“In my room in Amsterdam. Get caught again, you didn’t know what hit you,” De Mens sang 20 years ago. If you now look at house prices in Amsterdam, you do not know what will happen to you: an average house in the Dutch capital now costs on average more than half a million euros. A doubling in seven years.
The purchase and rental prices in the Netherlands – and above all in Amsterdam – have risen so sharply because there is a major housing shortage and because borrowing is cheap. The housing market in Amsterdam has become such a lucrative business that 30 percent of the homes there are now in the hands of private investors, who rent them out for a lot of money.
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