According to De Groot, the fact that rents in the free sector fell in the past year was due to the fact that expats stayed away from the Netherlands due to the corona pandemic. “Rental homes that they would normally rent remained vacant and were reduced in price in order to still be rented out. Travel restrictions have now been largely lifted and rents are rising in popular expat cities such as Amsterdam,” says De Groot.
Lasting increase
It is therefore no surprise that Amsterdam is still the most expensive Dutch city to rent a home. New tenants paid an average of 22.44 euros per square meter per month last quarter.
If we look at the Netherlands as a whole, rents rose relatively fastest in provinces outside the Randstad conurbation. Tenants in Flevoland (+9.2), Groningen (+8.4) and Gelderland (+6.5) in particular had to dig deeper into their pockets each month. Only in Drenthe (-1.8) and Zeeland (-7.1) did rents fall in the free sector.
According to De Groot, rents will continue to rise if nothing is done about the supply of rental housing in the private sector. “Investors should not be hindered from building houses and regulating the free sector with a purchase ban certainly does not help. You do not increase the supply that way.”
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