“Minister De Jonge’s Plans to Keep Dutch Housing Market Afloat Amid Construction Challenges”

This is evident from a letter that Minister Hugo de Jonge for Housing and Spatial Planning sent to the House of Representatives today. The minister still wants to build 900,000 homes in the period up to and including 2030, but acknowledges that he is facing strong headwinds.

Rising construction costs and interest rates are causing problems for both investors and buyers. Homes are too expensive for many buyers. That’s why they drop out. It is also becoming increasingly difficult for project developers to get plans financed. As a result, projects are currently stranded on the drawing board.

Minister De Jongen believes that time is needed to adapt plans to the new market situation. That is why he expects a dip in 2024 in particular. However, the minister wants to do everything possible to keep that dip as limited as possible. He is deploying an amount of 250 million euros for this, which has been made available to prevent plans from falling through. This ‘start-building impulse’ is an attempt to win over the most promising projects.

Need time

The minister also calls on provinces and municipalities to look for alternative locations. If they have that in hand, they can still continue to build. De Jonge wants such an alternative for every delayed project. He will conduct so-called acceleration talks with provinces and municipalities to allow construction to continue as much as possible.

Positive numbers

In addition to gloomy news, the letter to parliament also contains positive figures for 2022. In the past year, more than 90,000 homes have been built. This includes flex homes and the conversion of business premises into homes. For 2022, De Jonge had taken into account the construction of 80,000 homes. So it is a stroke of luck.

But against that positive news there is also another setback. The demand for housing will increase sharply in 2022, mainly due to migration. There was a doubling of population growth compared to the previous year. And it is also expected that there will be a significant increase in population due to migration in the coming years. New forecasts are expected before the summer of what this means for the number of homes that will be needed.