Rental housing market changes in Amsterdam & Haarlem

The demand for rental housing is strong in Amsterdam and Haarlem. RandstadWonen Real Estate Agents report a growing number of registrated house seekers in the area. And while the demand has grown with approx 15% the supply has equally increased. This increase of demand is caused by several reasons.

• the amsterdam region is still a favourable location to many businesses causing a drag of jobhunters fleeing area’s that suffer more from the crisis.
• graduated students more often stay in the area.
• banks’ reluctance to give mortgages to people on temporary employment contracts is also encouraging the switch to renting.

All this extra demand hasn’t caused a significant rise in rental prices however. The economic climate causes people to rent out houses on sale rather than selling them. On top of that the govnerment is rapidly “freeing” the market of prehistoric regulations that have strangled the Amsterdam Rental market for decades. Supply is growing fast.Especially for expats and dutch middle class the “liberation” of the rental market is a joy. Typically in Amsterdam the % of rent-controlled housing use to be around 65%. New regulations will change this over the years to come to about 45-50% or even lower once landlords an corporations learn to adapt rules in their favour. More houses will be available for expats in the near future.

More competition means more quality and more price differences. It’s an economy law. We don’t aspect the prices of highly popular canalside apartments to drop any time soon but we aspect price drops for properties on less wanted locations. For an expat we aspect more housing opportunities outside the rent-controlled market. This will not be achieved over night but in the years to come we will see a more flexible and “free” rental market that better suits the character and history of our beautiful city.