For the first time since the 1980s, a large-scale housing protest took place in Amsterdam. The protesters stood up to what they ‘colossal housing crisis’ call in our country. A term that is appropriate in two ways, because not only is the housing crisis of great, colossal, scale, home seekers also have to compete on the housing market against a true ‘behemoth’ in the form of the (private) investor. There is only one way to settle the fight between David and Goliath: ration homes.
According to figures from the Land Registry, investors have bought in the past ten years about 15 percent of the homes on offer in the Netherlands. As a result, almost 700,000 of the approximately 8 million homes in the Netherlands are now in the hands of investors. This concerns the large real estate companies, pension funds but also private investors, self-employed persons who save for their pension, and a single prince.
The investor contribution to the total number of housing transactions has risen systematically over the past ten years and reached a peak again last year. In that year, for example, from the homes that were sold in the city of The Hague more than half owned by investors. It wasn’t much better in other major cities. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, for example, approximately 40 percent of all homes for sale were owned by investors.
Transfer tax a pittance
Politics The Hague has previously tried to break the hype of slum landlords by increasing the transfer tax from two to eight percent for investors. Those one-time additional costs don’t seem to deter investors. That is also easy to explain. On a house of 300,000 euros, the additional costs are just under 18,000 euros. The investor simply converts this to his tenant by increasing the rent by 75 euros per month for twenty years. A pittance in the overall financial picture.
As of January 1, 2022, an amendment to the law will come into effect that is a second attempt at hindering investors in the housing market. Municipalities will then be given the opportunity to designate parts of their municipality where ‘purchase protection’ applies, as the minister describes it. In practice, however, this ‘purchase protection’ does not concern owner-occupied but rental properties. From now on, investors will need a permit from the municipality if they want to rent out a home in designated areas. The municipality can refuse that permit, after which the investor can sell the house or cancel the purchase at all. Before they can designate those areas, municipalities must first draw up an ordinance, conduct a scarcity study and take a large number of conditions into account.
Sounds complex and it is. All 352 municipalities will soon draw up ordinances in 352 different ways with 352 different surveys and 352 other area designations. Investors will probably not accept this, which means that in 352 municipalities the regulations and permits will also be submitted to courts in 352 ways. Although the first municipalities have already announced that they will start working with this new law, other, often smaller municipalities will drop out because of the complexity. This in turn creates a waterbed effect. This bill is therefore not a real solution.
Also read this opinion piece about the housing crisis: There is no house behind the mountains
Opportunities for starters
A better solution is to really use this purchase protection for owner-occupied homes. By putting homes on rations in the near future. Private individuals should temporarily not be allowed to buy a second home and companies should move away from the housing market in the first place. In this way we create more peace of mind in an overstrained housing market, resulting in more opportunities for starters looking for a home, for example. This rationing should take several years, until at least a large part of the planned 1 million homes have actually been built, and should be included in a single law, rather than regulated through 352 ordinances.
The scarcity on the Dutch housing market is noticeable from tower block to tiny house. The colossal housing crisis is not solved overnight. By rationing homes and thus keeping the behemoths from the housing market, we are creating a much-needed break in which there will also be opportunities for the ‘residential’ demonstrators.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 7, 2021
For the first time since the 1980s, a large-scale housing protest took place in Amsterdam. The protesters stood up to what they ‘colossal housing crisis’ call in our country. A term that is appropriate in two ways, because not only is the housing crisis of great, colossal, scale, home seekers also have to compete on the housing market against a true ‘behemoth’ in the form of the (private) investor. There is only one way to settle the fight between David and Goliath: ration homes.
According to figures from the Land Registry, investors have bought in the past ten years about 15 percent of the homes on offer in the Netherlands. As a result, almost 700,000 of the approximately 8 million homes in the Netherlands are now in the hands of investors. This concerns the large real estate companies, pension funds but also private investors, self-employed persons who save for their pension, and a single prince.
The investor contribution to the total number of housing transactions has risen systematically over the past ten years and reached a peak again last year. In that year, for example, from the homes that were sold in the city of The Hague more than half owned by investors. It wasn’t much better in other major cities. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, for example, approximately 40 percent of all homes for sale were owned by investors.
Transfer tax a pittance
Politics The Hague has previously tried to break the hype of slum landlords by increasing the transfer tax from two to eight percent for investors. Those one-time additional costs don’t seem to deter investors. That is also easy to explain. On a house of 300,000 euros, the additional costs are just under 18,000 euros. The investor simply converts this to his tenant by increasing the rent by 75 euros per month for twenty years. A pittance in the overall financial picture.
As of January 1, 2022, an amendment to the law will come into effect that is a second attempt at hindering investors in the housing market. Municipalities will then be given the opportunity to designate parts of their municipality where ‘purchase protection’ applies, as the minister describes it. In practice, however, this ‘purchase protection’ does not concern owner-occupied but rental properties. From now on, investors will need a permit from the municipality if they want to rent out a home in designated areas. The municipality can refuse that permit, after which the investor can sell the house or cancel the purchase at all. Before they can designate those areas, municipalities must first draw up an ordinance, conduct a scarcity study and take a large number of conditions into account.
Sounds complex and it is. All 352 municipalities will soon draw up ordinances in 352 different ways with 352 different surveys and 352 other area designations. Investors will probably not accept this, which means that in 352 municipalities the regulations and permits will also be submitted to courts in 352 ways. Although the first municipalities have already announced that they will start working with this new law, other, often smaller municipalities will drop out because of the complexity. This in turn creates a waterbed effect. This bill is therefore not a real solution.
Also read this opinion piece about the housing crisis: There is no house behind the mountains
Opportunities for starters
A better solution is to really use this purchase protection for owner-occupied homes. By putting homes on rations in the near future. Private individuals should temporarily not be allowed to buy a second home and companies should move away from the housing market in the first place. In this way we create more peace of mind in an overstrained housing market, resulting in more opportunities for starters looking for a home, for example. This rationing should take several years, until at least a large part of the planned 1 million homes have actually been built, and should be included in a single law, rather than regulated through 352 ordinances.
The scarcity on the Dutch housing market is noticeable from tower block to tiny house. The colossal housing crisis is not solved overnight. By rationing homes and thus keeping the behemoths from the housing market, we are creating a much-needed break in which there will also be opportunities for the ‘residential’ demonstrators.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 7, 2021
For the first time since the 1980s, a large-scale housing protest took place in Amsterdam. The protesters stood up to what they ‘colossal housing crisis’ call in our country. A term that is appropriate in two ways, because not only is the housing crisis of great, colossal, scale, home seekers also have to compete on the housing market against a true ‘behemoth’ in the form of the (private) investor. There is only one way to settle the fight between David and Goliath: ration homes.
According to figures from the Land Registry, investors have bought in the past ten years about 15 percent of the homes on offer in the Netherlands. As a result, almost 700,000 of the approximately 8 million homes in the Netherlands are now in the hands of investors. This concerns the large real estate companies, pension funds but also private investors, self-employed persons who save for their pension, and a single prince.
The investor contribution to the total number of housing transactions has risen systematically over the past ten years and reached a peak again last year. In that year, for example, from the homes that were sold in the city of The Hague more than half owned by investors. It wasn’t much better in other major cities. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, for example, approximately 40 percent of all homes for sale were owned by investors.
Transfer tax a pittance
Politics The Hague has previously tried to break the hype of slum landlords by increasing the transfer tax from two to eight percent for investors. Those one-time additional costs don’t seem to deter investors. That is also easy to explain. On a house of 300,000 euros, the additional costs are just under 18,000 euros. The investor simply converts this to his tenant by increasing the rent by 75 euros per month for twenty years. A pittance in the overall financial picture.
As of January 1, 2022, an amendment to the law will come into effect that is a second attempt at hindering investors in the housing market. Municipalities will then be given the opportunity to designate parts of their municipality where ‘purchase protection’ applies, as the minister describes it. In practice, however, this ‘purchase protection’ does not concern owner-occupied but rental properties. From now on, investors will need a permit from the municipality if they want to rent out a home in designated areas. The municipality can refuse that permit, after which the investor can sell the house or cancel the purchase at all. Before they can designate those areas, municipalities must first draw up an ordinance, conduct a scarcity study and take a large number of conditions into account.
Sounds complex and it is. All 352 municipalities will soon draw up ordinances in 352 different ways with 352 different surveys and 352 other area designations. Investors will probably not accept this, which means that in 352 municipalities the regulations and permits will also be submitted to courts in 352 ways. Although the first municipalities have already announced that they will start working with this new law, other, often smaller municipalities will drop out because of the complexity. This in turn creates a waterbed effect. This bill is therefore not a real solution.
Also read this opinion piece about the housing crisis: There is no house behind the mountains
Opportunities for starters
A better solution is to really use this purchase protection for owner-occupied homes. By putting homes on rations in the near future. Private individuals should temporarily not be allowed to buy a second home and companies should move away from the housing market in the first place. In this way we create more peace of mind in an overstrained housing market, resulting in more opportunities for starters looking for a home, for example. This rationing should take several years, until at least a large part of the planned 1 million homes have actually been built, and should be included in a single law, rather than regulated through 352 ordinances.
The scarcity on the Dutch housing market is noticeable from tower block to tiny house. The colossal housing crisis is not solved overnight. By rationing homes and thus keeping the behemoths from the housing market, we are creating a much-needed break in which there will also be opportunities for the ‘residential’ demonstrators.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 7, 2021
For the first time since the 1980s, a large-scale housing protest took place in Amsterdam. The protesters stood up to what they ‘colossal housing crisis’ call in our country. A term that is appropriate in two ways, because not only is the housing crisis of great, colossal, scale, home seekers also have to compete on the housing market against a true ‘behemoth’ in the form of the (private) investor. There is only one way to settle the fight between David and Goliath: ration homes.
According to figures from the Land Registry, investors have bought in the past ten years about 15 percent of the homes on offer in the Netherlands. As a result, almost 700,000 of the approximately 8 million homes in the Netherlands are now in the hands of investors. This concerns the large real estate companies, pension funds but also private investors, self-employed persons who save for their pension, and a single prince.
The investor contribution to the total number of housing transactions has risen systematically over the past ten years and reached a peak again last year. In that year, for example, from the homes that were sold in the city of The Hague more than half owned by investors. It wasn’t much better in other major cities. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, for example, approximately 40 percent of all homes for sale were owned by investors.
Transfer tax a pittance
Politics The Hague has previously tried to break the hype of slum landlords by increasing the transfer tax from two to eight percent for investors. Those one-time additional costs don’t seem to deter investors. That is also easy to explain. On a house of 300,000 euros, the additional costs are just under 18,000 euros. The investor simply converts this to his tenant by increasing the rent by 75 euros per month for twenty years. A pittance in the overall financial picture.
As of January 1, 2022, an amendment to the law will come into effect that is a second attempt at hindering investors in the housing market. Municipalities will then be given the opportunity to designate parts of their municipality where ‘purchase protection’ applies, as the minister describes it. In practice, however, this ‘purchase protection’ does not concern owner-occupied but rental properties. From now on, investors will need a permit from the municipality if they want to rent out a home in designated areas. The municipality can refuse that permit, after which the investor can sell the house or cancel the purchase at all. Before they can designate those areas, municipalities must first draw up an ordinance, conduct a scarcity study and take a large number of conditions into account.
Sounds complex and it is. All 352 municipalities will soon draw up ordinances in 352 different ways with 352 different surveys and 352 other area designations. Investors will probably not accept this, which means that in 352 municipalities the regulations and permits will also be submitted to courts in 352 ways. Although the first municipalities have already announced that they will start working with this new law, other, often smaller municipalities will drop out because of the complexity. This in turn creates a waterbed effect. This bill is therefore not a real solution.
Also read this opinion piece about the housing crisis: There is no house behind the mountains
Opportunities for starters
A better solution is to really use this purchase protection for owner-occupied homes. By putting homes on rations in the near future. Private individuals should temporarily not be allowed to buy a second home and companies should move away from the housing market in the first place. In this way we create more peace of mind in an overstrained housing market, resulting in more opportunities for starters looking for a home, for example. This rationing should take several years, until at least a large part of the planned 1 million homes have actually been built, and should be included in a single law, rather than regulated through 352 ordinances.
The scarcity on the Dutch housing market is noticeable from tower block to tiny house. The colossal housing crisis is not solved overnight. By rationing homes and thus keeping the behemoths from the housing market, we are creating a much-needed break in which there will also be opportunities for the ‘residential’ demonstrators.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 7, 2021