
Amsterdam's Plan: If You Buy a Newly Built House, You Can't Rent It Out - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/amsterdam-rental-housing-prices-new-home-owner-occupied/585235/
======
avar
Resident of Amsterdam here, any policy the city is going to come up with is
realistically speaking only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at
this point. Some systemic issues:

1) Building new & building up is mostly politically impossible. A large part
of the city is effectively a historic open-air museum. Supply is always going
to be squeezed.

2) The rent controlled market is huge in The Netherlands and
disproportionately big in Amsterdam compared to the rest of the country.

This puts off #1 because low-income people have an out, but squeezes prices on
the middle and upper-end, and creates generational special-interests groups
(there's decade-long waiting periods, people pass off such properties to
immediate family etc.).

Most of the profit construction companies make on (highly regulated) new
construction is reportedly on the relatively small proportion of apartments
they're allowed to sell for a high price on the free market. The rest is on
the mandatory public housing market from day one.

3) A further squeeze on non-rent controlled properties is created because some
of those only escape that "market" by having a bunch of "points" that are
calculated as a function of size, amenities etc.: [A] & [B].

This creates all sorts of absurd situations. E.g. having a sink on some random
wall in the middle of a bedroom purely because it (along with other crazy
point hacking) brought the property _just_ over the point limit.

4) (Re-)zoning of properties that do exist is relatively restricted and
centrally micro-managed.

5) Interest rates have been dropping for years, leading to inflated property
prices. It's relatively easy to get sub-2% loans, even as low as 1.5%.

A.
[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woningwaarderingsstelsel#Punte...](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woningwaarderingsstelsel#Punten)

B.
[https://www.huurcommissie.nl/fileadmin/afbeeldingen/Download...](https://www.huurcommissie.nl/fileadmin/afbeeldingen/Downloads/Handleidingen/Beleidsboek_zelfstandige_woonruimte_versie_1_oktober_2016.pdf)

~~~
standardUser
Is housing in Amsterdam that problematic? A friend recently moved there and
would send me photos of places he was looking at for him and his family. He
had plenty of really nice options at costs they could afford. It seemed vastly
more affordable than NYC or the Bay Area.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Just because something is more affordable than the two most expensive housing
markets in the world doesn't make it affordable.

Yes, by Bay standards, Amsterdam is not bad (especially for rent). It's still
bad for virtually everyone in Amsterdam who isn't on rent control.

~~~
dave5104
On the (sad) bright side of living in the Bay for awhile, if you ever move
anywhere else, housing will probably all look like a bargain!

~~~
Mirioron
You'll probably also take a massive paycut.

~~~
dave5104
For sure. I haven't done any research, but I'm sure there are some areas,
though, where the % pay cut is less than the % reduction in housing costs,
though.

~~~
mixedCase
If you do know of such a place, please post it. When I do the math SF always
comes out on top.

~~~
Fins
I have much more money left over in Austin than I did in San Jose (and living
in a 4bd house instead of a crappy SJ 2bd apartment) despite a COLA adjustment
from the company... And by the looks of it I could get the pay back up here
anyway if I can be bothered to drive to the office of some local company.

Purely personal anecdata, of course, but it does work for me, and the quality
of life is (for me, anyway) much higher.

------
hnarn
Like most _selective_ political actions in a market, I suspect this has good
intent but will produce predictably counter-productive outcomes. The intent is
obviously to "make housing more affordable", but they're only restricting one
part of the market, and that part is "newly built" homes. What about the real
estate market that is simply "homes"? So if newly built houses cannot be
rented out anymore, and a large driver of building homes is this customer base
of "landlords", what will happen to the rate of building, and the price of
older homes?

It doesn't seem like a stretch to assume that the building rate will go down,
and prices on older estates not affected by the law will go up. Unless the law
is applied broadly across any and all estates, the end result will simply be,
best case, that the market adjusts: worst case, that you end up with very
unwanted and negative economical effects that no-one predicted.

The article states that "It’s not yet been clarified, for example, how long an
owner would have to occupy their home before being able to rent it out" \-- in
my opinion the problem here is not where you draw the line, the problem _is_
the drawing of the line. It will only create synthetic movements in the market
and I don't think it will help in achieving the stated goal at all.

If one were inclined to be cynical, one could even assume that like with most
political proposals, there are those who stand to gain from this, and they may
be sponsoring it. Namely: whoever owns "old" real estate in Amsterdam. Is it
also cynical to believe that politicians may know that this will not help, but
are more interested in looking like they are "doing something about it",
rather than resolving the issue, causing economical loss for property owners?
The stated beneficiaries of this proposal are those weak in buying power
claiming the "right" to live in a certain place without being priced out --
normally not a group with huge political leverage.

~~~
gekkeboom
The key problem is the rich buying property for literal rent-seeking to become
even richer.

This drives prices up for homes in the city to a point that only if you are in
a relationship and over 30 you might be able to buy your first 'home'.

There may be downsides to the measures proposed, but the fun part of
government is that you can learn, change and adapt. Because you write the
rules, you can change and you can use this ability to create a better living
environment for people, which is the ultimate end goal.

~~~
hnarn
> The key problem is the rich buying property for literal rent-seeking to
> become even richer.

This key problem is in no way solved by the political proposal, as "the rich"
can move to buy older real estate instead.

> This drives prices up for homes in the city to a point that only if you are
> in a relationship and over 30 you might be able to buy your first 'home'.

The reason that prices are going up is because a lot of people want to spend a
lot of money for the real estate, so in the end you must take a moral stand
regarding who owns the right to live and/or own real estate in the city, and
what this right is based on. Long term consistency is key here, because short
lived stabs at the market like this one will not make any difference apart
from creating volatility.

As soon as you create economical impediments to achieve your "moral", or
"political" goals, you must ask yourself questions almost like a penetration
tester: how would I exploit this law if I wanted to stand to gain from it
economically? There's almost always a way, and unless you take this into
account _before_ creating the law, you're just making the problem worse, and
more complicated (normally the same thing).

> the fun part of government is that you can learn, change and adapt

Government shouldn't be having fun with laws. They should be enacting laws
that are thoroughly studied, where the possible outcomes are weighed against
eachother to minimize risk and maximize the odds of success. Of course you
always need to evaluate and adapt, but this proposal is sloppy to say the
least, perhaps even malicious.

~~~
skohan
> This key problem is in no way solved by the political proposal, as "the
> rich" can move to buy older real estate instead.

I suspect this proposal has less to do with protecting middle class people's
ability to be home owners, and has more to do with preventing perverse
incentives around real estate development from having a long-term negative
impact on Amsterdam's housing stock.

For instance: look at what's happening in Toronto. There are a massive number
of high-end, 1-br condos being built because that's the type of property which
makes sense as an investment instrument. Large swaths of the renting
population are not served by that type of property, but investors are the
customer for real-estate development, so that's what gets built.

~~~
hnarn
> Large swaths of the renting population are not served by that type of
> property, but investors are the customer for real-estate development, so
> that's what gets built.

It all comes down to the same discussion: what are the inherent rights of a
native population when compared to foreign capital owners. It's subjective.
Your opinion could be anywhere between "money buys you property rights" to
"land is owned by living on it" and you wouldn't be objectively wrong in any
case, since you're making a _moral_ argument.

The problem appears when a moral argument should enter legal and political
reality. When you look at this proposal through the lens of "what will be
achieved", it's hard to be optimistic.

~~~
mistermann
> It all comes down to the same discussion: what are the inherent rights of a
> native population when compared to foreign capital owners. It's subjective.

Indeed it is, and in an honest democracy a question of this importance would
be voted on in a referendum. But before doing that you'd first want the public
to be informed of the facts. But in Canada the government won't even do that -
we have no idea how much property is being purchased by foreign investors
directly, or via proxy friends/relatives who have obtained Canadian
citizenship.

------
siliconunit
While not perfect it's absolutely commendable, compare this to the borderline
criminal state of real estate market in places like the UK or Vancouver where
foreign investors and corrupted politics destroyed and alienated the middle
class population...Imho real estate should be absolutely outside the
possibility of speculation and 'investment', a house is for a family/person to
own and live in not some mega conglomerate side business of rip off rental and
overinflated selling prices.

~~~
nvarsj
The UK is awful. Worse than American cities. No property tax, non
existent/weak tenant laws, and renters have to pay the council taxes (in the
US the owner is usually responsible for all HOA and taxes). The deposit
protection schemes seem more designed to benefit landlords too.

~~~
beobab
For the landlord side: Renting out my one house in London after I bought
another one to live in (across the country). I had tenants who flat out
refused to pay their rent after a few months living there. This went on for
several years, and it took legal battles and numerous court fees to evict
them. None of which they turned up to contest.

Before they left, they plastered globs of lard on the walls, and destroyed the
kitchen floor and wall by rigging the water pipes to constantly overflow down
the outside wall.

I was not allowed to enter the property to inspect it, nor was I allowed to
"harass them" by speaking to them face-to-face, because they didn't want me
to. I was powerless.

Yes, they lost their deposit, but I was out of pocket tens of thousands, which
I basically couldn't afford. I maxed out my credit cards and bank account
overdrafts. Even selling the house, it took me nearly 5 years to get back to
zero.

I'm not saying that UK law is worse for landlords, but the laws aren't
particularly on the side of landlords either.

~~~
digianarchist
I'm going to call you out on the tenants remaining in the property for
"several years". That simply wouldn't happen unless you didn't follow the
procedure to evict them.

UK laws are very much in the favour of the landlord.

~~~
beobab
That's a reasonable call, and to be fair to the tenants; it might have been
less than I remember. I haven't got the details to hand, so I can't check.

But without going into detail, I definitely buried my head in the sand too
much, and they did pay a small amount at one stage to make me think it might
be okay. It was sixteen years ago now, and I've thankfully forgotten a lot of
it.

I do remember that I had to restart the whole process when it was thrown out
because a date was wrong on a letter. I wasted a whole heap of time trying to
get the judge to reverse that decision rather than moving on and starting
again.

Anyway, like I said, I was very naive back then, and made lots of mistakes.

~~~
Balero
"It was sixteen years ago now, and I've thankfully forgotten a lot of it."

Sorry you've had such crap tenants. 16 Years is a long time, and the laws
could have changed on this in this time. So there is a good chance you are
both right!

------
akho
Good time to be a landlord in Amsterdam. This looks like it’s designed to
penalize poor/young/foreign people, who will not be able to benefit from a
decrease in new housing prices, but will be hit by the rent increase once new
supply of rentals dries out. Most benefit will accrue to current owners (the
market will be segmented into places you can rent out — current stock — and
places you can’t, with current stock being more expensive).

~~~
MickerNews
Disincentivising a predatory rental market only lowers the cost of housing
prices because it excludes buy-to-rent commercial landlording. Properties
don't disappear from the market just because there's no landlord able to buy
them. Granted this needs to be coupled with further disincentivising of the
current stock being rented.

~~~
akho
Rents will go up, as will prices for existing, rentable, houses. So current
homeowners benefit at the expense of those who will continue to rent.

I have no opinion on the movement of new housing purchase prices. It depends
on the kind of landlords buying houses in Amsterdam, and their alternative
investment options; also on the volume of additional demand generated by the
increase in rents.

I'm not sure why you believe the Amsterdam rental market to be predatory, or
what you even mean by that. Perhaps you have more experience with it.

~~~
MickerNews
I'm far more experienced with the rental market in Dublin, I'm Irish living in
the Netherlands. The situation in Dublin is the endgame of the same property
market extremism.

The national obsession with landlording and trying to get someone else to pay
for your mortgage ended a few short years ago with the world's biggest
bailout. In Ireland there's very little regulation and what there is is almost
completely unenforced. No lessons were learned and we now have a national
housing crisis with a neoliberal government turning a blind eye to rampant
homelessness and a lost generation. All potential solutions are met with
excuses as to why it will only cause problems for the young being able to
rent, thus furthering the crisis.

~~~
akho
The (urban) solution is socialized housing, rent controls, and density. Not
whatever this is.

------
slapshot
I currently own a house. I love owning my house.

But there have been long (decade+) stretches when I actively did not want to
own. I was single, or I knew my family size would change and didn't want to
buy a huge house, or I knew I would only be in the market for a few years.

The transaction costs of buying and selling each time would have been probably
5-10% of the total price of the house (broker fee, mortgage fees, inspections,
etc). It simply would not have made sense to buy and sell a house every time I
moved.

Having plenty of rentals available made it easy to move to where I needed to
be, in a house size that made sense (neither too big nor small), in a cost-
effective way.

The answer of "don't move so much" cuts income mobility. I moved to the SF Bay
Area because it offered higher salaries. And it wouldn't solve the issue of
family size changing.

(I haven't yet done the reverse -- which is to rent out the house I now own,
but if I get a job offer somewhere else it'd be silly to force a sale to make
it impossible for me to come back.)

~~~
ck425
Why are the buying and selling costs so high?! Is that an American thing? In
Scotland I only had solicitor fees and moving/furnishing costs.

~~~
alexandre_m
Population density, growing market, supply/demand.

If you're close to the center, it's more expensive.

What kind of area do you live in Scotland?

~~~
ck425
Edinburgh City Centre. I was referring to the fees being such a large % of
transactions. Both my properties cost 1-2% in total fees.

------
jypepin
Interesting to read this, it seems like there are already some rules that make
renting a bit more difficult and less attractive.

I'd like to share a few points about what makes buying a house in Amsterdam
(and the Netherlands in general) interesting:

\- Amsterdam is growing and becoming the de fact European capital (english,
tech jobs, etc) so it's growing a lot, and real estate prices are up \-
Interest rates are very low (~2% on 30years fixed, if interests go down we can
refinance after 5 years). So no risk of going up, and no risk of missing out
when going down. \- 0 cash down necessary \- low cost of buying. We bought a
"first time buyer package" for ~3000 euros which included real estate agent,
notary, building inspection and financial evaluation. Only other expense we
had was 500 euro fee for our mortgage. \- Practically no real estate tax
(0.03789% of the official listed value) \- Prices are ~200-300k for a nice
1bedroom, 300-500 for nice 2 bedrooms. Prices seem reasonable compared to
salaries.

So, in most cases, going from renting to buying a similar property is
definitely worth it. You'll pay about the same monthly (all included).

To note, the buying market is pretty competitive (similar to SF) where people
often over-big 10-20% on the asking price. I've gone to multiple open house,
and helped ~5 other friends buy a place, and most buyers you see are young
professionals / young families, and doesn't look like the market is saturated
by landlords / investors.

Now, we looked into moving and renting our place in case we decide not to sell
it: \- Can't rent on our mortgage \- We need to take a commercial mortgage,
~doubling the interest rate to 5%. This increase makes the monthly cost above
what we would rent the place for

Those 2 last points to me make it clear that it's already pretty hard to just
exploit the cheapness of buying/investing in properties and renting them (I
looked myself to buy more properties and rent).

So this rule surprises me a little because the current housing market is
already pretty regulated against renting and very supportive to buying. We
definitely see much more owners, and much younger, than what we've seen on
average in other cities we've lives (SF, NYC, Paris, Montreal).

~~~
refurb
_So, in most cases, going from renting to buying a similar property is
definitely worth it. You 'll pay about the same monthly (all included)._

As someone who owns in SF, this is definitely not the case here.

For a $1.5M home in SF, the total monthly outlay includes mortgage ($5,557 @
3.75% with 20% down), property taxes ($1,454), property insurance ($2,250) for
a grand total of $9,262 per month. You could rent the same house for $6,000
per month. And that doesn't even include expected maintenance ($625 per month)
and opportunity cost of your $300,000 down payment ($1,250 @ 5%). So grand
total, you're spending over $11,000 per month or $5,000 more than the cost of
renting.

The reason for this is appreciation. If you're house goes up in value by 5%
per year, that $75,000 that more than covers the extra $60,000 you're paying
over renting. Question is - will it keep going up that much?

Edit: updated with actual numbers.

~~~
gjm11
Then why does anyone who owns property in SF rent it out rather than selling
it?

~~~
refurb
Probably because a lot of those people bought the same house for $600,000 10
years ago. Their monthly cost is likely less than rent.

I know someone who bought a house 5 years ago and rented it out. She had to
cough up $1,000 per month to pay all expenses. Rent has now caught up so she's
breaking even.

In the rest of the US where housing prices aren’t as inflated, it can actually
be cheaper to own.

------
apexalpha
Good, it's ridiculous in Amsterdam right now with investors buying houses left
and right just to rent them out.

A city of renters is a soulless city; less people are long-term invested and
no one really buys into the community they live in.

~~~
peteretep
> A city of renters is a soulless city

I am beyond skeptical on this point. The young and dynamic people responsible
for a city’s soul generally can’t afford to buy (I would guess, I have no
data)

~~~
bertil
One possible consequence of limiting the market is that it could lower the
price of buying real estate. Hopefully, that should make it accessible to
younger buyers.

~~~
michaelcampbell
Are there any occurrences of such a price control doing anything but worse
unintended consequences?

~~~
bertil
There has been similar systems in place in France and Sweden, and probably
other European countries. Usually, they are targetting financing system: you
can borrow money at a rebated cost _if_ you do not rent it for a period of
five to ten years.

The intended consequences are more people being able to afford a house and
home ownership has increased with most policies that I can think of. There are
some consequences: rental contracts are very hard to find in Stockholm for
instance, but those hardly seem unintended.

------
maeln
In France, a lot of cities propose "accessible housing" which can be brought
with a zero interest, or nearly zero interest, loan. The condition usually is,
if you buy it, you cannot rent it for 5 to 10 years. It does allow for more
housing that are owned and not rented and avoid excessive investment.

One of the drawbacks though is, since it only apply to building that have been
build with help from the city (has far as I know), it can sometimes, if done
poorly, create slum with huge bloc of social housing. Nowadays, they usually
try to spread the construction more through out the city and make more diverse
building to avoid this.

------
collyw
As someone who has just bought in another European city with high demand for
housing , this sounds great on the surface level, but again the devil is in
the details.

> It’s not yet been clarified, for example, how long an owner would have to
> occupy their home before being able to rent it out.

My GF has had offers of a years work in Melbourne and we have talked about it
saying, it would be nice to do. Right now it would be easy to rent our place
out, but it would be impossible if the rule stated that you must live in the
place for 5 years.

~~~
ucosty
How many people buy a new build house, and then within a year decide to move
half-way around the world, whilst still keeping the house?

~~~
runako
Bought the house, then got a long-term assignment/promotion in another city,
but 100% plan on moving back in the future.

This is not uncommon.

~~~
collyw
Its probably only people with "good jobs" with opportunities like that who can
afford to buy in major cities these days.

------
jules
At best this will do nothing, at worst the unintended consequence is a spike
in rental prices. The root of the problem is supply and demand, and they're
not willing to look at that. Increasing supply means highrises and more
building permits, and reducing demand means restricting immigration, both
highly toxic subjects.

------
nine_k
It looks mostly like the proponents of the law want to limit the growth of the
city, and prevent it from becoming dense(r).

Building an apartment house and _not_ renting it out makes about zero sense.
This means that only small, 1-2 family homes would be built, financed by
family home loans.

This definitely is not going to help against foreign rich people buying
"investment houses" and leaving them vacant. They could not rent them out even
if they wanted to! But maybe it;s not a problem in Amsterdam.

------
JasonFruit
This law may work for it's intended purpose, but it's an unconscionable
violation of property rights. I worry that our statistician's approach to
legislation is hastening our times' abandonment of principle, and that we're
sacrificing any particular individual's good to the good of faceless society.

~~~
bognition
Except society isn’t faceless. It’s our friends and neighbors. It’s our
cousins and coworkers.

I’m more than willing to give up a bit of my extremely affluent lifestyle if
it would genuinely help those around me who haven’t had the same economic
opportunities as me.

~~~
Macross8299
>I’m more than willing to give up a bit of my extremely affluent lifestyle if
it would genuinely help those around me who haven’t had the same economic
opportunities as me.

All well and good. It's fine and commendable to personally sacrifice but when
you start advocating for stripping property rights from other people to do it,
it stops being a personal sacrifice and more of an imposition on others'
freedom.

What about unintended backfire consequences of this law: people who own a
place and are traveling, unable to put their places on airbnb because of this
law and thus leaving vacant houses anyways and constricting short-term rental
supply?

------
mikeash
Yes, nasty renters don’t deserve access to new houses.

~~~
hannasanarion
How about "yes, the housing market should deprioritize making rich people even
richer off the backs of renters"

~~~
mikeash
By ensuring renters have an inferior selection.

~~~
hannasanarion
Why do renters need to live in brand new houses?

~~~
mikeash
They don’t need to. But it seems rather unfair to say that people with decent
income but who can’t (or don’t want to) access large amounts of capital must
have an artificially reduced selection.

Imagine if it was flipped around: new houses cannot be sold, and can only be
rented out. Would that be reasonable?

I totally understand why people dislike speculators who buy houses and let
them sit empty. I get why they dislike investors who buy properties and put
them out for short-term rentals like AirBnB. But getting upset at long-term
rentals? Why? Lots of people rent, for many good reasons. Especially poorer
people. What’s so terrible about serving that market? If you think the
landlords are making too much money, bring prices down by increasing the
supply i.e. the exact opposite of this plan.

------
bognition
Two main thoughts here. First I love that municipalities are thinking
creatively about the housing crisis. Second, I’m curious to see how policies
like this end up playing out in practice. I can think of a bunch of negative
outcomes such as rental properties degenerating and home builders getting less
work.

In the end we can’t know what’s going to work until the experiment plays out
which to my first point is why it’s very encouraging to see so many places
trying different policies.

~~~
pfisch
This is very obviously not going to work out well. This policy means the total
rentable property supply will now not increase and only decrease for X years
based on this policy. Rents are going to spike throughout the city.

Trying to mess with the free market like this almost always has a bunch of
unintended consequences and rarely works as intended.

~~~
mbreese
I don’t think it’s obvious how this will turn out at all. What you state is
one possible outcome, but it’s not clear that is what will happen.

1) rental properties can still be built, they just have to be designated as
such before their construction is approved

2) the price limits were designed to still make it possible to profitably
build a new house, so the market will still produce new homes (maybe at a
different rate)

3) they also put in place quotas for low, middle, and upper priced housing,
guaranteeing a varied supply on the market.

4) middle income families will no longer need to compete with people buying
investment rental homes, meaning they will be more able to buy affordable
homes. This frees up rental property elsewhere in the system for someone else.

Housing markets are almost never free markets. It’s quite rare to see a
completely free market for where and what kind of housing is built. This is at
least an attempt to make sure that entire part of the population isn’t left
out of owing a home. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. That’s the great part
of government — if it doesn’t work, those in charge can be replaced by the
citizens. I’m interested to see where the experiment goes.

------
dep_b
Making sure that building enough affordable housing is possible for developers
to begin with is of course not something that a NIMBY backed city council
would ever do.

------
ds
I have no comment on if this is good or bad, I am just curious how laws like
this get passed in the first place. You would assume that most home owners
would not be in favor of something like this, as it obviously would seek to
decrease the value of their property by reducing the potential acquirers. The
only thing that would make sense is if in Amsterdam, most voters rent vs own.

~~~
hnarn
> You would assume that most home owners would not be in favor of something
> like this, as it obviously would seek to decrease the value of their
> property by reducing the potential acquirers.

It's obvious even from the headline that this "ban" only applies to _newly
built_ homes, meaning that if you own an "older" home (whatever the definition
of that ends up being), this does not apply to you. So in a perverted sense,
being an Amsterdam home owner may be beneficial, since the politicians are
rigging the market to your advantage, if you are an "older" home owner.

As for renters of these "older" homes, I'd say the outcome is fairly
predictable: your rent will skyrocket as the demand for your landlords real
estate increases, unless there are already other political tools in place to
cap rents.

------
greyfox
I'm glad this was posted here because it echoes the philosophy of a late
(18th?) century philosopher who i cannot remember the name of. Perhaps some of
the other well-read minds of hacker news can remind me what his name is.

Basically he's an ehticist, an economist, and a philosopher and he also
promotes a "value system" in his philosophy that states that buying a home for
any othe reason than to live in it yourself is ethically/morally wrong.

I have been looking for his name for ages since i found it first, should've
bookmarked it, never did. Now i desperately want to find him and re-read some
of his works as well as his wiki page.

Edit: His name might be Henry George and his philosophy Georgism. Does that
sound right to any of yall? Or is it someone else I'm thinking of?

~~~
ProAm
I get your point, but is it not fair to allow people to earn a living? Being a
landlord is a job, it helps to put food on my table and a roof over my head.
Surely there are other jobs out there, but why make this one illegal? All
forms of employment can be used to exploit others, shall we make them all
illegal?

~~~
WhompingWindows
I don't think the landlord labor/job is really the issue, it's the
capitalization of real estate. Do you think it's ethical for banks and
billionaires to buy up properties in very expensive markets and price out
people who have been living there for decades? They're just looking to make a
buck, and in the process may displace those with less power and luck to not be
wealthy.

I doubt someone buying a property themselves, living in it while fixing it up,
then renting it out is really the issue. That's the Mr. Money Moustache type
approach, which to me is much less pernicious than the ultra wealthy
leveraging their incredible luck and fortune.

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gok
So more investors will leave houses empty. Brilliant.

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TomMckenny
>...households that would have formerly expected to buy, however, are
increasingly finding themselves priced out of the market, substantially by
investors who then place the property on the rental market...

This is exactly the core of the problem: without aggressive intervention, it
is always more profitable to buy a property and rent it than to live in it.
Potential owner occupiers will eventually always be out bid by investors in an
uncontrolled market.

There were abundant measures to prevent this installed during the 20th
century. They have been eliminated over the last decades and without them the
market will naturally come to look like it did before the 20th century.

~~~
hhjinks
What I don't understand is, why aren't secondary dwellings taxed extremely
heavily? Optimally, nobody should ever have to rent their residence for a
prolonged amount of time, which means you need to disincentivize sitting on a
property you don't live in. Making it hard to profit over time from such an
investment is the only solution I see.

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philliphaydon
We have something similar here in Singapore. You cannot rent or sell a new HDB
for 5 years. And you cannot rent to non-citizen / non-pr till it’s 10 years
old. I would say it works but that’s only because the market is entirely
different here.

~~~
tikkabhuna
What happens if you need to sell it for some reason? Job relocation perhaps?

~~~
Gigablah
You can apply for an exception from HDB (Singapore’s housing authority). Most
of the exceptions granted are for cases like divorce and emigration.

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Jsharm
A flavour of this exists in Ireland, where the Government help to buy scheme
offers up to €20,000 towards your new build house purchase if you are a first
time buyer and commit to living in your home for the first 5 years.

~~~
purple_ducks
That just ended up jacking up every property by 20k to give more profit to
developers who were complaining.

Completely short-sighted.

~~~
refurb
Indeed. Canada does the same. “Let’s make it easier for people to buy a
home!”, “Oh wow! Home prices have really gone up, let’s make it even easier!”,
repeat.

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jumbopapa
I guess we don't truly have ownership of our property.

~~~
wyattpeak
This doesn't seem like a helpful consideration. No polity on the planet allows
for truly conditionless ownership of property.

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tobyhinloopen
€302.000 is the average home price here? Hah! You can buy huge homes for that
price just outside the Amsterdam Area (like I did).

~~~
roel_v
No you can't.

~~~
nizmow
Perhaps Almere, but I wouldn't call what you'd get there for 300k "huge",
although you'd get a house rather than an apartment most likely.

~~~
tobyhinloopen
Almere Poort/Hout, Lelystad, BiddingHuizen, Swifterbant. All <1 hour away from
Amsterdam

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holoduke
Lot of countries prevent foreign persons or institutions to own real estate
for 100%. There has to be a local partner who owns the place for at least
50.1% This is much more effective than adding a law which can never cover all
edge cases. And there are a lot of those which make it possible to buy
property anyway even with the new law in place.

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Scarblac
One thing not mentioned: the fact that so much work in the Netherlands,
especially in tech, is focused in just a few cities. If the work was more
spread out over the country, not everybody would have to make their way to
Amsterdam every day or live there.

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juiyout
What is stopping buyers to resell the house to another entity and have that
entity to rent it out?

Second-hand house wouldn’t be considered newly built, would it?

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jacquesm
Just yesterday I came across one listing that worked out to 11,000 euro / sq
meter. At that price there are very few rental options that would still work.

~~~
Phemist
Crazy, I did some analysis on large cities in the Randstad in june/july last
year. Amsterdam was by far the most expensive, but the most expensive house in
price / sq meter was "only" ~9,000 euro / sq meter

[https://imgur.com/a/lrV9C5I](https://imgur.com/a/lrV9C5I)

~~~
marapuru
I like what you did here. Where did you get the data? Scraped funda?

~~~
Phemist
Yep, I scraped address, price and size from the house overview pages. I ended
up with data from Funda going back ~3 months (so April, May & June) of all the
'gemeentes' in provinces of Utrecht, Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland.

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cimmanom
They're preventing rentals at all, not just short-term rentals? That seems
counterproductive.

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panoply
Amsterdam is no longer culturally unique and the current mayor has made it
worse.

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dpflan
Perhaps this strategy can bring back the community-minded days of AirBnB?

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freshcatch_
The decommodification of housing is the only tenable solution.

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tathougies
What I'll never understand about complaints about 'affordable' housing -- if
the housing supply is so unaffordable, how come vacancy rates are so low?

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mianos
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

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prepend
This summons the image of modern day Anne Frank trying to find a long term
rental through Airbnb, not finding any, and shaking her head.

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EZ-E
We need to have higher interest rates to let the market come to its sense.
Then the prices will drop for both buying and renting.

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IkmoIkmo
It must be noted that this applies only to new homes, which are sold,
temporarily.

Amsterdam builds around 5k homes a year (or about 1% of total stock). Of those
5k, about 40% are sold, 40% are rented to as social housing, the rest rented
at market rates. So we're talking about a law that applies to about 2k homes
per year, or <0.5% of the homes in the city, and likely only for the first two
years. (there's no legal instruments or interest to restrict an person's use
of his property long-term).

No huge impact, mostly symbolic. Plus, one can wonder whether it's effective.
There's a lot of criticism on investors buying homes at market value and
renting them out at market value, when really it has absolutely no bearing on
the available housing stock to all citizens. There's a lot of rhetoric aimed
against investors, which is kind of weird. Amsterdam is a transient place for
many, so a strong non-social and non-purchase rental market has its place.
Investors buy homes and rent them out to meet this demand. It pushes up
prices, yes, but only because they're meeting this real demand from real
people. And this higher price point is generating construction business that
wouldn't exist (due to lack of economic feasibility) at the price levels of
five years ago. This is what is creating new homes which actually solves the
underlying problem: a housing shortage, which you can't solve by restricting
use of property, capping prices or taxing investors, but by increasing the
housing stock.

I appreciate a it's not as black and white as 'just let the market figure it
out', but the current policy maker for housing is a member of the socialist
party. I've enjoyed their impact on local politics generally, but I think some
of their housing proposals aren't effective. Especially not in a housing
context which is already extremely distorted by national housing & welfare
policy and where market forces very are limited and produce weird outcomes.
I'm not against this particular idea, but I also don't see it as a big win
either. It's small at best, and ineffective at worst. We'll see.

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hguhghuff
This is genius.

------
justaaron
good

------
pietrovismara
This is a great idea and I hope more cities take the hint and fight housing
speculation.

~~~
alexgmcm
I hope more cities tackle the actual cause and build/repair more housing.

~~~
iagovar
There's no unlimited supply of land. And there's a limited distance that
citizens can travel before that impacts their lifestyle or behavior.

Also, if you wanted to build higher buildings to accommodate more people in
the same space, good luck doing that in a city center, because there's no
space for such thing.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Also, if you wanted to build higher buildings to accommodate more people in
> the same space, good luck doing that in a city center, because there's no
> space for such thing.

I have seen a three story building knocked down in Hong Kong and a 20 story
building rise in its place without any damage to the structural integrity of
its neighbours. Engineers are really good at building things if they’re
allowed to do so, even under significant constraints.

~~~
iagovar
The problem is not a technical one, but a legal one. There are very few empty
buildings in most euro cities, and people is typically reluctant to get out
because of the hassle it causes them.

If there is a run down and empty building, then sure, but you won't find many.

