A pretty farm for sale near Noordwijk has had ‘hundreds’ of viewing requests as Dutchies seek the relative peace of the North
Translated by Thomas Ansell
We all know that the rental market in Groningen is essentially broken; with such a lack of housing that people are able to rent 15 square metre ‘studios’ for up to 600 euros per month. But what about people looking to lay roots in the area? Well, the buying market is still boiling over in the background too!
There is no better example of this than the story of a pretty former farm in Noordwijk; located in the Gemeente Westerkwartier and with about 225 residents, which received over 200 viewing requests in just a few hours after being placed on Funda (like Kamernet, but for people with money or parents to pay for a deposit). As reported by RTV Noord.
Henk Wieland, the estate agent tasked with selling the house, saw his phone ‘blow up’ on August 27; receiving an email every five minutes from 06:00 after the advert went live the evening before.
The farmhouse is a bit of a rarity, with over 5,650 sq m of space (my apartment is 36 sq m), and a pretty thatched roof. “Such houses rarely come on the market”, says Wieland, “so they are often popular- but I hadn’t expected this!”
The current owners, Wim and Ursula, will be moving with their three children to the City of Groningen. They spent three weeks getting the house ready to show: cleaning, removing clutter, and de-personalising.
The asking price of the property (495,000 euros) hasn’t put off potential owners, with interest coming from every Province in the Netherlands. On Friday afternoon the estate agents decided to unlist the property because they had had so many people expressing interest that the ‘reserve list’ was full.
Image: a different house to that mentioned in the story by Uta Scholl on Unsplash
