The municipality of Amsterdam has been trying to act against vacancy for years, but it lacked compelling measures. That is why the college is coming up with new rules that eventually have to force home owners to make their homes occupied.
Owners are now required to report vacancy to the municipality within six months. If an owner does not succeed in getting a house occupied, officials will soon be allowed to have a ‘market-based rent’ determined and imposed. This prevents an owner from asking too high a rent, for example to keep a house empty or to wait for an expat who is willing to pay a lot.
Sometimes homeowners leave their houses empty for years, for example they wait for a higher sales price as houses become more expensive every year. Officials will soon be able to force owners to rent out a property temporarily, or to renovate it so that it becomes suitable for habitation.
Until now, the municipality could not impose fines for vacancy. However, civil servants could fine home owners who did not report within six months that their property is empty. When an owner himself did not report vacancy, the municipality often found empty houses through observant neighbors, or when the national basic register showed that a house had not been occupied for a long time.
The municipality has been trying to reduce vacancy since 2017. In 2020, for example, the municipality investigated 1,600 addresses due to (suspected) vacancy. That year, a total of 113 talks were held with owners about solving the vacancy in their property. It is not known how many homes in Amsterdam have no residents in total.
Homes to expensive rent
Vacancy cannot be explained in this housing crisis, according to the council. Another problem of the overheated housing market is what buy to let and keep-to-let is called: buying or holding homes for rent. Recent research commissioned by the municipality showed that in two years’ time, about ten thousand houses shifted from the owner-occupied market to the expensive private rental segment. Tenants in the free sector pay an average of 1,466 euros per month in the capital.
Amsterdam is one of the cities where purchase protection will soon apply. This means that homes purchased from April and with a WOZ value of up to and including 512,000 euros must be occupied by the buyer for at least four years. Utrecht, Haarlem and The Hague are also starting with such a purchase protection. Opponents of the measure fear that the measure will lead to even greater shortages in the mid-rental segment.