Amsterdammers find themselves at the nadir of a Europe-wide housing shortage. But some bold initiatives offer hope
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In a pan-European housing crisis, the Netherlands’ is next level. According to independent analysis, the average Dutch home now costs €452,000 – more than 10 times the modal, or most common, Dutch salary of €44,000.
That means you need a salary of more than twice that to buy one. Nationwide, house prices have doubled in the past decade; in more sought-after neighbourhoods they have surged 130%. A new-build home costs 16 times an average salary.
The rental market is equally dysfunctional. Rents in the private sector – about 15% of the country’s total housing stock – have soared. A single room in a shared house in Amsterdam is €950 a month; a one-bed flat €1,500 or more; a three-bedder €3,500.
For the record, I was looking for places to buy in Rotterdam the other month, and what I found was that by and large, if you want to buy things inside the city limits, it’s either some weird mansion in the bougie foresty part, a 3 million EUR apartment where your garage is in the apartment, and you enter your place by car lift, or an entire fucking apartment block. People just don’t sell cheap apartments piecemeal.
The upside is that living in “the suburbs” which means moderately dense villages and towns near the big cities is doable, and you might be able to commute even without a car since public transport is mostly good.