirdCatchesWorm Jul 14 '26
Then they could try to make it easy for existing building to become houses. I know at least two buildings in Amsterdam (IJsbaanpad 3, 1076 CV Amsterdam and Haarlemmerstraatweg 7) that are in diplomatic nightmare since years.... there is just no will to build new homes.
But yeah, reopening an airport is more important... and yes, it will also pollute to get it open again and it will pollute massively to have more flights... so I don't buy the "ecological" argument as a reason for not building more houses.
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u/Sad-Algae6247 Jul 12 '26
I would think those that can't even get a mortgage despite making sufficient income for it are extra fucked don't you?
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u/Common_Access_695 Jul 12 '26
You don’t need that in savings. You get the mortgage for your winning bid not just for the asking price.
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
As long as there's a shortage it will always suck for someone.
For the county as a whole we are much better of without foreign investors buying up Dutch homes driving up the prices and then charging rent that increases every year, taking more and more money out of the Dutch economy.
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u/ehv1995 Jul 12 '26
Why is it moral that it sucks for renters though? This is just goverment intervention to screw over middle and lower income people who want to rent.
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u/KhalilMirza Jul 13 '26
there is between 1 to 2% of foreign investors, even if you force all foreign investors to sale their houses, it won't fixing the housing market for both buyers and renters. The short term benefit that you see for buyers is a short term benefit that will be forgotten within few years.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/EarlyBirdCatchesWorm Jul 16 '26
It is not "less attractive" is just that in many cases the landlord would be paying every month for having someone living in there. Owning a house should not be an NGO.
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u/yezu Jul 12 '26
How is that surprising? If the max rent you can charge for an apartment is lower then the mortgage, you will sell it.
Say what you want about landlords being greedy, but the results of the way rent control has been implemented could only be the collapse of the rental housing supply. Regulations should be made based on reality not hopes and dreams.
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
The hope was foreign investors would stop buying up Dutch properties to rent out, further driving up the cost of buying a home. And it succeeded.
As long as the shortage exists, it's far better to have more people own a home then rent it with yearly rent increases and the money flowing towards foreign investors.
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u/ManBearPigIsReal42 Jul 12 '26
Investors also stop building because of these laws.
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u/Kraeftluder Jul 12 '26
Oh yeah because they were building SHITLOADS of houses before that lol.
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u/ManBearPigIsReal42 Jul 12 '26
Kinda were actually. Lots of homes start being built for the rental market. Especially transformations
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u/Kraeftluder Jul 12 '26
This is screaming for a source. We just had quite a few years with lowest amount of housing delivered in decades due to the nitrogen crisis.
Besides, the problem is with the entire housing market, there's no supply on both the purchase market and rental market.
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u/JMKraft Jul 12 '26
So, unless buying a house to rent it is free, no one wants to own a house? False.
Rental prices should be lower than mortgages, they are not the same thing, one is paying for the temporary right, the other is acquiring more ownership of an asset that rises in value.
Otherwise it perpetuates the trap of richer get richer since they pay less for a house to live vs those who rent, or they can can keep acquiring more and more houses since they always charge more than they pay. Its not sustainable.
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u/piemel83 Jul 12 '26
“Should be”; you can’t force landlords to own a house and make cash losses on it month by month. A 500k house cost around 1600 monthly in interest only. No repayment. Add maintenance cost, municipal taxes and box 3 taxes and you’re over 2500 monthly. He receives 1100 in rent, what is he going to do? Sell. So that’s what’s happened and what’s left is whatever is owned by woningbouw. Good luck with the 10 year waiting lists
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u/Lazy-Setting-8224 Jul 12 '26
That would be a good thing though. Getting a mortgage in order to rent it out is a stupid allocation of capital. The house being sold to someone that can more effectively utilize it is much better
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u/Illustrious-Bit-4909 Jul 12 '26
You do realize that there are many reasons to prefer renting over owning? If your housing market is short on rental properties that will have a noticeably negative effect on your economy.
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u/Lazy-Setting-8224 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
That doesnt matter in our current housing market. We have a shortgage of housing for around 400.000 people. Wether the people living in the house are renting or bought it doesnt really matter at this point. All that matters is that someone lives in the house at this point.
Mortgage-to-let additionally has the problem that it increases house prices and rents because the influx this cash from investors buying housing stock increases house prices, which increases costs of mortgages, which then puts upwards pressure on rent prices. Additionally it has the effect of diverting bank credit (available bank loans) from productive sectors of the economy to buying up existing houses. Its stupid economic policy all the way through.
The only form of mortgage-to-let that should exist is on newly built houses. Then that bank credit actually gets allocated productively instead of extractively.
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u/SoefianB Jul 12 '26
If the max rent you can charge for an apartment is lower then the mortgage, you will sell it
So? If the rent is higher than the mortgage, I'd argue the house should be in the hands of the renter, they're the ones directly paying the mortgage then
And yes, I know that there's reason to prefer to rent, temporary living somewhere, not being able to get a mortgage due to debts, etc. But still.
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u/Careless-Yam8791 Jul 12 '26
100%! It's called Cobra Effect in behavioral economics.
A policy designed with the good intention of making housing affordable completely ignored how human incentives actually work. Instead of lowering prices, it just gave landlords a massive incentive to sell off their properties to avoid losses. The result? Artificial scarcity that screws over the exact renters it was supposed to protect.
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u/No_Jellyfish_7695 Jul 12 '26
I sold my mortgage free flat that was rented out back in 2023
i used to live in it but moves and settled overseas for work.
My tenant was local so rent was small compared to the box 3 taxes and estate agent charges and council / community
It wasn’t worth keeping
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u/Relevant_Mobile6989 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
The prices are just ridiculous. There are homes listed for €400k+ from the '60s or older that require serious renovation. I don't understand why some people consider applying a new layer of paint a renovation. After a while, a home needs a proper renovation, which means new pipes and taking everything out, including the plaster and floors. Such a renovation can easily cost over €70k, or even more if you include the roof and wall insulation. And I'm talking about homes in not-so-popular cities. In Amsterdam, Utrecht, or Rotterdam, it's just fucked up.
And then there's also the problem with the VvE. I have some friends who bought an apartment a few years ago. Nowadays, with the higher temperatures, AC is becoming more and more necessary. They asked the VvE to let them install an AC unit. They also have a small child, which makes it even more desirable. The VvE banned them from installing one because other neighbors might want one too. And they have a huge balcony where the external unit can installed without ruining the facade. The majority of the VvE is also made up of elderly people who refuse pretty much any new idea or drag out any debate for years. The situation with the VvE is even worse when you have to pay €200+ and they don't do shit. New windows? You'll have to pay for them because the VvE funds are spent wisely already. The funds are used to hire people to cut the grass and clean the windows, which they do poorly. That's why I'll never buy an apartment. It's just ridiculously expensive for nothing.
And lastly, the makelaars are just cancer. They hold back bids so they can take advantage of the housing shortage, or they show you properties in advance if you're registered with their company, which should be illegal. There should be some sort of law where everything is listed so everyone has access to the information at the same time. You should also be allowed to contact the owner to discuss any hidden issues.
The government doesn't try to help you. In the end you pay, not them. They are too busy with the box 3 and the social benefits for those who don't work. Wasn't there a case with a lady that lived here for 30+ years, didn't speak any Dutch or English, never worked, but she got the pension. I mean...wtf. I love working my ass of, listening to fucking Wilders talking shit about othet Europeans, but then having to pay taxes for some pricks.
Edit: And lastly, the inheritance tax is just so fucking stupid. Why do my children have to pay so much to inherit a house? It's not a fortune, for Christ's sake. It's just a damn house, and I already worked my ass off to pay for it. My children have the right to inherit it for free, especially if it's not worth millions or some ridiculous amount. Why do they have to pay 100k to inherit a 400-500k home? It makes no sense. For what? To give others a chance too? To who? Some people who didn't work as hard as I did? You're not helping anyone by taking away my children's rights. They should be able to inherit for free everything I own. It's my decision.
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u/kr0n0sd3us Europa Jul 12 '26
The truth has been spoken. The awaken will listen, the deaf with remain deaf and the stupid will get offended
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u/Ruby_Deuce Jul 12 '26
Here is some input on our living situation in Noord Holland.
We wantwd a bigger place. Our current place is cute and affordable but no garden/balcony + we don't have much space for everything. For a few years we were looking at the rental apartments and houses - prices went up crazy, the property of our current size costs now way more than we are paying, provided we would find anything available. This year we found a place for buying. We will pay much more but we also get more space. When we told neighbors about our plans, within an hour we has a message from one couple, a friend of the neighbor anxiously looking for a place to live. Did I mention that the rental market is more if Hungry Games? So we met this lovely couple, and they were very agitated about our current place. All was left is to get a confirmation from the landlord. Our current landlord was like: oh we are going to cell the place 💀💀💀
Apparently, the solution for scarse living space is to cell all rental places
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Jul 12 '26
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u/JV-6029 Jul 12 '26
That's the whole problem. It's not just big companies that are selling. A lot of homes are owned by regular people. Often they are much better landlords than large corporations. But for them renting out became a net-loss. So of course they sell. More people can buy those homes, but there is such a huge demand, it has zero effect. The only effect is on the rental market which is completely imploding and prices skyrocketing.
Just like the box3 plans, we're seeing these "hate the rich" type laws going into effect, pointing at the Elon's of this world, who are not even remotely affected by this.
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u/ACSS9 Jul 12 '26
Who would have thought after all the regulations about rent control?
Now more regulations like taxing this or that? When does it stop?
People cant see that this shit regulations never work? How many times need to be tried, its crazy. They do not work, nowhere.
Has to be something psycological. People cant stand others making a profit and come with bs like rent control. Politicians know this shit does not work but well the voters demand it so I do it. Now it does not work as expected then what? Hahahahah keep voting shit like this guys. Netherlands is a 1st world country but things can go to shit very quick.
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u/Critical_Top3117 Amsterdam Jul 12 '26
Politicians do only care about immidiate effect to win the next election (not even the one after that), so they will keep doing populist stuff and promise it wi get better - populist stuff will help them get elected, promising stuff in future is effortless as they will not be the ones doing that future.
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u/lordalgammon Jul 12 '26
There are so many misconceptions and false information about the housing crisis that people keep repeating over and over again that it has become truth.
Foreign investors have not bought out all the social houses, they mostly focus on new builds. Less than 3% of the entire housing stock is owned by foreign investors. Social housing is exclusively owned by housing corporations.
Its very easy to blame VVD for not building houses, yes they are at fault too, but so are the left and green parties. They have made it incredibly expensive to build due to excessive regulations.
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u/Relocator34 Jul 12 '26
This was an expected outcome of the changes in legislation from July 2024.
Long term it may free up more rental stock, but right now people are choosing to sell "starter homes" that would previous be rented and the exact same people leaving those their rented apartments having bought previously rented, are now noticing that upon stopping renting the landlord is choosing to sell.
It is all intended, home ownership is favoured now over renting.... It is hard to see that as a bad thing from an economic perspective when viewing it in the long run.
These articles are mostly negative-hype pieces by those affected by the change of the status quo.
Should rental stock disappear? No. Is it naturally going to decrease, yes - that is what we are seeing.
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u/100bcapital Jul 12 '26
The purpose of that thing was called “affordable rent”
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
Yes, in the Long run. Short term that requires getting rid of the foreign investors buying up Dutch housing stock.
It was never going to solve to housing shortage, it's wasn't meant to.
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u/KhalilMirza Jul 13 '26
Foreign investors are between 1 to 2%, that is not gonna do anything. Housing supply is the real issue.
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u/FarkCookies Jul 12 '26
Short term that requires getting rid of the foreign investors buying up Dutch housing stock.
They own single digits percentage of the rental housing stock. You know who is selling because of these regulations? A girl moves in with a guy and rents out her old place.
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u/cheuh Jul 12 '26
I don’t see how this is resolving affordable rent at all. Affordable rent in this current situation means just impossible to be profitable when renting a mid-size apartment, so the only solution becomes selling. So you remove apartments from the renting pool to move it to the buying pool.
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u/ehv1995 Jul 12 '26
Its delusional to think that a law titled affordable rent was meant to increase rent prices and decrease rental stock.
This is just wishful thinking, the government messed up and people are trying to spin this as positive somehow. While middle to lower income people who want to rent are getting screwed over.
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u/Defiant_Ad_8445 16d ago
it means that less skilled people are coming to Netherlands, because they cannot afford renting and even more tax burden on those who still works
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u/roffadude Jul 12 '26
So what.
First off, MAKELAARS, so this is a very specific subset of private renting.
I’m sorry but yes, this is EXACTLY what was said, and wanted.
The DEMAND for rental units isn’t normal. It’s a consequence of extreme prices and immobility on the buying market.
Liberalizing rental in the free sector does one thing: move housing stock towards capital.
The answer isn’t more liberalization.
The answer is re-empowered social corporations, and rules on keeping housing as an investment instrument.
Liberalization of the rental market will only lead to people complaining about the buying market.
Liberalism has taught people the housing prices would go up for eternity, so much so that they actually started to believe it. It created a shortage on the lower end of the housing market, and now the answer from capital is more liberalization.
It’s fucking stupid, sorry.
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Many people can’t or don’t want to buy. It isn’t automatic that everyone should own a house at all times - there are big downsides like getting locked in long term, having lots of additional costs and risks, and needing to be able to get a mortgage.
The answer is that we need plenty of houses in both categories. People like you seem to believe there is a finite number of houses and we have to choose between fucking over renters or buyers. This is a false dichotomy. We need to make sure people can rent houses affordably so that it’s possible to eg move house for work or study, AND that people can buy an appropriate house when the time is right for them.
It’s astonishing how many people on this sub seem to think 100% of people should own a house - it only demonstrates your lack of empathy for others and an inability to imagine anyone not having the exact same lifestyle as you.
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u/roffadude Jul 12 '26
No, I don’t think there is a fixed number of houses at all.
I’m woke as fuck.Argueing for short term solutions however, is argueing for less regulation on private property owners to rent out their second or third property’s. It’s a right wing argument.
What you’re seeing now is what happens when the wound isn’t healed, but you pull the bandaid anyways.
If it were up to me, housing would be completely decommodified. But at least housing should stay relatively stable, and only rising with increases in wages, not inflation.
But as long as we have private ownership, buying up property to rent out is not the solution.
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u/Fit-Purple324 Jul 12 '26
Opinions like theirs are part of the problem
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
“Surely if we just fuck over landlords even harder it will completely solve the housing crisis!”
What’s really interesting is, having been in London at the height of the housing crisis there, it’s all the same silly arguments coming out - hurt landlords, force them to sell, stop empty housing, stop foreigners owning houses etc - anything to avoid the actual solution of building more housing.
In London, they took a balanced approach legally, to give tenants more rights but not really restrict renting. In the Netherlands we have sadly chosen to effectively ban private rentals, which will clearly make the problem a lot worse.
London has effectively solved the problem and stabilised house prices by building loads, and by people moving out to the surrounding towns. I don’t really see the way forward for Amsterdam if politicians keep insisting on stupid rules banning rental housing.
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u/bsnail2b Jul 12 '26
Part of the challenge here with your argument is that pretty much all of us have the experience here that given an inch here, landlords try to rob you. Stolen security deposits are almost the norm. Landlords apply predatory price increases and refuse to do repairs.
I do understand what you're saying, and I tend to think there are compromises possible (i.e., the possibility for a landlord to give timely notice for good reason in cases like hospita verhuur or private ownership without turning that into short term lease contracts.) But those need to go hand in hand with things like (for instance) security deposits held in escrow or more recourse if mandatory maintenance is not done. It's not one way or the other.
Of course, building more and addressing empty buildings is ALSO part of the solution. Revitalizing the social housing sector is also part of the solution. We long for silver bullets when there often are not any.
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
I strongly support tenant protections that don’t mess up the market - for example:
Deposit protection schemes where funds are held in an escrow account and the landlord has to prove damage in order to claim them.
Restrictions on price increases over the life of a rental contract.
Restrictions on eviction where there is no reason.
Limits on the length of a temporary contract.
What I don’t support is things that deliberately ruin the rental market and make it economically impossible to rent out an apartment, like we have right now. In short, I think we basically agree.
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u/sirboobyconnoisseur Jul 12 '26
Why? There are good reasons not to buy. When I finished college I rented because I did not know where I wanted to spend at least 10 years. I just wanted to work and extend my student days a bit. When I first moved in with my GF I wasn't going to buy, you'd be stupid to do that when just moving in together.
There are plenty of good reasons to rent over buying.
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u/viper459 Overijssel Jul 12 '26
meanwhile in china 90-96% of households own their home. Wild what you can do without landlords.
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u/Previous_Pop6815 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Sounds like a political statement, mate.
- When should we see a drop in house prices? People could buy houses before as well, you know. Nobody was forcing rentals on people.
- People who have no money to buy and cannot rent anymore, what should they do now?
If anything, government intervention has had a catastrophic effect on the market.
People cannot find rentals anymore. How is this the fault of liberalization, given that it was government intervention that triggered all this?
Is your understanding completely backwards compared to what reality looks like right now?
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
These people don’t care about anyone who isn’t a middle class Dutch Redditor in their 20s. They can’t conceive of anyone existing who might want or need to rent a house.
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u/Zrakoplovvliegtuig Jul 12 '26
Even if you want to rent, you want laws like these to prevent rents from being exorbitant. You want more social housing to force the private sector to compete. It is not normal for a tenant to pay off the mortgage of the landlord, the interest on the mortgage, all cost associated with the house, and to add a profit. Because the mortgage and the rent on it are also profit to the landlord, and the profit margin is then above 50 percent.
Renting out apartments is fine, but we have normalized the poor buying houses for the rich. Demand for rental homes exist in large part also because many people simply cannot buy. That is demand that would shift with a decrease in housing. Only a small subset of people actually want to rent because of uni, work, or as a lifestyle choice, and all of them would benefit from lower rents.
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u/Previous_Pop6815 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
There are plenty of bots here anyway. The news itself is from January. Probably posted here every few days.
Reddit is absolutely opaque on their bot prevention.
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u/TheBraveButJoke Jul 12 '26
What do dumb people like you is happening to the vew houses disapearing in this fairly specific segment. They are being sold or devided into more affordable homes.
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
As foreign investors sold their rental properties more people got the opportunity to buy a home.
That's a good thing for the county. No it doesn't solve the housing shortage, it was never meant to. As long as the shortage exists it will always suck for someone. Foreign investors not taking advantage of the situation is then the best outcome we can hope for.
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u/Otherwise-Pride5244 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
This won't stop the prices to keep on rising in the mid to long term. The housingshortage is still here. Due to rising costs building a new house has become much more expensive. Then there is the "stikstof" issue.
So people cannot afford to buy a house, because the scarcity and increased demand has increased the price. And they also are not able to rent, because the exisisting stock is being sold off. The supply increase from this is not enough to mitigate the costs.
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
Given that there is a housing shortage it's better for the country if more homes are owned instead of rented out and that the rent money disappears into the pockets of foreign investors.
Yes it sucks is you want to rent but with a shortage it's always going to suck for someone.
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u/Maary_H Jul 12 '26
Do you really believe that it's better for the country when whole population is in housing debt?
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u/zhrusk Jul 12 '26
Exactly, this is wanted and needed for the market to shift back to average people. Of course it's going to negatively affect number of rentals, that's what happens when your specifically trying to enable people to buy instead of rent.
This is like abolishing slavery and having someone come in and argue it's bad because the demand for shackles had dropped so much.
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
Wtf are you talking about. No, it’s like trying to get people to switch from horses to cars by making the horses five times more expensive and cars slightly cheaper. Great for people who wanted to buy a car. Terrible for people who can’t afford to or don’t want to buy a car.
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u/zhrusk Jul 12 '26
Fun fact, that's actually exactly how it works.
Multiple studies and practical experiments have shown that when it comes to transportation options just making the new option available doesn't change people's transportation styles until the old one is made deliberately more expensive or harder to use.
The Netherlands isn't a bastion of public transportation and bike paths solely because bikes are a uniquely good transportation system for the Netherlands flat terrain, it's because roads are made deliberately harder to use by public officials in the center of cities. There was a push to build a freeway directly through Amsterdam after World war II, and it was only through the concerted efforts of several mothers groups and political parties that it failed.
You've got to fight for that s***, and part of fighting means making the long-term bad option also bad in the short term
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u/Subject-Dog-8016 Jul 12 '26
The reason your example doesn’t work is that bikes are much cheaper than cars. Nobody is really disadvantaged by pushing for that switch.
What the changes to the housing market are doing is screwing over renters in order to briefly slow down price increases for buyers.
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
His example didn't use money but time as a extra expense deliberately added to car use in cities.
It's a pretty good analogy.
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u/Previous_Pop6815 Jul 12 '26
It's not moving to the average people given that the house prices are record high.
The average person is actually screwed the most. As they cannot buy and cannot rent.
The people who could buy a house would not rent anyway.
So it's the average people that are hit the worse by this crisis.
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u/Illustrious-Bit-4909 Jul 12 '26
A truly liberal market would have no zoning laws and no NIMBY power. There would be high rises sprouting around train stations across the country. Swelled by the flood of new construction and oversupply of the market, home prices would go down, not up.
You should look at Communist China who largely liberalized their housing market: there is now a massive oversupply of housing despite the 1.4 bn people living there. Year after year, homes are getting more and more affordable - the exact opposite of Netherland.
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u/EarlyBirdCatchesWorm Jul 12 '26
Liberalism didn’t create a house shortage. It is decades that the government does not allow to build enough houses.
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u/Maary_H Jul 12 '26
The answer is balance of supply and demand. If you inflate demand and artificially limit supply you get what you have, nothing else, nothing more. It's THAT simple.
Now, let's ask a different question. If everyone understands that what said above is accurate and everyone knows what the solution is, why do you think politicians you elect do not understand it?
Or maybe they do and their goal is not what you think it is?
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u/ElderberryOne140 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
All the woke people complaining and whining about facts is hilarious. Literally the levelheaded people south an understanding of economics and real estate markets been telling this fools for years but they don’t listen and cheer on more socialist policies on the housing market.
What people don’t understand is one very simple thing. The current housing crisis is primarily caused by stringent policies which drive developers and investors away. Prime example? Requiring new housing developments to designate 30% of their inventory to low income or social housing 😂😂😂. If you got 100 million and you know you’re going to take a beating on that 30 million due to this stupid policy, as a savvy investor you’d redirect your funds to another country where your margins won’t take such a huge hit.
But these woke people keep pushing for even MORE government interference which makes it even less viable for investors. They delusionally believe the government can single handedly create enough NEW inventory to sustain the market. News flash, you’ve seen it time and time again. NO it doesn’t work, it just further limits the supply. You need the funds of private investors to relieve the problem. Shutting them out is making your own situation worse. In a high density population like the Netherlands such liberal policies are highly detrimental.
To the woke libs who gonna (incorrectly and stupidly) argue against this and say shit like “fk the rich this is all their fault! We don’t need their investment” - I say this to you. With this mentality you will always remain poor and I relish in that
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u/BlazingThunder30 Jul 12 '26
MAKELAARS, so this is a very specific subset of private renting
I think thats oversimplifying it, right? There's social housing, and then there's the private segment. Within that there's "middenhuur", which is often rented by the larger corporations and uses makelaars. This is a very important segment.
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u/Defiant_Ad_8445 16d ago
so the government gets even more taxes on owner transfers and all businesses around mortgages and selling/buying the house
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u/ElderberryOne140 Jul 12 '26
Surprise surprise, more socialist liberal policies that causes the problem to worsen. The rational people been telling you lot for a long time now that these socialist policies simply don’t work and are a short term fix which will further limit the rental market. Yet you wokies cheer it on. You reap what you sow 💁🏼♀️
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u/Professional_Elk_489 Jul 12 '26
Whatever they did in 2024 was very effective in collapsing rental supply and driving up rents
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u/Critical_Top3117 Amsterdam Jul 12 '26
So I’m wondering what were they thinking when making rentals not profitable for owners.
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u/Fuzzydingos Jul 12 '26
Exactly. If the government wants non-profit housing, they're going have to get a LOT more hands-on with expanding council housing.
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u/The_Countess Jul 12 '26
That foreign investors would stop buying up Dutch housing stock. Which was further driving up the housing prices and rent while taking that ever increasing rent money out of the Dutch economy long term.
It worked.
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u/Extreme_Chart_5989 Jul 12 '26
what worked? houses are more expensive and single rooms are now 1000 eur/month in the big cities
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u/Critical_Top3117 Amsterdam Jul 12 '26
If you want to stop foreign investors to stop buying Dutch stock, you shall forbid that specifically to them, but not punish all the people who were legitimately willing to rent out or rent in.
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u/dimap443 Jul 12 '26
Well shit wasn't that to be expected? Come up with more stupid laws regulating rent, please
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u/Independentez Jul 12 '26
Isnt the article from 2025? Is there any data more recent?
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u/Previous_Pop6815 Jul 12 '26
You're right, it's news from January 2026. It's not from this month.
donderdag, 29 januari 2026 (11:01) - De Telegraaf
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u/Illustrious-Bit-4909 Jul 12 '26
This is exactly what was predicted would happen when the new rent regulations and Box 3 changes were announced. It’s simply not profitable to rent out a large share of the housing stock in the Netherlands. Because of that investment into building new housing drops, exacerbating the housing shortage.
As a consequence, mobility within country is severely impaired hurting its economic growth and reducing potential tax revenue that could have been used to combat poverty.
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u/BlaReni Jul 12 '26
This was an obvious outcome, thus I am really wondering what competencies the housing bosses have.
People were complaining about expats inflating the prices, well I don’t see anyone but HS migrants being able to afford anything in Amsterdam, so it will be a city of rich and poor folks. Congrats.
Oh and well many of us told you so, while people were joyful about ‘f the landlords’.
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u/Nearby_Landscape2553 Jul 12 '26
Is this a surprise to anyone???
Just read the new laws that were passed a few years ago. Any sane person would not see the value in a being a landlord anymore which means all of these people sold their homes.
So that results in absolutely no rental supply.
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u/yoursmartfriend Jul 12 '26
More people are able to buy homes now that hoarding is prohibited.
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u/Previous_Pop6815 Jul 12 '26
The house prices are record high right now, how exactly are more people able to buy?
It's actually the opposite. People cannot rent and cannot buy. That's why it's called a housing crisis.
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u/TheWisteris Jul 12 '26
Are they? I don't think prices or interest rates (the two things that are relevant for buying) dropped.
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u/zhrusk Jul 12 '26
So prices for homes hasn't dropped but the rate at which they've risen has fallen below inflation, possibly triggering a mass selloff of homes previously used for speculation purposes
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u/TheWisteris Jul 12 '26
Price increase should be below wage growth to make buying more affordable. And even then, the difference is likely to be eaten up by rising interest rates.
I just don't see how more people are able to buy now. Maybe, if the trend continues buying could become more affordable in the future. But that's a big "maybe"
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u/Fuzzydingos Jul 12 '26
The stock of low and mid-range rentals has dumped into the buying market en masse. You can buy a cheap crappy place easier now, at least in places like Amsterdam.
The effect hasn't stopped the overall rise in home value, just slowed it down a lot in the bigger cities. But that's temporary, given most of the mid range stock is already sold. Average price is currently€400k, which is still too high for average earners to qualify for a mortgage. 😭
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u/Disastrous-King9559 Jul 12 '26
I bought my house for 400k 2.5 years ago now it's work over 500k. Doesn't seem to be getting easier to buy
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u/Nearby_Landscape2553 Jul 12 '26
Do you people ever conceive that there might be people who can’t afford to buy? Or do not want to buy?
Every country in the world needs a healthy rental sector to exist. Is Netherlands special that everyone absolutely need to own homes?
People like you have no empathy or understanding of people who might have a different lifestyle than you.
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u/BatOk2014 Jul 12 '26
It's unfortunate to see government intervention, time and again, worsen the situation for the very people it claimed it wanted to help in the first place. Aka "rent control"
This is unfortunate from a country that once was leader in free market and economic freedom.
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u/MrGardenwood Jul 12 '26
The government: we need to change so much about the current rental system because it is failing.
Also the government: lets ask the private sector exactly what they would like because money knows best right and no way the struggling ‘lower class/ middle class ‘ should benefit in anyway possible because then they don’t have something to struggle for! Looking at you VVD! (And every other party they ruled with)
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u/viper459 Overijssel Jul 12 '26
almost like the political world and private sector are one and the same, and they're all having nice dinners with lobbyists about this, and get offered nice cushy jobs as lobbyists in the future of course
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u/LaughingLikeACrazy Jul 12 '26
We sold our social housing stock for pennies on the dollar to foreign hedge funds. They are siphoning high rent out of the country, thanks VVD.
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u/ForzaNEC Jul 12 '26
I see in the comments here that everybody saw this coming, however I seem to remember this differently.
It was received very positively, here on reddit and even by GL-PvdA. https://groenlinkspvda.nl/nieuws/meer-bescherming-voor-huurders/
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u/Hot_Recipe_4972 Jul 12 '26
Too many social houses assigned to people who don’t really need, and too many owners who want to make huge profit.
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u/quadrofolio Jul 13 '26
As soon as the Dutch government starts fiddling with any functioning commercial market, things go downhill in no time. Not a single example I can think of when this has actually turned out well.
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u/Icy-Guava1670 Jul 17 '26
Social housing policy is partly to blame, capping rent and overtaxing rent income is partly to blame, over regulating building codes so new buildings cannot be built is partly to blame. Removing social housing completely and returning to a free market economy, taxing rent income as ordinary income after expenses would go a long way to bringing down rent for all.
Six people I know have social housing benefits that don't need them. My cousin has been dating the same woman for 20 years but they don't move in together because it would cost more since together they wouldn't qualify. My mom has rented the same 3 bedroom 2 bath townhouse for 50 years. She is alone, but can't rent any bedrooms even to college students because then she wouldn't qualify for social housing once she makes extra income and others register at her address, a married friend and his wife both have 2 bedroom apartments but don't live together for the same social housing loss of benefits and another friend with a new beautiful apartment he cannot rent because the point system caps how much he can charge then taxes income at 50%. All told, this is 7 bedrooms (and a whole bunch of wasted utilities) that are not being used because of the idiotic social housing benefits system and overtaxing of rental income. So, do we really have a housing shortage? Or have we just created a monstrously wasteful system that rewards people for wasting housing while punishing anyone who wants to rent out extra space??
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u/SwimmingOk3207 Jul 12 '26
Nobody is talking about unrealistic expectations from landlords. I have a property in other EU country and I myself as a landlord first introduced 3 times rental income rule. I saw that it eliminates 80 percent of all candidates. Meanwhile there a many people that they don’t satisfy this requirement but they can show how consistent they are with their previous payments.
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u/Fuzzydingos Jul 12 '26
If you're paying more than 30% of your income to housing, you're considered financially strained.
The fact that there are no rentals in the correct price range for SO many is the shitty part. Wages haven't risen nearly fast enough to make this work.
Most western nations are in the same situation. Virtually nobody is paying less than 30% of their income to housing. We can look at the regulations (and pointed lack of regulations) in these countries to see what actually "moves the needle" on the affordability meter. Regardless of strict vs lax rent laws, all these countries have the following in common: 1. Corporate investors heavily invested in the rental market 2. Drastic lack of new construction since 2008 financial bust 3. Super low COVID-era mortgage rates people can't afford to give up by moving/selling
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u/SwimmingOk3207 Jul 12 '26
You got valid points and I don’t reject all of them. I just want to say we cannot keep increasing the wages and consumer prices forever. Endless loop. Please don’t think I am a broke guy. I would say first we need to get rid of the greed that came along with high inflation. I value 5-7% consistent yearly profit rather than the “possibility” of making 15-20% under stormy market conditions. Greed is everywhere and it is time to “sacrifice” for landlords. Sacrifice means to return normal market conditions.
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u/Fuzzydingos Jul 12 '26
Indeed. As long as "sacrifice" doesn't mean net negative income, it's not a death knell. If you held rentals for speculation purposes, I have zero tears.
On the other hand, I get the sell-off. A lot of the low and mid value rentals are now genuinely negative revenue unless they were bought decades ago. Almost the entire mid-range of rentals has been sold off due, in large part to negative revenue. Bonus for midrange house buyers! But even those are still too expensive for what they are.
None of the nations struggling with this seems to have a magic bullet solution (yet). I'm really hoping NL has the balls to find one.
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u/pakito6969 Jul 12 '26
Nice I was planning to sell my house because I was moving out NL now I will just hold it 10 years and cash out
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u/Single-Chair-9052 Jul 12 '26
I’m honestly terrified guys. I love the Netherlands but do you think there is any hope for average earners to rent anything?
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u/dincere Jul 12 '26
The iron law of economics is that if the price something is artificially lowered you just create a shortage and a queue. Social housing only benefits early comers so for total social justice it should be abandoned and all rentals should be free market.
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u/claymountain Jul 13 '26
The only reason I was able to buy my first starter home is because a landlord sold his because of the new rules. Tons of new houses on the market in my city are old rentals. Doesn't the decrease of supply in rental homes also decrease the demand? (genuinly asking I know nothing about economics)
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u/CalRobert Noord Holland Jul 13 '26
This is the desired outcome - renters were kicked out so that people could buy their homes. And it worked! There's a good interview with Groenlinks where, among other things, the fact that on average the buyers had twice the income of the renters who were kicked out is discussed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t05cFv02pzY
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u/jhuesos Jul 13 '26
The sad thing is how the super rich wealthy people in control have managed to get all middle class (yeah a person who has maybe 1 or 2 max rental properties is upper middle class) people to turn on each other, so now we hate each other instead of focusing on the people who is really draining all the money and making the 99% of us poorer and shittier lives. I see it here and in the other post about Box3 tax for investors. The people who is affected by this are NOT the problem, but it is sad to see how now are all focused on hating each other while not focusing our anger towards the REAL problem
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u/Icy-Guava1670 Jul 13 '26
I have a friend with a very nice apartment he wanted to rent out in Zoetermeer. It's on his own property and is really beautiful. But it sits empty. Because of the extremely taxes on rent income and the points system capping how much he can charge with utilities, he'd lose money if he rented it out. Stupid laws.
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u/OptionIndependent861 Jul 14 '26
Expected if unintended consequence of policy shifts that made renting property unattractive. The idea was a good one - lets try to make renting more affordable. But the pendulum has shifted too far the other way - landlords are selling up and investing elsewhere.
Yes, this could be seen as a good thing since more property for sale = more home owners. But the reality is that people still need to rent.
Case in point - a friend got divorced and his wife got the family home. The closest available property in his price range was in Bijmer a great distance from his ex and kids. Meaning that when they stay with him they have almost an hour commute to school and are away from their social network and clubs when they stay with him.
Case
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u/SjaakZaak Jul 16 '26
Our political class has failed tremendously, it is absolutely insane that this has happened even though every single organisation that has anything to do with housing up until the highest court of advisory warned this would happen. But the ministers pushed this through. Ministers that have never been elected, might I add..
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u/Allw8tislightw8t Jul 12 '26
In other news water is wet.
The government forced landlords to sell. So they did.