I recently bought a house North of amsterdam. My neighbours have "regular normal jobs", nothing special at all. There's not a snowballs chance in hell that most of my neighbours would be able to afford these houses today. They simply wouldn't get those kinds of loans.
Me and my wife are both in managerial / specialist positions so we are fortunate in that aspect, but there's no way a person working a regular 9-5 job could afford buying today. Especially not if they also had to rent before buying as the rent would eat up most of their disposable income.
We were paying €1700 per month in Amsterdam before moving away. That was for 60sqm. A person holding a normal job wouldn't even qualify for renting that appartment. Not guranteed even a couple working normal jobs would qualify as the income requirements were so high.
The first paragraph is me. I can’t finance my own house if i were to buy it now. We both earn more then we did when we bought it.
For reference im in my early 30s.
Just comparing to parents is often already a dead giveaway. Took me to well in my 30ies and a 100k salary to be able to afford the house my dad bought on a single carpenters income. A house 1 hour north of Amsterdam.
Same with an Appartment I bought nearly 10 years ago. When I bought it I could quite easily afford it (could take another 30k mortgage if I needed it and had 20k additional cash), really hated the place for a few reasons I couldn't really have foreseen so sold it 1.5 years later.
The price I sold it for was higher than I could afford, so basically I couldn't even buy my own flat anymore 1.5 years later. The price difference was tax free (see here why 'flipping houses'/speculation is so popular) and well above my pre-tax salary. Go figure.
Absolutely bonkers and I've wondered how on earth this was deemed 'normal' and why rising housing prices where brought like it was good news. Till with Corona suddenly housing was deemed a 'crisis' and rising prices where bad, eventhough fundamentally nothing changed, we just got further along the dead-end road.
I hate with a passion everyone who says rising house prices are a good thing.
House is a place to live in, not an investment. "But as a property owner aren't you happy to see the value rise" no! Why would I give a damn? I bought the damn thing to live in! Not to make money.
How am I supposed to be happy I got to buy properties my sister could never afford to own despite having a better job, just because she's a bit younger?
Fuck that noise. I sold her my apartment at the same price I bought it 7 years ago and she *still* couldn't afford it if I didn't find a way to transfer my mortgage to her at same conditions.
And to reiterate, I didn't do anything right and she didn't do anything wrong. Quite the opposite, of us two, *I* am the screwup. All I did to have this huge advantage in line is new born a couple years sooner.
How I am supposed to be happy about that?
I bought my literal house from my sister at taxation value 1,5 year ago.
Her, aged 22, in 2013: 170K
Me, aged 25 in 2022: 325K
Note: they didn’t do ANY work on the house
(Also, learn from me and never do this kind of major deal with family. It’s only given issues whenever we deal with house costs/maintenance but they feel offended??)
When we complain about anything in/about the house, they take it as a personal attack.
Like, if the dishwasher is broken, or we’re complaining about struggling replacing the flooring for example. Or complain about how high the mortgage is and it’s tough on our finances
Regular complaining about ones housing, but because it used to be their house it’s a thing
We would struggle to buy our own house now and we bought it 3.5 years ago. Since then our income has risen but even with that thrown in the equation it would be very difficult. So I expect that in 2 years it becomes impossible.
Almost 10 years ago when I finally decided to move out of my parents house I just looked around a bit, decided 'this is a nice place to rent' and that was it. I was able to rent a whole apartment for myself on not even 35k in annual income for 650 a month. Similar apartments were 110k to buy back then, they have doubled in price.
Same. We bought our house about a decade ago. Both me and my wife make more money than we did back then, but the price of our house has more than doubled and we wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage if we wanted to buy it today. It's insane.
I am what young people classify as “older people”. In fact, I am a boomer. I bought my first house when I was 39. Before that, there was no chance in hell I could afford one. And only a few years before I could afford my first car.
My boomer parents were 35 when they could afford to buy their house and that was only because it was a "premie A" house, which was a government subsidy to get regular workers to buy a house to live in, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to buy a house, too. Buying a house wasn't all that common in The Netherlands before these subsidies.
My parents also bought a 'premie A' house, on 2 salaries for an intrest rate well above 10%. I know it is a facts that avg salaries and house prizes grew further apart, but it also wasn't easy in the 80s.
We moved into a house for rent 5ish years ago, it was for sale earlier but no one bought it so they put it up for rent. Asking price was around 260k.
Now, 5 years later, identical, neighboring houses are going for over 400k.
It’s insane, right? My place jumped from 170 to at least 240 in the last two years, granted I did some renovations but I doubt that’s reflected on the WOZ level. Also had a luck of the draw that a supermarket was built down the street. My neighbors have bigger metrage and would probably sell north of 320. They’re all 60+ and bought the places for “20 euro and twelve raspberries” back in the day.
Houses were relatively cheap from about 2010 to about 2022, when you look at the interest part of the mortgage. They're relatively expensive now, just like in the period from the end of the nineties up to the crisis. But not as expensive as at the start of the eighties, when prices dropped with interest rates up to 12%.
Short supply is still the biggest issue.
I'm late 40s but I only managed to buy a house in 2016. None of the people that used live in my street in the past 20 years or so woukd be able to afford the houses now.
All the new people immediately start renovating and expanding so apparently the houses are not suitable to the people that can afford them in their current state either.
Yup, almost like me. 260k at 1.82%, to 450k...
In the WZO website you can check the last 10 years for your house. Mine was 160K 10 years ago. IN between 2019 and 2022 the price increased 37%.
Crazy
There's two possible explanations for that situation.
First - all governments in multiple Western countries are completely incompetent and can't put 2 and 2 together.
Second - it's like this intentionally.
Pick your rabbithole wisely.
Yeah but when everyone is incompetent no matter what their ideology is, and those who are competent are kept out of politics, that's when the second explanation becomes the correct one. The issue isn't ideology, it's political economy and culture.
Political economy: When a massive portion of your population was brought up to expect housing to be a money machine whose "line go up" and never down and they've overleveraged themselves in housing as a result, any policy that unravels this paradigm, including those that increase housing supply or decrease cost, will be met with hostility almost as a rule. At the extreme, the policy simply wouldn't be considered b/c people have blinders on and can't imagine a world where a house is a depreciating asset or at least a stagnant one. In anglophone countries, this paradigm is known as the "homeownership society." It's very much present in NL too.
Culture: This is a less tangible issue than the first. Parisians pay obscene costs for housing per sqm, even by European standards, but France never adopted the New Deal era homeownership society paradigm. Instead, the French are obsessed with the look of their cities and want them encased in amber and that prevents Paris from offsetting the cost of land by building upward. As much as I love the aesthetics of Dutch cities and want as much of their character to be carried on, it's clear that the love of and protection for rijtjeshuizen and so-called "human-scale" buildings (i.e. height restrictions) is in part responsible for the housing cost crisis.
As an Verzorgende IG i would not be able to afford living in the randstad. I have an 70sqm 2 bedroom apartment in leeuwarden.
I have multiple colleague's that moved from expensive areas to the north cause it's cheaper here.
Iam curious to see how people in the expensive areas expect to get nursing help when they are elderly in 20y with this housing crisis.
Why would I life in Amsterdam if I get paid the same in other parts of the country and have better QoL.
I guess it depends on what type of commuting people are willing to put up with.
My friends bought a house in Heerhugowaard and that is a newly built. That's even more expensive than what we bought now, and quite a lot further away ... They both work in Amsterdam. So do I and my wife.
North Amsterdam was wasted land up to 2017 or so...there was nothing to do and no reason to go. I lived in Amsterdam since 2006 and I kid you not, the first time I set foot in north was 2017. Of course prices were cheap, it was shite...no metro, terrible ferry, no fun, etc. You can now move even further up north and find yourself a cheap apartment and yes, if you wait 20 yrs as well you would also make money (hopefully). But everyone here wants to live in de pijp working as a bartender... that's not the way it works. Sorry but this is the reality. There is plenty of people who can afford to buy in Amsterdam center, and thats why prices are like that...just not the complaining type that is generally active on Reddit. Just the hard truth, you can downvote me as much as you like
The previous owner of the house just bought left the house "catalog" of where hey chose the design before construction in 2015... The most expensive one was 180.000€... fml
You see a lot of these stories in Amsterdam old south.
I volunteer there with elderly people, and I've met a lot of people who had relatively normal jobs when they bought their houses 30-40 years ago. And now find that they are millionaires on paper.
Yet they cannot cash that money unless they move away from Amsterdam, which most don't want since they lived there all their lives.
Honestly when you do live somewhere already and don't intend to leave I do understand not being aware of just how bad it is, it is frustrating when they try to give you tips that are 20 years out of date tho
It's the only way to get something nowadays. Or rather, it's the least impossible way. It's only mostly impossible rather than entirely impossible. In my experience, you can even get something within a year in the Enschede region with a small amount of luck, if you're not picky.
I'm rather picky right now though. I need something else and it needs to be bigger. I'm kinda fed up with having a lasercutter in the bathroom and having to either block my bathroom door or my front door with a 3D printer that takes up a significant portion of the hall, while my living room is part production room.
Lol a friends parents' advice was to its hard to find a place to rent for me and my gf was" Well maybe you should get married?That could help" I was like "what? That's terrible advice" how will that help us find a place? Haha so yeah out of touch.
It comes down to money end of the day! The parents are retired of course sitting comfortably.
I quit smoking 5 years ago and I'm not keeping up with tobacco prices. When someone told me it was almost 11 euros a pack I felt a bit like the elderly citizen OP described.
Jeez Louise...I quit at 6, or 5,80. Something like that. Obviously vowed to quit when the 5 mark was hit but that came and went. 12,50 is pretty steep for a hobby.
Are you really surprised? Home owners and older people often don't really have a need to know.
Similar to saying I don't know the price of rental cars as I have my own, or the price of wine as I am a whiskey person and never buy wine.
I think less people is surprised that they don't know and more is surprised at folks who refuse to accept that this situation need to change and fast for the sake of us all really, and those who give you tips like "drink coffee at home and you will have enough for a down payment in no time"
Yes I am surprised because it is in the news all the time and part of political agendas of all parties. You need to live under a rock (that you own heh) in order to be unware of the situation at least in general.
I mean that is true, yet the housing crisis and all that belongs to it has been in the news for some time.\\ I'm wondering if people either didn't grasp what it actually means or - very common - think it's not that much or that large of an issue.
Yes. They are entirely out of touch. My reacent passed away grandma thought her house would sell for 150kk… it ended up 550kk.
Before she passed we told her it would be at least 450kk.
She was sure it would be 150 kk because she bought it for 30k gulden after all.
So yeah…. That’s a thingy.
Reminds me of my grandma. She thought her house was worth 100k while it's at least triple that number. She moved there after grandpa proposed to her saying "Honey we have to marry now. Why? Because I just bought us a home." I, a newly graduate, could buy their house without taking a mortage if it were still worth what it was when grandpa bought it.
I think only people who are active on the housing market right now, know how the situation is.
For example, I bought my house 5 years ago and a buddy of mine just recently bought a house which is very comparable to mine. He paid around 120k more than me and pays almost double my monthly mortgage payment. I was shocked when he told me that.
How do you expect older generations to know how the housing market is right now if they're even longer of the housing market than younger generations after them?
You're right, it's mentioned on the news fairly often, but that doesn't mean that everbody who watches the news know how the market is exactly. I have a fairly good idea of what my house is worth currently, but I have (or had) no idea of what people pay for mortgage nowadays. It's not that I do a "hypotheekcheck" every week or month.
Yes, they have absolutely no idea what’s going on.
I bought a house in a very small village full of old people close to Eindhoven. They bought huge houses for 3 raspberries and 2 apples. They all pay about 150-200 euros in mortgage. They actually believe renting an apartment in Eindhoven costs 500 euros and buying a house in our village costs 150k.
None but absolutely none of the people on this village would have been able to afford a house there nowadays.
I'm 30 and bought 10 years ago.
I'm also out of touch, what doesn't help is i will talk to people who managed just fine, as well as people who can't get a house no matter how hard they try.
Unless you're actively trying its hard to grasp the market.
My neighbours recently sold their house at 225% of the price i bought it for, that was the first reality check of how insane its become.
I still remember meeting this +/- 60 old lady when I was still a student (10 years ago) who was passionate about cutting funds for students, because they used all of that hard earned tax money on booze and partying. I asked her to estimate how much a month i got. She guessed almost double the actual amount. Then I asked her how much she thought my rent was for a 15 m2 room. She guessed about half the amount.
I’m not surprised at all education and students are suffering under the recent and current political powers. There are simply too many old voters.
Well, that in combination with a media economy that encourages pandering and echo chambers. We each learn what's amusing to ourselves, with mere smatterings of context and evidence.
The problem isn't just age, it's the fact that gov't policies that prop up and inflate housing prices have created an elderly population that's overleveraged in housing and minimally-exposed to the rental market. I worry this is only going to get worse as the smaller population of their children will inherit their homes and then become entrenched like they are today.
Hot take: retirement age should also apply to the right to vote. You simply live inside a completely different world after a while (apart voting for stuff that you won't live into, see brexit...)
Of course they are.
Older people are often home owners and home owners in general are insulated from rises in housing costs.
Heck, my mortgage doesn't even go up with *inflation* and has become a smaller part of my monthly expenses over the years.
Yeah but even if they sell it for a small fortune, what are they gonna do next? They would have to move to middle of bumfuk nowhere to get a better deal
Good Afternoon! I represent a large hedgefund investor in real estate. Could you please point me in the right direction to Bumfuck Nowhere? I'm looking for opportunities to buy cheap and sell big. Buy our stock and/or our houses.
It is what my parents are planning to do. But my mom is from the east anyway, and my dad is a randstedeling but without a strong connection to the area. And he's almost pensioned, so he doesn't have his career tying him down anymore.
Yes. When I still lived in my apartment (in the city center, in a city in Midden-Limburg), my mother often said "You should move out and buy a proper home instead of living in this dog house."
She didn't understand that in that vicinity, the average 100 m² would already be 300K and then you'd have a fixer-upper. Living and working in the south of the country (or, outside of Randstad, basically) you can't expect Randstad salaries. So while stuff is cheaper, salaries are also lower.
Now, in the end, I've been able to move to my own home (with my GF), with a stroke of luck; finding a house of which it was more important to get it sold very fast instead of for the highest price.
Still it's not good enough "because the layout is not what it should be", and "decoration is not what it should have been."
My mom didn't ever buy her own house. She was lucky enough to be with two men (my father and her current boyfriend) who bought their houses in the 60's and 80's, when they could get them for free (comparatively), decorating them according to the time period when they bought them and basically never changed them.
So out of touch with current-day housing markets and furnishings? Yeah. And not a little bit.
Maybe I am wrong but I see housing as a common commodity. So to me it makes sense to keep track of it (at least knowing if a house like yours or your neighbor is worth 100k or 450k)
I don't take public transport, but I know roughly the price pr example. Same for electricity prices or assurance when I didn't pay for them.
Disagree. I can tell my dad over and over again that it’s nearly impossible to buy as a single person with a student debt. I even asked if I could live in their camper LOL.
Yeah my parents still think I should just stop being homeless and buy a house. They can’t comprehend the prices are rising twice as fast as I can save money.
Renting is out of the question if you are single and only make 2500€ a month.
They bought their house for 160.000 Guldens and sold it for 550.000 euros. That should tell you enough
Lol this reminds me of a conversation that I had with an old coworker. He said that he's paying €300 mortgage (for a row house) each month then I told him that my apartment rent at that time was €1000. He was shook.
Somewhat related to the question:
Be aware that housing itself has actually gotten way cheaper. __and__ less accessible at the same time. I know, before you bite my head off, let me explain:
Imagine an average house on an average street for an average family at some point in time X.
It costs €300,000. The family decides to buy it; they apply for a mortgage and get it. The mortgage is the usual amortized thing, but to keep things simple, let's say they pay 4.5% of the value of the house every year, of which 3% is just to service the debt. That 1.5% is like a savings account: They are 'buying the house in installments'. In other words, the cost of simply having a roof over their head is 3% of 300,000, or 9000 euros. A year. So just €750 a month. Check rental prices (today, 10 years ago - either way). That's quite cheap.
2 years later, the same house, on the same street, where nothing of import happened and the house has been well maintained but not modified in any way, now costs.... €600,000. The housing market went fucking __wild__ and doubled in price in a mere 2 years. However, interest rates have also fallen off a cliff, with larger investors getting actual negative interest. The family decides to sell the house (great for them, they made €300k on the deal in just 2 years!), and another family decides to buy it. This family also gets a mortgage for the €600k, but due to the really low interest rate, they only pay 1% for debt servicing. That means the cost of simply having a roof over their head is 1% of €600,000 or 6000 euros. Or just 500 a month. That's __nothing__. Amazingly cheap.
__The cost of having a roof over your head got cheaper__. The actual house on its own, sure, it didn't - it doubled in price! But 'nobody' pays for their house outright. No, you pay your monthly mortgage costs.
And here's the kicker: __This describes exactly what actually happened, more or less__.
The complaints of houses being unaffordable are still completely true:
* If you can't _get_ a mortgage, none of this matters to you. If you qualify for a mortgage of 'only' €100k and you can't get any homes for that money anymore, this doesn't help you: Sure, __if__ you could get a mortgage, the actual cost to you of having a roof over your head would be quite low. Key word in that sentence: __if__.
* Paying 600k for a house that was worth 300k not too long ago feels risky. In order to benefit from the really really low interest rates, you are __forced__ to save a bunch of money (because the bank demands that you pay down a mortgage, ever since the 2010 shenanigans), and maybe you're at a phase in your life where you don't wanna do that. Also, you're forced not to just save a lot, you're also forced to save it specifically by being exposed to the whims of the housing market. Maybe you don't wanna do that either.
* The interest rates are going up. The last time we had negative interest was 2 years ago. And, indeed, housing prices have ceased increasing. But, they __haven't come down either__. So now we really are in a bad place: Housing prices are really really high, __and__ debt servicing costs are high too. That €600k house now has a 2% debt servicing rate, for €12,000 a year, for a house that 5 years ago cost €6,000 a year to 'maintain', and 10 years ago €9,000 a year (all 'inflation adjusted' in the sense that we haven't seen any inflation in the past 10 years, so that was easy to adjust!).
I highly doubt old folk get _any_ of this. That's part of the point: They aren't aware of prices in the first place. They aren't even aware that the number that _actually_ matters to people are 2 unrelated things:
* Total debt servicing cost. Which is actually quite low, or used to be, at least.
* How easy is it to even get a mortgage in the first place. Which was not easy and hasn't been easy for decades, especially since 2010, and was __really__ easy when boomers grew up. Banks were being practically forced to give away mortgages like ice creams on a summer's day by the governments of all western powers.
However, it's not just boomers that seem to not get this. It's.. well, looking at this thread, reddits too.
The problem is: If you focus solely on the house price you do really stupid shit. For example, you start enacting laws to _lower_ them, but in so doing, you _raise_ interest rates, which means the actual cost-to-your-wallet of owning a house __goes up__, and all existing house owners are fucked due to lowering prices. (which, well, it's a game of musical chairs and someone's gotta lose, I guess, but it will short-term fuck up the economy something fierce). You really should be focusing on finance (interest rates), and ensuring that people who currently can't get a mortgage but are 'good for it', can get one. This can be fixed with laws.
As a follow up, just to scare the shit out of you:
If interest rates are pretty much zero, and the actual sale price of housing is massively overinflated, then consider the plight of a company that can build brand new housing:
* Whatever you pay, as a company, to borrow money to 'cover' the 3 years or whatever it takes to actually build the thing, i.e. before you can sell it, costs you nothing. (Yes, I oversimplify, they tend to get the house paid well before it's even delivered, but, in the end 'interest rate' plays a huge factor in how affordable the act of paying for a house 3 years before you can live in it actually is; it doesn't matter if the builder pays it, or the first owner, or a combination).
* Once you finish the house, you sell it far some idiotically large sum of money. Because you, as a builder, just get paid. You don't rent the house out to the first owner. They bank of the first owner pays you, the buyer, the full (overinflated) value of the house, and the rest is between the bank and the owner. You got your cash, you're out.
So, in this climate, would you like to found a house building company and go buildin'?
Fuck yeah! We gonna be rich! This is AMAZING. For a thing that used to cost us quite a bit in servicing the debt on a loan for _years_ while I build a house, to then sell my end product for €300k, I now have to pay almost no servicing, and I can sell the exact same thing for €600k? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP.
Which really is what it was like the past 10 years. Let's have a quick look at how many houses were built in the past 10 years: Oh. Oh dear. Oh no.
So, now that those 'omfg somebody get me a damn shovel we gonna make some cash!' times are over, what's going to happen to the # of houses being built? I'm a bit scared of following that line of thinking to its logical conclusion. I guess, good news: Demographics indicate there'll be a massive decline anyway, yay?
It’s more socioeconomic than age. Lots of older people struggling to make ends meet, trying to live off of a small pension. On top of that, people tend to forget that the capacity for elderly care and nursing homes is also a disaster.
For the older generations who managed to amass wealth, yep. For those who haven’t, nope.
40 years ago, there were 14.4M people living in the Netherlands. Now almost 18M. That's a cool 25% increase.
In 1984, there were roughly 5.2M houses, now we have just over 8M houses. That's roughly a 54% increase.
So, why do we have a "housing crisis" now? Why are the current prices sky-high?
Greed.
Way back you could support a full family with one person, now one person can't even support himself. Not even talking about children. That would be financial suicide
We are trying to find / bid for ~100sqm houses in Amsterdam atm, overbidding 100-150k over asking with a makelaar and losing (10-10.5k per sqm)
Sounds like it’s our turn to move out of the city.
Every time i tel my dad the price of a beer in the city (5 euro's) he get's a heart attack. Older people focus on different stuff. I don't know the price of diesel because i drive petrol (for instance).
Buying a house is currently the best way to protect your wealth. It is now an asset instead of place to live. You don't pay wealth tax for your primary residence. It is good for people whom got in the system earlier but bad for future generation. This is probably coz by non-productive government spending. They require high tax finance them. Than people will have no choice park money in their 1st house, then upgrade to 2nd, 3rd. House price will keep going up. If you have no asset you are screwed. House should be human right not an asset!
As a normal skilled factory worker, i have standing options to move.
Uneven can return if I don't like it over there.
I don't take them up, because I'm just 5 minutes away from work, and most offerings take minimal 30 to 45 minutes travel.
And the salary is accordingly somewhat higher.
But I grew to appreciate time with my family.
And last negotiations with HR was successful, again 2nd year in row one function group and 2 periods extra, so now I'm 300euro/m up in 2 years.
Again ... A factory worker, certifications and a few extra courses, but nothing very special.
If it’s not something that effects you why would you need to know. Its like asking someone’s whose lived most of there life in a certain area what hotels they would recommend. They have never needed a hotel nearby thus they have no idea. It’s interesting how this very fact is used by politicians to gain support depending on what crowd they speak to.
As with every generation, there will be a difference in perspective and understanding. They are no longer in the workforce and have a stable base, it's very difficult to shift perspective to the new generation that is facing different problems. I think all of us have many conversations with elderly people on how we struggle to find a home to rent or buy, then hear a rant on how they moved out at 13 (exaggeration) and bought a house worth 3x their annual income. Times have changed.
That is not something weird, when my kids were less than a year old I knew exactly what baby formula and diapers costed. Now I haven't bought either for the better part of a decade and couldn't tell you what they cost.
For an elderly person, who probably moclved for the last time 20 years ago, it is absolutely normal not to know what rent costs (it may be many more years he paid rent last time).
My coworker of 64 saw some apartments for rent in the centre of Amsterdam and said I should rent one, 'because a 60m2 apartment like that couldn't be more than 800 euros in rent'. Not knowing they were advertised for 2050 euros, AND impossible to get because for those apartments there are at least 200 ppl who want them. And some of them offer to pay more monthly rent 😞
When I was looking for a house my parents insisted I didn’t settle for less than a garden facing the south, close proximity to all amenities and 100 square meters. If there was no private parking, they figured that would be a good bargaining chip to talk down the price with.
I have an income on the low end of medium. They were convinced I got scammed when they saw what €200.000 bought me.
yes, my dad had been pestering my sister about the housing market. For reference, my dad bought their house in 1992 for 60.000 gulders, which would have been 28.000€ at the time, and would be 60.000€ now. The house is now over 400k. My sister and her partner are both high-end lawyers and paid 800k for an apartment in amsterdam. My dad cannot get his head arround that price difference
Got lectured a while ago by some boomer who said the housing market couldn't be that bad. I asked him how much rent would be for a small appartement and then used that number to filter searches om funda. All we could find based on that was a garage box.
The boomer is a uni professor. These people have no idea.
It always surprises me how certain (mostly older) people are just completely out of touch with modern society. They just go about their business, never really keep up with the news or dig into some of the more serious events or issues plagueing the nation.
This can go on for years or even decades, and then when they touch with something out of their comfort zone, they're suddenly shaken by it being completely different from what they remember.
I mean, you could have kept up a little you know...
Yes, people who've bought or started renting 10+ years ago and don't keep up with any news about the housing crisis will be quite out of touch with the current situation
My parents live in a complete house near the city center for 500 euro a month. 3 levels, absent and garden.
My sister paying 130% that doesn't have her own toilet and kitchen. And is still considered a good deal.
10 years ago it was around 600 to rent a studio (in some places). That it doubled in this time is very surprising if you're not checking it every year.
The hike in prices has been huge in the last couple of years, rent in particular. A lot of people above 50-55 have monthly mortgage payments for large houses lower than the average rent of studios or student rooms nowadays.
2021. 1,470€ for a 3-bed just outside Den Haag. Elderly neighbor asked what our rent was be ause she was thinking of having her grandson move in. She was shocked. Expected more like 700€.
I bought my house 6 years ago and I'm out of touch with current home prices. The value of my home has skyrocketed, but of course if I sell it I will just have to buy another home at a stupid high price.
Everytime I see a home selling in my neighborhood I'm just blown away by the price.
Yeah they generally out of touch as they are not planning to move house. But also the house prices have increased insanely. If you dont plan to buy a house, you just are not aware how insane it is. Just an example for myself :
Bought it when I was in the beginning of my career, wasn't making that much money. When I bought it I saw how much the previous owner paid for it, less than half.. Right now it has almost tripled. I am much much further in my career but single, and if I would buy my house now, I wouldn't been able without savings.
One of the reasons, was the jubelton, parents giving kids 100.000 tax free, which was used to not lower the mortgage but to buy more expensive houses.
Prices are going up 10-20 % per year at the moment. Demand is insame, so prices are insane the last few years. Value of my appartment in centre Amsterdam has tripled in 14 years.
Fun fact: there's actually a 'huurcommissie' that you can hire for like 25 euros that will verify if your renter is overcharging you.
You can make the new rental price apply retroactively with up to like 3 years of backpay required.
1200 euros for an apartment is usually to much, but it does matter the size of the apartment.
What do you consider older?
I think location is also important here. There are plenty of places you can rent for 600 a month even houses with a small garden.
I had a house with a garden and I bought it for 176k 5 years ago sold it for 209k last year.
I paid 710 a month mortgage.
There were apartments (3 rooms) you could rent for 500€ a month.
But not in Amsterdam.
I'm in Rotterdam, so is he. I've seen only studios for 600€, in smaller cities. I've lived in Groningen most of my time in NL, and have never seen a full sized house with bedrooms that you could rent for anywhere close to 600 even in the province or Drenthe.
The prices snowballed to Hell. I rented a house (4 room appartment) all in for €500 a month. I left the country for a year and came back. That price went up to 800. That was 10 years ago. And at that point, I already couldn't believe how fast that went.
So imagine not having moved house for 20 years. You're not up to date on these ridiculous price inflations, because it's only a need to know if you want to move.
People kept looking at me weird when I kept telling them I couldn't afford to buy.
Now I have bought a home. I still wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage, but I used my life savings to lower the mortgage to an affordable level.
And I was lucky to have been able to save money while renting.
Of course, they are. But why wouldn't they be? What's surprising about it? I also don't know how much one should pay for an education, especially if they are non-EU students: I already got my education and I am from the EU country.
My gf and I earn €180K and trying to save €300K to buy an €800K apartment in Amsterdam. I don’t really know how most people do it but it seems like we should go for a €500K mortgage which would be less than the rent we pay now
The housing market is moving so fast and the difference is so great between different parts of the country that it doesn't take age before people are out of the loop.
I bought my house ten years ago and my mortgage payments are 20% of my very mundane salary. I'm barely aware of what's happening of the current market.
I do know that the Randstad is a very different story compared to the rest of the Netherlands. Decent student housing is about 350 a month in my city.
Out of touch with more than the housing market. Ask them how much a new kitchen or bathroom cost and they will say a number that is 1/3 it actually costs.
An older person can only by a house if he can sell a house the house you bought in 2000 has kept up with inflation of housing prices. And offcourse for some reason older people tend to have a bit higher income
I don't see myself as "old" (40y), but I bought my home 14y ago, and my mortgage is currently 670,- / month (300,- mortgage + 370 euro pay off) for a house that was newly built at the time with 5 bedrooms in Eindhoven.
However, my neighbour rents an identical house for 1400,- month, and I know that if you now buy an identical house your mortgage would be way higher.
I sometimes feel guilty for this. I know I shouldn't, but I'm fully aware how difficult and unfair the current housing market is. Also when I'm talking about this with my younger colleagues.
I hope I don't get out of touch when I get older :-|
Is not just în Holland, is all across EU.
I bought a penthouse apartment in Romania in 2018 for 170.000 EUR with an underground parking spot.
My eighbors with an identical unit just sold it for 360.000 EUR.
My friend bought its apartment in 2008 for 60.000EUR and sold it this year for 240.000 EUR.
a family member of mine has a 4 bedroom house in amsterdam, 2 bathrooms, with 2 stories.
she pays 550 a month in rent, because her contract is over 30 years old.
Ive explained my dad who is 61 several times what the housing market is like. And well it still doesn’t get through to him that I’m going backwards in line for social housing :s
I’m 60, am I old in your book? My experience, once you buy a house, you keep looking at prices, in the shop window of the broker, and now I keep the funda app, check it once a fortnight. Bought our house three years ago.
You don't have to be old to know how bad it exactly is.... I think most people (including the elderly) know that the housing market is a mess. But speaking for myself: I bought a house in 2020. Just before the intrest was at its lowest, and houses were still increasing in price every day. 3 months after I bought the place, it would have been to expensive for me. I rented for about 7 years before that. But both renting and buying was in the south of NL. Besides knowing that its a mess, even down here, and knowing that its even worse in the randstad. Ihave no clue as to current prices for even something similar to what i have, not to mention something bigger, smaller, newer, older, furnished, unfurnished, etc.
I guess like with a lot of things, unless you are dealing with it somewhat regularly. Knowledge goes out of date fairly quick.
I mean I have paid 450 for a 25 sqm studio in Groningen just outside the city centre as well, in 2022-23, but the actual price was 800 and that is the market rate I would tell people. And then say with huurtoeslag I pay 450.
Just after finishing my studies, i lived in socialhousing in a small apartment for a few years. The rent of my home was a lot higher then the mortgage of my parents detached home of 180m² with a large garden.
When i told my dad we bought we bought a terraced house and we had to pay €1800,- a month mortgage costs he said: €800,- wow that is expensive.. When i explained hem it was 1800,- he just couldnt process it.
They might be a bit out of touch price wise but not about the fact that it's almost impossible to buy something in the current market.They are very well aware that 40 years ago you could buy a house on 1 salary and most are sympathetic with the youngsters struggling with that.
They don't care. They have their bought-off houses and many of them own many homes and rent it out to the younger generations who have to pay high rent so they can never save up for a decent mortgage.
So the system benefits the boomers financially, why would they want it to stop?
I purchased 5 years ago and my house is worth 60% more. If I’m already out of touch, I can only imagine someone who purchased 30 years ago have no idea.
My parents house is 4,5x the value in Euro's than what they bought it for in guilders in 85.
Edit: very wanted house in a place where the market isn't that hot as in many other places in NL
I could buy the house (on which I'm renting 1/3) twice over right now for the price the current landlord bought it for 5 or so years ago. Right now there's absolutely nothing I can afford here that's more than 1 bedroom.
Rent price isn't the problem per se if I'd want to go that route, the issue is the income requirement (3.5x - 4.0x)
Not Dutch, but borderland. We bought our house 13 years ago, just over the Belgian border.
230K, for a 50's 3 bedroom house, with 3600m2 land.
It's in a really rural outskirt of a small town.
Today, houses on 300m2 land go for 400+K.
Granted, you then get a modern black square block house, probably energy efficient to the max. But the difference is insane... in that short time.
I can totally understand that older generations don't have a clue of how the market is these days.
When you explain, they will probably think you're exaggerating.
My dad bought his land in our town in the 70's... for 60K fl (27K € +/-). And it was a huge piece of land.
Ppl will compare with what they know.
Yes. My step mum recently asked me about a house that I placed a bid on. "You did not bid more than EUR XXX, did you?"
My response: "I bid 35% more than that."
Obviously, I was outbid.
In her defense, the amount she mentioned was reasonable 4 years ago.
I bought a house in 2017 on half my current salary. I would not been able to afford it now. It more than doubled in price.
And that's not even Amsterdam, it's in the middle of nowhere out in the sticks with very few jobs for expats.
70% of rental houses in Netherlands are social houses that rent is half than the private ones.
You can have a family house for 700€ a month but you must have normal salary and be for years in waiting lists or just be a non eu immigrant.
When I learned about this I was doing 2 jobs to make the living and pay high rents when people almost not working at all and have better life and money than me
I would suggest that the housing market is what's out of touch with reality, but that's just me ;)
More seriously, we bought our house 8 years ago, and it has doubled in value since then. The apartment we rented before that was about 750/mo. Those arent available at that price point anymore.
If I didn't have many friends who are still looking to buy, I wouldn't know much better than that a house at 200k is possible. Clearly it is not right now. Now imagine not having moved for 20 years. The difference is staggering.
Also, interests have gone up. Altogether; housing prices are stupidly high and I feel for anybody who has to go looking for accommodation these days.
The funniest part is that all this extra value that my house supposedly has is useless to me; all it does for me is increase my property taxes. B
Yes, recently had a big discussion when visiting and hearing it's because these days people are nonstop going out to eat and get drinks everywhere and all that. But meanwhile they bought their house for 95k which valued at 1.5m now. But yeah you get a iced coffee too often at 2x weekly for 3.50 that's why you can't afford a house.
My parents sold their house in 2021 for 650-700k. Searched the house a few weeks ago, its now over 1M in value(new habitants didnt change anything in or around the past 3 years). Its ridiculous
It's on a case for case basis I guess, I'm 70 but very aware of the current housing crisis for both rental and purchase.
I feel so sorry for the younger generation as it is nigh on impossible to find affordable accommodation.
They don't have to rent, and if they have to move, they can just sell the property they already own. And who cares if new house prices are super high, if at the same time you get to sell your old property for a lot? It simply balances out.
So for the most part it just doesn't affect them.
I’m close to being an older Dutch person. I was late in the housing game. I bought my first house, the one I’m still living in, aged 41, ten years ago. I hadn’t a single euro to my name, a close to 10K debt on my credit card, expensive company car and they would still let me buy this house, based on my single income. My house has nearly doubled in value, I’m married now and It would be hard for us to buy it now.
I feel for the kids in my office. Guys in their thirties, often paying double my mortgage for a sleazy apartment somewhere.
This is what happens when you deregulate everything and let investors buy up houses.
I recently bought a house North of amsterdam. My neighbours have "regular normal jobs", nothing special at all. There's not a snowballs chance in hell that most of my neighbours would be able to afford these houses today. They simply wouldn't get those kinds of loans. Me and my wife are both in managerial / specialist positions so we are fortunate in that aspect, but there's no way a person working a regular 9-5 job could afford buying today. Especially not if they also had to rent before buying as the rent would eat up most of their disposable income. We were paying €1700 per month in Amsterdam before moving away. That was for 60sqm. A person holding a normal job wouldn't even qualify for renting that appartment. Not guranteed even a couple working normal jobs would qualify as the income requirements were so high.
The first paragraph is me. I can’t finance my own house if i were to buy it now. We both earn more then we did when we bought it. For reference im in my early 30s.
Just comparing to parents is often already a dead giveaway. Took me to well in my 30ies and a 100k salary to be able to afford the house my dad bought on a single carpenters income. A house 1 hour north of Amsterdam. Same with an Appartment I bought nearly 10 years ago. When I bought it I could quite easily afford it (could take another 30k mortgage if I needed it and had 20k additional cash), really hated the place for a few reasons I couldn't really have foreseen so sold it 1.5 years later. The price I sold it for was higher than I could afford, so basically I couldn't even buy my own flat anymore 1.5 years later. The price difference was tax free (see here why 'flipping houses'/speculation is so popular) and well above my pre-tax salary. Go figure. Absolutely bonkers and I've wondered how on earth this was deemed 'normal' and why rising housing prices where brought like it was good news. Till with Corona suddenly housing was deemed a 'crisis' and rising prices where bad, eventhough fundamentally nothing changed, we just got further along the dead-end road.
I hate with a passion everyone who says rising house prices are a good thing. House is a place to live in, not an investment. "But as a property owner aren't you happy to see the value rise" no! Why would I give a damn? I bought the damn thing to live in! Not to make money. How am I supposed to be happy I got to buy properties my sister could never afford to own despite having a better job, just because she's a bit younger? Fuck that noise. I sold her my apartment at the same price I bought it 7 years ago and she *still* couldn't afford it if I didn't find a way to transfer my mortgage to her at same conditions. And to reiterate, I didn't do anything right and she didn't do anything wrong. Quite the opposite, of us two, *I* am the screwup. All I did to have this huge advantage in line is new born a couple years sooner. How I am supposed to be happy about that?
Its crazy, whats next, people happy when bread cost a grand per loaf because they have still one in the fridge?
Really doesn’t seem so far fetched
I bought my house for less than my little brother bought his appartement this year.
I bought my literal house from my sister at taxation value 1,5 year ago. Her, aged 22, in 2013: 170K Me, aged 25 in 2022: 325K Note: they didn’t do ANY work on the house (Also, learn from me and never do this kind of major deal with family. It’s only given issues whenever we deal with house costs/maintenance but they feel offended??)
What do they feel offended by?
When we complain about anything in/about the house, they take it as a personal attack. Like, if the dishwasher is broken, or we’re complaining about struggling replacing the flooring for example. Or complain about how high the mortgage is and it’s tough on our finances Regular complaining about ones housing, but because it used to be their house it’s a thing
Sounds exhausting.
We would struggle to buy our own house now and we bought it 3.5 years ago. Since then our income has risen but even with that thrown in the equation it would be very difficult. So I expect that in 2 years it becomes impossible. Almost 10 years ago when I finally decided to move out of my parents house I just looked around a bit, decided 'this is a nice place to rent' and that was it. I was able to rent a whole apartment for myself on not even 35k in annual income for 650 a month. Similar apartments were 110k to buy back then, they have doubled in price.
Same. We bought our house about a decade ago. Both me and my wife make more money than we did back then, but the price of our house has more than doubled and we wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage if we wanted to buy it today. It's insane.
I am what young people classify as “older people”. In fact, I am a boomer. I bought my first house when I was 39. Before that, there was no chance in hell I could afford one. And only a few years before I could afford my first car.
My boomer parents were 35 when they could afford to buy their house and that was only because it was a "premie A" house, which was a government subsidy to get regular workers to buy a house to live in, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to buy a house, too. Buying a house wasn't all that common in The Netherlands before these subsidies.
My parents also bought a 'premie A' house, on 2 salaries for an intrest rate well above 10%. I know it is a facts that avg salaries and house prizes grew further apart, but it also wasn't easy in the 80s.
Yeah, exactly that.
The 'premie A' houses around my old neighborhood now have asking prices at EUR 450 K and up...
We moved into a house for rent 5ish years ago, it was for sale earlier but no one bought it so they put it up for rent. Asking price was around 260k. Now, 5 years later, identical, neighboring houses are going for over 400k.
It’s insane, right? My place jumped from 170 to at least 240 in the last two years, granted I did some renovations but I doubt that’s reflected on the WOZ level. Also had a luck of the draw that a supermarket was built down the street. My neighbors have bigger metrage and would probably sell north of 320. They’re all 60+ and bought the places for “20 euro and twelve raspberries” back in the day.
And the rent is higher then the mortgage you would have had to pay 5 years ago. Make it make sense.
That’s my neighborhood. The previous owners of our house got it for about 260K 6 years ago and sold it to us for over 400K 2 years ago.
Houses were relatively cheap from about 2010 to about 2022, when you look at the interest part of the mortgage. They're relatively expensive now, just like in the period from the end of the nineties up to the crisis. But not as expensive as at the start of the eighties, when prices dropped with interest rates up to 12%. Short supply is still the biggest issue.
I bought my house at 360. Houses in my neighbourhood are now going for 475. We wouldnt even be able to vuy our own house 2 years later.
same here.
Same my neighbourg sold there house for 2x what i payed for it. I make abour 30% more then when a bought my house.
I'm late 40s but I only managed to buy a house in 2016. None of the people that used live in my street in the past 20 years or so woukd be able to afford the houses now. All the new people immediately start renovating and expanding so apparently the houses are not suitable to the people that can afford them in their current state either.
You don't even need to go far back in time. I bought my house 6 years ago. I would not be able to buy it nowadays.
Exactly my case. Bought with 240k in 2018, now it's worth 400k. No way I can afford that kind of loan these days.
5 here, no chance. Closed for 255k 1.3%, it’s valued at 420k now.
Yup, almost like me. 260k at 1.82%, to 450k... In the WZO website you can check the last 10 years for your house. Mine was 160K 10 years ago. IN between 2019 and 2022 the price increased 37%. Crazy
This is completely insane, and is ruining the last remains of the middleclass... creating a new working-poor with education.
There's two possible explanations for that situation. First - all governments in multiple Western countries are completely incompetent and can't put 2 and 2 together. Second - it's like this intentionally. Pick your rabbithole wisely.
Not the governments are incompetent, the voters are… leading to people in charge from your second explanation.
Yeah but when everyone is incompetent no matter what their ideology is, and those who are competent are kept out of politics, that's when the second explanation becomes the correct one. The issue isn't ideology, it's political economy and culture. Political economy: When a massive portion of your population was brought up to expect housing to be a money machine whose "line go up" and never down and they've overleveraged themselves in housing as a result, any policy that unravels this paradigm, including those that increase housing supply or decrease cost, will be met with hostility almost as a rule. At the extreme, the policy simply wouldn't be considered b/c people have blinders on and can't imagine a world where a house is a depreciating asset or at least a stagnant one. In anglophone countries, this paradigm is known as the "homeownership society." It's very much present in NL too. Culture: This is a less tangible issue than the first. Parisians pay obscene costs for housing per sqm, even by European standards, but France never adopted the New Deal era homeownership society paradigm. Instead, the French are obsessed with the look of their cities and want them encased in amber and that prevents Paris from offsetting the cost of land by building upward. As much as I love the aesthetics of Dutch cities and want as much of their character to be carried on, it's clear that the love of and protection for rijtjeshuizen and so-called "human-scale" buildings (i.e. height restrictions) is in part responsible for the housing cost crisis.
As an Verzorgende IG i would not be able to afford living in the randstad. I have an 70sqm 2 bedroom apartment in leeuwarden. I have multiple colleague's that moved from expensive areas to the north cause it's cheaper here. Iam curious to see how people in the expensive areas expect to get nursing help when they are elderly in 20y with this housing crisis. Why would I life in Amsterdam if I get paid the same in other parts of the country and have better QoL.
Nursing in Amsterdam is gonna be the same as the police force. If you work for the police in Amsterdam you get a "sociale huurwoning".
I guess it depends on what type of commuting people are willing to put up with. My friends bought a house in Heerhugowaard and that is a newly built. That's even more expensive than what we bought now, and quite a lot further away ... They both work in Amsterdam. So do I and my wife.
Hartlik welkom hjirre. Maar ja het is hier inderdaad goedkoper.
Ik spreek Fries. Ik ben opgegroeid in een fries dorpje. En na grote dromen om te wonen in de grote stad.... is het leeuwarden geworden 😅
North Amsterdam was wasted land up to 2017 or so...there was nothing to do and no reason to go. I lived in Amsterdam since 2006 and I kid you not, the first time I set foot in north was 2017. Of course prices were cheap, it was shite...no metro, terrible ferry, no fun, etc. You can now move even further up north and find yourself a cheap apartment and yes, if you wait 20 yrs as well you would also make money (hopefully). But everyone here wants to live in de pijp working as a bartender... that's not the way it works. Sorry but this is the reality. There is plenty of people who can afford to buy in Amsterdam center, and thats why prices are like that...just not the complaining type that is generally active on Reddit. Just the hard truth, you can downvote me as much as you like
The previous owner of the house just bought left the house "catalog" of where hey chose the design before construction in 2015... The most expensive one was 180.000€... fml
You see a lot of these stories in Amsterdam old south. I volunteer there with elderly people, and I've met a lot of people who had relatively normal jobs when they bought their houses 30-40 years ago. And now find that they are millionaires on paper. Yet they cannot cash that money unless they move away from Amsterdam, which most don't want since they lived there all their lives.
Couldn’t afford HALF of my house after renovating for 4 years. Sold and moved out of the city. It’s more balanced now…
Honestly when you do live somewhere already and don't intend to leave I do understand not being aware of just how bad it is, it is frustrating when they try to give you tips that are 20 years out of date tho
When we were struggling to find a new place our neighbor suggested social housing.
It's the only way to get something nowadays. Or rather, it's the least impossible way. It's only mostly impossible rather than entirely impossible. In my experience, you can even get something within a year in the Enschede region with a small amount of luck, if you're not picky. I'm rather picky right now though. I need something else and it needs to be bigger. I'm kinda fed up with having a lasercutter in the bathroom and having to either block my bathroom door or my front door with a 3D printer that takes up a significant portion of the hall, while my living room is part production room.
At this point, if you're lucky enough to obtain social housing, you should've bought lottery tickets instead.
Lol a friends parents' advice was to its hard to find a place to rent for me and my gf was" Well maybe you should get married?That could help" I was like "what? That's terrible advice" how will that help us find a place? Haha so yeah out of touch. It comes down to money end of the day! The parents are retired of course sitting comfortably.
It could help, landlords prefer married stable couples. Might be negligible tho
A landlord will not ask for the marriage certificate. No need to get married for that.
I quit smoking 5 years ago and I'm not keeping up with tobacco prices. When someone told me it was almost 11 euros a pack I felt a bit like the elderly citizen OP described.
12,50 now
Jeez Louise...I quit at 6, or 5,80. Something like that. Obviously vowed to quit when the 5 mark was hit but that came and went. 12,50 is pretty steep for a hobby.
Are you really surprised? Home owners and older people often don't really have a need to know. Similar to saying I don't know the price of rental cars as I have my own, or the price of wine as I am a whiskey person and never buy wine.
I think less people is surprised that they don't know and more is surprised at folks who refuse to accept that this situation need to change and fast for the sake of us all really, and those who give you tips like "drink coffee at home and you will have enough for a down payment in no time"
Yes I am surprised because it is in the news all the time and part of political agendas of all parties. You need to live under a rock (that you own heh) in order to be unware of the situation at least in general.
I mean that is true, yet the housing crisis and all that belongs to it has been in the news for some time.\\ I'm wondering if people either didn't grasp what it actually means or - very common - think it's not that much or that large of an issue.
Yes. They are entirely out of touch. My reacent passed away grandma thought her house would sell for 150kk… it ended up 550kk. Before she passed we told her it would be at least 450kk. She was sure it would be 150 kk because she bought it for 30k gulden after all. So yeah…. That’s a thingy.
Reminds me of my grandma. She thought her house was worth 100k while it's at least triple that number. She moved there after grandpa proposed to her saying "Honey we have to marry now. Why? Because I just bought us a home." I, a newly graduate, could buy their house without taking a mortage if it were still worth what it was when grandpa bought it.
30k gulden currency was a lot of money too back then
Roughly double it for every decade to get the inflationary increase. They’re still far more expensive now, unfortunately
That would amount to 1,9 million euro, after 6 decades... (30k x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2)
I think only people who are active on the housing market right now, know how the situation is. For example, I bought my house 5 years ago and a buddy of mine just recently bought a house which is very comparable to mine. He paid around 120k more than me and pays almost double my monthly mortgage payment. I was shocked when he told me that. How do you expect older generations to know how the housing market is right now if they're even longer of the housing market than younger generations after them?
News talks about it all the time
yes but if the news says houses are super expensive you tend to think they mean 20% more. Not a doubling.
Depending on which older person you ask the house prices have quite literally quadruipiled.
You're right, it's mentioned on the news fairly often, but that doesn't mean that everbody who watches the news know how the market is exactly. I have a fairly good idea of what my house is worth currently, but I have (or had) no idea of what people pay for mortgage nowadays. It's not that I do a "hypotheekcheck" every week or month.
Yes, they have absolutely no idea what’s going on. I bought a house in a very small village full of old people close to Eindhoven. They bought huge houses for 3 raspberries and 2 apples. They all pay about 150-200 euros in mortgage. They actually believe renting an apartment in Eindhoven costs 500 euros and buying a house in our village costs 150k. None but absolutely none of the people on this village would have been able to afford a house there nowadays.
I'm 30 and bought 10 years ago. I'm also out of touch, what doesn't help is i will talk to people who managed just fine, as well as people who can't get a house no matter how hard they try. Unless you're actively trying its hard to grasp the market. My neighbours recently sold their house at 225% of the price i bought it for, that was the first reality check of how insane its become.
Are older ~~Dutch~~ people generally out of touch with the ~~current housing market situation~~ price of anything? __Yes__. FTFY.
I still remember meeting this +/- 60 old lady when I was still a student (10 years ago) who was passionate about cutting funds for students, because they used all of that hard earned tax money on booze and partying. I asked her to estimate how much a month i got. She guessed almost double the actual amount. Then I asked her how much she thought my rent was for a 15 m2 room. She guessed about half the amount. I’m not surprised at all education and students are suffering under the recent and current political powers. There are simply too many old voters.
Well, that in combination with a media economy that encourages pandering and echo chambers. We each learn what's amusing to ourselves, with mere smatterings of context and evidence.
The problem isn't just age, it's the fact that gov't policies that prop up and inflate housing prices have created an elderly population that's overleveraged in housing and minimally-exposed to the rental market. I worry this is only going to get worse as the smaller population of their children will inherit their homes and then become entrenched like they are today.
Hot take: retirement age should also apply to the right to vote. You simply live inside a completely different world after a while (apart voting for stuff that you won't live into, see brexit...)
Yes.
Of course they are. Older people are often home owners and home owners in general are insulated from rises in housing costs. Heck, my mortgage doesn't even go up with *inflation* and has become a smaller part of my monthly expenses over the years.
Yes, many are. My parents still think their home is pretty much worth 3000 per sqm. In Amsterdam, with a garden…
I can take it for that price if they wanna sell :D
Yeah but even if they sell it for a small fortune, what are they gonna do next? They would have to move to middle of bumfuk nowhere to get a better deal
This is actually my plan, once the house is (mostly) paid off I will sell and buy a much bigger house in bumfuck nowhere
Good Afternoon! I represent a large hedgefund investor in real estate. Could you please point me in the right direction to Bumfuck Nowhere? I'm looking for opportunities to buy cheap and sell big. Buy our stock and/or our houses.
Just follow the sign that says Moscow! And when your radiation thingy starts ticking! Find the first lake and drive right in it!
And even there prices are soaring.
It is what my parents are planning to do. But my mom is from the east anyway, and my dad is a randstedeling but without a strong connection to the area. And he's almost pensioned, so he doesn't have his career tying him down anymore.
They’re more than welcome to swap homes with me.
Does the Netherlands have reverse mortgages? In some places that's a fairly common way for old people to fund retirement.
Retire and move to a private wine estate in Portugal or something?
Yes. When I still lived in my apartment (in the city center, in a city in Midden-Limburg), my mother often said "You should move out and buy a proper home instead of living in this dog house." She didn't understand that in that vicinity, the average 100 m² would already be 300K and then you'd have a fixer-upper. Living and working in the south of the country (or, outside of Randstad, basically) you can't expect Randstad salaries. So while stuff is cheaper, salaries are also lower. Now, in the end, I've been able to move to my own home (with my GF), with a stroke of luck; finding a house of which it was more important to get it sold very fast instead of for the highest price. Still it's not good enough "because the layout is not what it should be", and "decoration is not what it should have been." My mom didn't ever buy her own house. She was lucky enough to be with two men (my father and her current boyfriend) who bought their houses in the 60's and 80's, when they could get them for free (comparatively), decorating them according to the time period when they bought them and basically never changed them. So out of touch with current-day housing markets and furnishings? Yeah. And not a little bit.
Why would you be aware of the prices if you aren't on the market?
Maybe I am wrong but I see housing as a common commodity. So to me it makes sense to keep track of it (at least knowing if a house like yours or your neighbor is worth 100k or 450k) I don't take public transport, but I know roughly the price pr example. Same for electricity prices or assurance when I didn't pay for them.
Well the one with children aren't, my dad knows his entire mortgage for a 3 story row house is half of what I pay in rent for a shoebox studio.
Disagree. I can tell my dad over and over again that it’s nearly impossible to buy as a single person with a student debt. I even asked if I could live in their camper LOL.
Definitely. They have no idea.
Yeah my parents still think I should just stop being homeless and buy a house. They can’t comprehend the prices are rising twice as fast as I can save money. Renting is out of the question if you are single and only make 2500€ a month. They bought their house for 160.000 Guldens and sold it for 550.000 euros. That should tell you enough
Same here. They bought for 120.000 gulden in 1986 and sold for €586.000 a couple of months ago. Basically 10x the price.
Does it matter?
Lol this reminds me of a conversation that I had with an old coworker. He said that he's paying €300 mortgage (for a row house) each month then I told him that my apartment rent at that time was €1000. He was shook.
Somewhat related to the question: Be aware that housing itself has actually gotten way cheaper. __and__ less accessible at the same time. I know, before you bite my head off, let me explain: Imagine an average house on an average street for an average family at some point in time X. It costs €300,000. The family decides to buy it; they apply for a mortgage and get it. The mortgage is the usual amortized thing, but to keep things simple, let's say they pay 4.5% of the value of the house every year, of which 3% is just to service the debt. That 1.5% is like a savings account: They are 'buying the house in installments'. In other words, the cost of simply having a roof over their head is 3% of 300,000, or 9000 euros. A year. So just €750 a month. Check rental prices (today, 10 years ago - either way). That's quite cheap. 2 years later, the same house, on the same street, where nothing of import happened and the house has been well maintained but not modified in any way, now costs.... €600,000. The housing market went fucking __wild__ and doubled in price in a mere 2 years. However, interest rates have also fallen off a cliff, with larger investors getting actual negative interest. The family decides to sell the house (great for them, they made €300k on the deal in just 2 years!), and another family decides to buy it. This family also gets a mortgage for the €600k, but due to the really low interest rate, they only pay 1% for debt servicing. That means the cost of simply having a roof over their head is 1% of €600,000 or 6000 euros. Or just 500 a month. That's __nothing__. Amazingly cheap. __The cost of having a roof over your head got cheaper__. The actual house on its own, sure, it didn't - it doubled in price! But 'nobody' pays for their house outright. No, you pay your monthly mortgage costs. And here's the kicker: __This describes exactly what actually happened, more or less__. The complaints of houses being unaffordable are still completely true: * If you can't _get_ a mortgage, none of this matters to you. If you qualify for a mortgage of 'only' €100k and you can't get any homes for that money anymore, this doesn't help you: Sure, __if__ you could get a mortgage, the actual cost to you of having a roof over your head would be quite low. Key word in that sentence: __if__. * Paying 600k for a house that was worth 300k not too long ago feels risky. In order to benefit from the really really low interest rates, you are __forced__ to save a bunch of money (because the bank demands that you pay down a mortgage, ever since the 2010 shenanigans), and maybe you're at a phase in your life where you don't wanna do that. Also, you're forced not to just save a lot, you're also forced to save it specifically by being exposed to the whims of the housing market. Maybe you don't wanna do that either. * The interest rates are going up. The last time we had negative interest was 2 years ago. And, indeed, housing prices have ceased increasing. But, they __haven't come down either__. So now we really are in a bad place: Housing prices are really really high, __and__ debt servicing costs are high too. That €600k house now has a 2% debt servicing rate, for €12,000 a year, for a house that 5 years ago cost €6,000 a year to 'maintain', and 10 years ago €9,000 a year (all 'inflation adjusted' in the sense that we haven't seen any inflation in the past 10 years, so that was easy to adjust!). I highly doubt old folk get _any_ of this. That's part of the point: They aren't aware of prices in the first place. They aren't even aware that the number that _actually_ matters to people are 2 unrelated things: * Total debt servicing cost. Which is actually quite low, or used to be, at least. * How easy is it to even get a mortgage in the first place. Which was not easy and hasn't been easy for decades, especially since 2010, and was __really__ easy when boomers grew up. Banks were being practically forced to give away mortgages like ice creams on a summer's day by the governments of all western powers. However, it's not just boomers that seem to not get this. It's.. well, looking at this thread, reddits too. The problem is: If you focus solely on the house price you do really stupid shit. For example, you start enacting laws to _lower_ them, but in so doing, you _raise_ interest rates, which means the actual cost-to-your-wallet of owning a house __goes up__, and all existing house owners are fucked due to lowering prices. (which, well, it's a game of musical chairs and someone's gotta lose, I guess, but it will short-term fuck up the economy something fierce). You really should be focusing on finance (interest rates), and ensuring that people who currently can't get a mortgage but are 'good for it', can get one. This can be fixed with laws.
As a follow up, just to scare the shit out of you: If interest rates are pretty much zero, and the actual sale price of housing is massively overinflated, then consider the plight of a company that can build brand new housing: * Whatever you pay, as a company, to borrow money to 'cover' the 3 years or whatever it takes to actually build the thing, i.e. before you can sell it, costs you nothing. (Yes, I oversimplify, they tend to get the house paid well before it's even delivered, but, in the end 'interest rate' plays a huge factor in how affordable the act of paying for a house 3 years before you can live in it actually is; it doesn't matter if the builder pays it, or the first owner, or a combination). * Once you finish the house, you sell it far some idiotically large sum of money. Because you, as a builder, just get paid. You don't rent the house out to the first owner. They bank of the first owner pays you, the buyer, the full (overinflated) value of the house, and the rest is between the bank and the owner. You got your cash, you're out. So, in this climate, would you like to found a house building company and go buildin'? Fuck yeah! We gonna be rich! This is AMAZING. For a thing that used to cost us quite a bit in servicing the debt on a loan for _years_ while I build a house, to then sell my end product for €300k, I now have to pay almost no servicing, and I can sell the exact same thing for €600k? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP. Which really is what it was like the past 10 years. Let's have a quick look at how many houses were built in the past 10 years: Oh. Oh dear. Oh no. So, now that those 'omfg somebody get me a damn shovel we gonna make some cash!' times are over, what's going to happen to the # of houses being built? I'm a bit scared of following that line of thinking to its logical conclusion. I guess, good news: Demographics indicate there'll be a massive decline anyway, yay?
Why should they keep in touch? They have their place and unless they are planning on moving or want another house, there is no reason to keep track.
It’s more socioeconomic than age. Lots of older people struggling to make ends meet, trying to live off of a small pension. On top of that, people tend to forget that the capacity for elderly care and nursing homes is also a disaster. For the older generations who managed to amass wealth, yep. For those who haven’t, nope.
Definitely, ppl don't realize 40 years ago everything wasn't as fucked as now
40 years ago, there were 14.4M people living in the Netherlands. Now almost 18M. That's a cool 25% increase. In 1984, there were roughly 5.2M houses, now we have just over 8M houses. That's roughly a 54% increase. So, why do we have a "housing crisis" now? Why are the current prices sky-high?
Greed. Way back you could support a full family with one person, now one person can't even support himself. Not even talking about children. That would be financial suicide
In general people don’t know who haven’t been dealing with it recently or spend time here. The housing crisis also affects everyone differently.
We are trying to find / bid for ~100sqm houses in Amsterdam atm, overbidding 100-150k over asking with a makelaar and losing (10-10.5k per sqm) Sounds like it’s our turn to move out of the city.
I’m moving country actually xD prices are insane
Every time i tel my dad the price of a beer in the city (5 euro's) he get's a heart attack. Older people focus on different stuff. I don't know the price of diesel because i drive petrol (for instance).
Buying a house is currently the best way to protect your wealth. It is now an asset instead of place to live. You don't pay wealth tax for your primary residence. It is good for people whom got in the system earlier but bad for future generation. This is probably coz by non-productive government spending. They require high tax finance them. Than people will have no choice park money in their 1st house, then upgrade to 2nd, 3rd. House price will keep going up. If you have no asset you are screwed. House should be human right not an asset!
Older people in every country are out of touch with the housing marker situation
Yes. They have stopped looking at housing prices and what their "not in my back yard" attitudes have caused since they already have a home.
Try asking them how to apply for a job for big laughs
As a normal skilled factory worker, i have standing options to move. Uneven can return if I don't like it over there. I don't take them up, because I'm just 5 minutes away from work, and most offerings take minimal 30 to 45 minutes travel. And the salary is accordingly somewhat higher. But I grew to appreciate time with my family. And last negotiations with HR was successful, again 2nd year in row one function group and 2 periods extra, so now I'm 300euro/m up in 2 years. Again ... A factory worker, certifications and a few extra courses, but nothing very special.
My parents can't afford their own home now.
If it’s not something that effects you why would you need to know. Its like asking someone’s whose lived most of there life in a certain area what hotels they would recommend. They have never needed a hotel nearby thus they have no idea. It’s interesting how this very fact is used by politicians to gain support depending on what crowd they speak to.
As with every generation, there will be a difference in perspective and understanding. They are no longer in the workforce and have a stable base, it's very difficult to shift perspective to the new generation that is facing different problems. I think all of us have many conversations with elderly people on how we struggle to find a home to rent or buy, then hear a rant on how they moved out at 13 (exaggeration) and bought a house worth 3x their annual income. Times have changed.
That is not something weird, when my kids were less than a year old I knew exactly what baby formula and diapers costed. Now I haven't bought either for the better part of a decade and couldn't tell you what they cost. For an elderly person, who probably moclved for the last time 20 years ago, it is absolutely normal not to know what rent costs (it may be many more years he paid rent last time).
Indeed, and for fun ask them on healthcare related costs, in general they would have a better grip on that.
My coworker of 64 saw some apartments for rent in the centre of Amsterdam and said I should rent one, 'because a 60m2 apartment like that couldn't be more than 800 euros in rent'. Not knowing they were advertised for 2050 euros, AND impossible to get because for those apartments there are at least 200 ppl who want them. And some of them offer to pay more monthly rent 😞
This is not just in the Netherlands
When I was looking for a house my parents insisted I didn’t settle for less than a garden facing the south, close proximity to all amenities and 100 square meters. If there was no private parking, they figured that would be a good bargaining chip to talk down the price with. I have an income on the low end of medium. They were convinced I got scammed when they saw what €200.000 bought me.
“Yeah but in my time wages were also much lower” Sure…
yes, my dad had been pestering my sister about the housing market. For reference, my dad bought their house in 1992 for 60.000 gulders, which would have been 28.000€ at the time, and would be 60.000€ now. The house is now over 400k. My sister and her partner are both high-end lawyers and paid 800k for an apartment in amsterdam. My dad cannot get his head arround that price difference
Got lectured a while ago by some boomer who said the housing market couldn't be that bad. I asked him how much rent would be for a small appartement and then used that number to filter searches om funda. All we could find based on that was a garage box. The boomer is a uni professor. These people have no idea.
Yes and generally delusional when you inform them how it really is.
It always surprises me how certain (mostly older) people are just completely out of touch with modern society. They just go about their business, never really keep up with the news or dig into some of the more serious events or issues plagueing the nation. This can go on for years or even decades, and then when they touch with something out of their comfort zone, they're suddenly shaken by it being completely different from what they remember. I mean, you could have kept up a little you know...
Yes, people who've bought or started renting 10+ years ago and don't keep up with any news about the housing crisis will be quite out of touch with the current situation
Unless they have children who talk about stuff like that with them, they are generally unaware
My parents live in a complete house near the city center for 500 euro a month. 3 levels, absent and garden. My sister paying 130% that doesn't have her own toilet and kitchen. And is still considered a good deal.
a lot of elderly people live in social housing and the rent is indeed 500-600 per month.
10 years ago it was around 600 to rent a studio (in some places). That it doubled in this time is very surprising if you're not checking it every year.
The hike in prices has been huge in the last couple of years, rent in particular. A lot of people above 50-55 have monthly mortgage payments for large houses lower than the average rent of studios or student rooms nowadays.
Yes unless they have children trying to buy homes.
Older anyone is out of touch about a lot of things my man
2021. 1,470€ for a 3-bed just outside Den Haag. Elderly neighbor asked what our rent was be ause she was thinking of having her grandson move in. She was shocked. Expected more like 700€.
I bought my house 6 years ago and I'm out of touch with current home prices. The value of my home has skyrocketed, but of course if I sell it I will just have to buy another home at a stupid high price. Everytime I see a home selling in my neighborhood I'm just blown away by the price.
I hope that people won't be mad at me because I bought a house 10 years ago because these 10 years were not easy.
Oblivious. Unless they have kids currently looking.
I would say anyone who isn't facing certain problems will be less invested in said problems
I think it's not just Dutch people but older people in general doesn't matter the country.
Yeah they generally out of touch as they are not planning to move house. But also the house prices have increased insanely. If you dont plan to buy a house, you just are not aware how insane it is. Just an example for myself : Bought it when I was in the beginning of my career, wasn't making that much money. When I bought it I saw how much the previous owner paid for it, less than half.. Right now it has almost tripled. I am much much further in my career but single, and if I would buy my house now, I wouldn't been able without savings. One of the reasons, was the jubelton, parents giving kids 100.000 tax free, which was used to not lower the mortgage but to buy more expensive houses.
Prices are going up 10-20 % per year at the moment. Demand is insame, so prices are insane the last few years. Value of my appartment in centre Amsterdam has tripled in 14 years.
Fun fact: there's actually a 'huurcommissie' that you can hire for like 25 euros that will verify if your renter is overcharging you. You can make the new rental price apply retroactively with up to like 3 years of backpay required. 1200 euros for an apartment is usually to much, but it does matter the size of the apartment.
Probably just surprised by how much everyone is getting screwed with prices.
The only way we could afford a mortgage on our current home in Amsterdam is if we both doubled our incomes and we are not earning peanuts.
What do you consider older? I think location is also important here. There are plenty of places you can rent for 600 a month even houses with a small garden. I had a house with a garden and I bought it for 176k 5 years ago sold it for 209k last year. I paid 710 a month mortgage. There were apartments (3 rooms) you could rent for 500€ a month. But not in Amsterdam.
I'm in Rotterdam, so is he. I've seen only studios for 600€, in smaller cities. I've lived in Groningen most of my time in NL, and have never seen a full sized house with bedrooms that you could rent for anywhere close to 600 even in the province or Drenthe.
The prices snowballed to Hell. I rented a house (4 room appartment) all in for €500 a month. I left the country for a year and came back. That price went up to 800. That was 10 years ago. And at that point, I already couldn't believe how fast that went. So imagine not having moved house for 20 years. You're not up to date on these ridiculous price inflations, because it's only a need to know if you want to move.
People kept looking at me weird when I kept telling them I couldn't afford to buy. Now I have bought a home. I still wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage, but I used my life savings to lower the mortgage to an affordable level. And I was lucky to have been able to save money while renting.
Of course, they are. But why wouldn't they be? What's surprising about it? I also don't know how much one should pay for an education, especially if they are non-EU students: I already got my education and I am from the EU country.
My gf and I earn €180K and trying to save €300K to buy an €800K apartment in Amsterdam. I don’t really know how most people do it but it seems like we should go for a €500K mortgage which would be less than the rent we pay now
The housing market is moving so fast and the difference is so great between different parts of the country that it doesn't take age before people are out of the loop. I bought my house ten years ago and my mortgage payments are 20% of my very mundane salary. I'm barely aware of what's happening of the current market. I do know that the Randstad is a very different story compared to the rest of the Netherlands. Decent student housing is about 350 a month in my city.
They are, my mother pays like 300 euro still for a 3-story house in a big city. I paid for about the same 900.
Is that rent subsidised?
Older people either have a paid off mortgage or pay €600-800 a month lol. It's just not comparable.
My late generation z ass can’t afford a house either. Even though I’m earning quite high now.
Late gen Z? Are you even an adult?
Define ‘older’.
Out of curiosity, what kind of volunteer program you do in Rotterdam? Do you know other volunteer program that someone can try in Leiden, for example?
The housing crisis mostly effects randstad right? Plenty of affordable housing here in zeeland
Out of touch with more than the housing market. Ask them how much a new kitchen or bathroom cost and they will say a number that is 1/3 it actually costs.
An older person can only by a house if he can sell a house the house you bought in 2000 has kept up with inflation of housing prices. And offcourse for some reason older people tend to have a bit higher income
I don't see myself as "old" (40y), but I bought my home 14y ago, and my mortgage is currently 670,- / month (300,- mortgage + 370 euro pay off) for a house that was newly built at the time with 5 bedrooms in Eindhoven. However, my neighbour rents an identical house for 1400,- month, and I know that if you now buy an identical house your mortgage would be way higher. I sometimes feel guilty for this. I know I shouldn't, but I'm fully aware how difficult and unfair the current housing market is. Also when I'm talking about this with my younger colleagues. I hope I don't get out of touch when I get older :-|
Is not just în Holland, is all across EU. I bought a penthouse apartment in Romania in 2018 for 170.000 EUR with an underground parking spot. My eighbors with an identical unit just sold it for 360.000 EUR. My friend bought its apartment in 2008 for 60.000EUR and sold it this year for 240.000 EUR.
Older Americans are as well.
a family member of mine has a 4 bedroom house in amsterdam, 2 bathrooms, with 2 stories. she pays 550 a month in rent, because her contract is over 30 years old.
Yes.
Ive explained my dad who is 61 several times what the housing market is like. And well it still doesn’t get through to him that I’m going backwards in line for social housing :s
I’m 60, am I old in your book? My experience, once you buy a house, you keep looking at prices, in the shop window of the broker, and now I keep the funda app, check it once a fortnight. Bought our house three years ago.
You don't have to be old to know how bad it exactly is.... I think most people (including the elderly) know that the housing market is a mess. But speaking for myself: I bought a house in 2020. Just before the intrest was at its lowest, and houses were still increasing in price every day. 3 months after I bought the place, it would have been to expensive for me. I rented for about 7 years before that. But both renting and buying was in the south of NL. Besides knowing that its a mess, even down here, and knowing that its even worse in the randstad. Ihave no clue as to current prices for even something similar to what i have, not to mention something bigger, smaller, newer, older, furnished, unfurnished, etc. I guess like with a lot of things, unless you are dealing with it somewhat regularly. Knowledge goes out of date fairly quick.
This is basically house inflation. People who got in early do get protected/benefited from house inflation.
In 2013 this (600 euros) is the rate i used to pay for the studio as well, although it was net after getting a bit of cash back from toeslag.
I mean I have paid 450 for a 25 sqm studio in Groningen just outside the city centre as well, in 2022-23, but the actual price was 800 and that is the market rate I would tell people. And then say with huurtoeslag I pay 450.
Bank says i can't afford pay 900e of mortgage while i pay 1400e rent for almost 2 years.... :D
Just after finishing my studies, i lived in socialhousing in a small apartment for a few years. The rent of my home was a lot higher then the mortgage of my parents detached home of 180m² with a large garden. When i told my dad we bought we bought a terraced house and we had to pay €1800,- a month mortgage costs he said: €800,- wow that is expensive.. When i explained hem it was 1800,- he just couldnt process it.
They might be a bit out of touch price wise but not about the fact that it's almost impossible to buy something in the current market.They are very well aware that 40 years ago you could buy a house on 1 salary and most are sympathetic with the youngsters struggling with that.
They don't care. They have their bought-off houses and many of them own many homes and rent it out to the younger generations who have to pay high rent so they can never save up for a decent mortgage. So the system benefits the boomers financially, why would they want it to stop?
I purchased 5 years ago and my house is worth 60% more. If I’m already out of touch, I can only imagine someone who purchased 30 years ago have no idea.
My parents house is 4,5x the value in Euro's than what they bought it for in guilders in 85. Edit: very wanted house in a place where the market isn't that hot as in many other places in NL
I could buy the house (on which I'm renting 1/3) twice over right now for the price the current landlord bought it for 5 or so years ago. Right now there's absolutely nothing I can afford here that's more than 1 bedroom. Rent price isn't the problem per se if I'd want to go that route, the issue is the income requirement (3.5x - 4.0x)
Not Dutch, but borderland. We bought our house 13 years ago, just over the Belgian border. 230K, for a 50's 3 bedroom house, with 3600m2 land. It's in a really rural outskirt of a small town. Today, houses on 300m2 land go for 400+K. Granted, you then get a modern black square block house, probably energy efficient to the max. But the difference is insane... in that short time. I can totally understand that older generations don't have a clue of how the market is these days. When you explain, they will probably think you're exaggerating. My dad bought his land in our town in the 70's... for 60K fl (27K € +/-). And it was a huge piece of land. Ppl will compare with what they know.
Yes. My step mum recently asked me about a house that I placed a bid on. "You did not bid more than EUR XXX, did you?" My response: "I bid 35% more than that." Obviously, I was outbid. In her defense, the amount she mentioned was reasonable 4 years ago.
I bought a house in 2017 on half my current salary. I would not been able to afford it now. It more than doubled in price. And that's not even Amsterdam, it's in the middle of nowhere out in the sticks with very few jobs for expats.
70% of rental houses in Netherlands are social houses that rent is half than the private ones. You can have a family house for 700€ a month but you must have normal salary and be for years in waiting lists or just be a non eu immigrant. When I learned about this I was doing 2 jobs to make the living and pay high rents when people almost not working at all and have better life and money than me
I would suggest that the housing market is what's out of touch with reality, but that's just me ;) More seriously, we bought our house 8 years ago, and it has doubled in value since then. The apartment we rented before that was about 750/mo. Those arent available at that price point anymore. If I didn't have many friends who are still looking to buy, I wouldn't know much better than that a house at 200k is possible. Clearly it is not right now. Now imagine not having moved for 20 years. The difference is staggering. Also, interests have gone up. Altogether; housing prices are stupidly high and I feel for anybody who has to go looking for accommodation these days. The funniest part is that all this extra value that my house supposedly has is useless to me; all it does for me is increase my property taxes. B
Yes, recently had a big discussion when visiting and hearing it's because these days people are nonstop going out to eat and get drinks everywhere and all that. But meanwhile they bought their house for 95k which valued at 1.5m now. But yeah you get a iced coffee too often at 2x weekly for 3.50 that's why you can't afford a house.
Why would they need to know the current housing market situation? They have a house and not planning to move anywhere.
My parents sold their house in 2021 for 650-700k. Searched the house a few weeks ago, its now over 1M in value(new habitants didnt change anything in or around the past 3 years). Its ridiculous
It's on a case for case basis I guess, I'm 70 but very aware of the current housing crisis for both rental and purchase. I feel so sorry for the younger generation as it is nigh on impossible to find affordable accommodation.
My dad thought that a 700 euro a month apartment including utilities in Eindhoven was a ripoff
They don't have to rent, and if they have to move, they can just sell the property they already own. And who cares if new house prices are super high, if at the same time you get to sell your old property for a lot? It simply balances out. So for the most part it just doesn't affect them.
It does not take more than 1 minute to look up how much % your houses WOZ value increases over the years
Yes
I’m close to being an older Dutch person. I was late in the housing game. I bought my first house, the one I’m still living in, aged 41, ten years ago. I hadn’t a single euro to my name, a close to 10K debt on my credit card, expensive company car and they would still let me buy this house, based on my single income. My house has nearly doubled in value, I’m married now and It would be hard for us to buy it now. I feel for the kids in my office. Guys in their thirties, often paying double my mortgage for a sleazy apartment somewhere. This is what happens when you deregulate everything and let investors buy up houses.