Amsterdam's Plan: If You Buy a Newly Built House, You Can't Rent It Out
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:<p>1) Building new &amp; 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.<p>2) The rent controlled market is huge in The Netherlands and disproportionately big in Amsterdam compared to the rest of the country.<p>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&#x27;s decade-long waiting periods, people pass off such properties to immediate family etc.).<p>Most of the profit construction companies make on (highly regulated) new construction is reportedly on the relatively small proportion of apartments they&#x27;re allowed to sell for a high price on the free market. The rest is on the mandatory public housing market from day one.<p>3) A further squeeze on non-rent controlled properties is created because some of those only escape that &quot;market&quot; by having a bunch of &quot;points&quot; that are calculated as a function of size, amenities etc.: [A] &amp; [B].<p>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 <i>just</i> over the point limit.<p>4) (Re-)zoning of properties that do exist is relatively restricted and centrally micro-managed.<p>5) Interest rates have been dropping for years, leading to inflated property prices. It&#x27;s relatively easy to get sub-2% loans, even as low as 1.5%.<p>A. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nl.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Woningwaarderingsstelsel#Punten" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nl.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Woningwaarderingsstelsel#Punte...</a><p>B. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huurcommissie.nl&#x2F;fileadmin&#x2F;afbeeldingen&#x2F;Downloads&#x2F;Handleidingen&#x2F;Beleidsboek_zelfstandige_woonruimte_versie_1_oktober_2016.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huurcommissie.nl&#x2F;fileadmin&#x2F;afbeeldingen&#x2F;Download...</a>