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Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

nltimes.nl

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Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#231

Post by Yaa101 »

rusteh1 wrote: post #165

I don't understand how this would work. How do people rent? Obviously many people can't or do not wish to own their house for any number of reasons. Who will own houses that are rented? I used to live in Amsterdam as an expat, and rented from a landlord who owned several homes in Amsterdam. Would she not be able to own and rent these homes under this scheme? The social housing system seemed to be abused when I was th…

We had housing cooperation's for a century until they were forced by consecutive right wing governments to sell their houses, and thus ruining a system that was well working, except for rich friends of the right wing government to speculate with the housing system, which is taking place now.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#232

Post by taffer »

ForHackernews wrote: post #146
zeepthee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would it encourage urban sprawling?

If you're taxed on the value of the land, rather than the value of the property built on top of that land, it arguably incentivizes buying super-cheap exurban land and planting massive McManisions on it. Obviously in real life, people care about other things besides just pure acreage, but you can see the argument.

If people only cared about land area, the distinction between urban and non-urban land wouldn't even exist. What makes urban land special is the infrastructure, schools, workplaces, restaurants, cafés, theaters, libraries. These things make a city a city. These things promote density because people cluster around them.

As I explained in another comment[1], a property tax discourages density and encourages sprawl. A land value tax, on the other hand, does not have these adverse effects on density because it taxes only the fixed supply of land, not the variable supply of buildings.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28423428

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#233

Post by ehou »

lifty wrote: post #141
ChrisLomont wrote: post #43

So they want to make renting impossible? That surely won't help low income people.

The Dutch system caters for that through the social housing system. There are special companies that get permits to own houses and rent them at cheap prices for disadvantaged groups.

In theory you are right. In practice this part of the system is having problems too:

    - people who used to move on to a larger house stay because of the increased costs
    - older houses are broken down and are replaced by newer ones … but due to building regulations fewer are build at the same place
    - due to stagnation in outflow and decreased number of houses the waiting time for getting a “social house” is increased by a ridiculous amount. In Eindhoven it is more than 10 years - in theory. But due to rules about preferred placement it’s often way more.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#234

Post by winkelwagen »

rusteh1 wrote: post #215
734129837261 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designations. That's how. Some houses are built and intended to be rented out to people. These houses are constructed entirely by companies (or people) for that purpose alone. Other houses are meant to be for purchase, and purchase only. If you purchase a house like this and then rent it out, that should be considered breaking the intended designation. So if you as an individual want to own multiple houses to rent ou…

Thanks. What if I purchase a home, to live in. Then I take a job overseas and move for 2-3 years. Must I sell the house rather than rent it out on a short term basis?

There are special rules for that specific scenarios. As long if you don’t live in the Netherlands yourself and it is the only property you own

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#235

Post by iso1210 »

refurb wrote: post #208
dogma1138 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median price for a property in London is £600K, the average is over £1M today. That means that normal people cannot afford to buy anything in London even with HTB which is a terrible policy the people who can afford to use it are already in the top percentiles. A £600K property as a first time buyer requires you to have about £100K to get on a property ladder. 10% deposit for a 90% LTV mortgage is £60K, stamp dut…

Why is it reasonable to assume that people earning an average wage should be able to afford a home in the most desirable city in the UK, and one of the most desirable cities in Europe if not the world? I mean, nobody complains in the US if the average family can’t buy a home in Manhattan. That’s just unreasonable.

The idea is that two people on an average London wage should be able to afford to live in an average home in London. The truth is they can - if they can get the deposit together (which is trivial if you have parents you can live with for a couple of years, but if you've moved to London for work and your family lives 300 miles away your deposit savings go on rent). Perhaps they can't live in the most desirable parts of Chelsea, but there are affordable houses in the London area for a couple of 41k each.

Personally if I had to work in London, I'd look at buying a 2 bed house somewhere like Leighton Buzzard (30m Euston), Gravesend (22m St Pancras), Tonbridge (35m London Bridge), for about 250k.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#236

Post by yodsanklai »

iso1210 wrote: post #217
dogma1138 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median price for a property in London is £600K, the average is over £1M today. That means that normal people cannot afford to buy anything in London even with HTB which is a terrible policy the people who can afford to use it are already in the top percentiles. A £600K property as a first time buyer requires you to have about £100K to get on a property ladder. 10% deposit for a 90% LTV mortgage is £60K, stamp dut…

> even with HTB which is a terrible policy the people who can afford to buy are already in the top percentiles What a load of rubbish. HTB really helped us when buying by giving 5 years of interest free We bought a 240k house with a 12k deposit and 48k htb. Moving costs etc meant we had to find about £17k, which we borrowed. Assuming you do that now, HTB means paying £647 a month on the mortgage and £330 a month on r…

> you'd be crazy to live in London when there are far more reasonable places to live just half an hour out of a one 1 station and far far less cost

How much cheaper would it be? I've just moved to London (living in zone 2, going a bit further didn't strike me as much cheaper).

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#238

Post by TeMPOraL »

988747 wrote: post #103
jhgb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need for every family to sublet. Usually a small minority of residences house subletters. I'm not quite sure how worsening the situation for everyone by property investors hoarding houses would make it better for students, either.

Property investors are not "hoarding" houses. They buy them and then rent them out, thus increasing the supply. It is actually better for students this way: an investor that does not live in their property can rent out it whole. If a house can fit 5 people that means a living space for 5 students. If the house gets bought by a family, that family moves in, so 3 out of 5 spots are now occupied, leaving only 2 availabl…

> an investor that does not live in their property can rent out it whole

There's a flip side to this. An investor that does not live in their property doesn't care about the property as a place to live. So...

> If a house can fit 5 people that means a living space for 5 students.

But what actually happens these days is the house gets renovated to turn those 5 living spaces into 8 or 10. Students don't have any leverage on the market, so investors will densify houses over time, until they health and safety limits, and then some (the rents, of course, don't drop proportionally). Not enough students anymore? Fortunately there's AirBnB now. What about people who actually want to settle in the area? Nah, they're too needy, literally the least efficient bunch to extract money from.

Elsewhere in the thread, some people say that the problem is with people who want to settle in expensive, wealthy cities. But perhaps the main reason those cities are expensive is because of property investment? That is, all those high salaries cancel out with high rents. Get rid of high rents, salaries may drop, but so do costs of living, and the whole market settles at a more approachable and sustainable level.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#240

Post by user568439 »

rusteh1 wrote: post #165

I don't understand how this would work. How do people rent? Obviously many people can't or do not wish to own their house for any number of reasons. Who will own houses that are rented? I used to live in Amsterdam as an expat, and rented from a landlord who owned several homes in Amsterdam. Would she not be able to own and rent these homes under this scheme? The social housing system seemed to be abused when I was th…

I guess this is only for new sales. The point is that there is plenty of people wanting to buy a home in Netherlands, they just can’t pay the same price as investors. With this law the seller will have to lower the price till some person who wants to live there can afford it
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