In the northern cities of Leeuwarden and Groningen, many of the homes being put up for sale on the market are being bought by private investors and turned into rental properties.
Translation by Traci White
Recent reporting by the Dagblad van het Noorden and the Leeuwarder Courant found that a significant portion of homes in the cities of Groningen and Leeuwarden are being sold to private investors, which means fewer start homes are available on the market.
In Leeuwarden, 11% of homes that are listed for sale end up in the hands of private investors, which is well above the national average. On Groningen, seven out of ten homes sold in the city centre end up becoming rental properties, which is the highest percentage for an individual neighbourhood in the country. The Dagblad reports that 4,000 more homes have become rentals in the past five years in Groningen.
The decreasing number of homes for sale is making it more difficult for tenants to make their way onto the property ladder. Groningen’s housing market in particular has already been famously tight in recent years: numbers released in January found that more than half of the homes that are listed for sale in the city were sold within 24 hours. Similar issues have been emerging in Friesland and Drenthe: even though more new housing units are popping up across the region, there are still too few new homes being built to keep pace with growing demand.
The national figures were released in a report by Kadaster which was commissioned by the Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure.
