Ricky Gerrese (22) and Karim Abdalla (24) from Delft have known each other since high school. They are best friends, both study accountancy at Nyenrode Business University and work at the same office of accountant Baker Tilly in The Hague. And now they have also bought a house together. Due to the housing shortage, they see no other solution. The number of single people has been growing for years, but smaller, affordable houses are scarce for this target group.
Four years ago, Karim was already looking for a suitable home for sale in the The Hague region, but that didn’t work out. “It is really not feasible here for our generation.” According to research agency ABF Research, there is a shortage of 390,000 homes in the Netherlands this year. Of young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty living at home, 13 percent want to leave home, but cannot find anything.
Renting a home is also expensive. Vaccording to housing platform Pararius the average square meter price of a rental home in the private sector in The Hague is now 19.14 euros. That is 7.2 percent higher than a year ago. In addition, the number of rental properties released for new tenants this year fell by 32 percent. Since this year, private individuals have to pay higher property tax on homes that they do not live in themselves. This means that some homeowners would rather sell their house than rent it out again.
With the current rent prices, it is almost impossible for a single person to find something, says Karim. “For a reasonable rental home in The Hague, I would have spent 1,600 euros per month or even more on rent.” When he talked about it with Ricky last summer, the idea arose to see if they could buy something together. Karim and Ricky both earn an average salary. That offered perspective. “Our current mortgage amounts to less than 1,400 euros, so that makes us cheaper.”
After their conversation, they went to Jan-Paul van Daal, the father of a mutual friend, who is a real estate agent. He initially reacted sceptically, he says: “It’s all right, I thought, there you have another dream scenario.” But he quickly discovered that they had a good plan and made a good team. “I had never heard of friends buying a house together. Of course, you always hear that students live together, but buying is really something else.”
This is also unknown territory for the NVM brokers’ association. A spokesperson: “We see it among family members, but we have not yet seen it among friends.”
Yet it is not entirely unique for friends to enter the housing market together. Advisor Boudewijn de Jong of De Hypotheker in Rotterdam has had to deal with this several times. “A few years ago it started occasionally with two friends, now we see it happen more often. They are mainly former students. They are not in a steady relationship, but they do earn the money and have the lifestyle to live more seriously and beautifully. Together you have many more options on the housing market.”
Master bedroom
Karim and Ricky noticed that a search for a suitable home for two friends is not easy. Real estate agent Van Daal: “Most homes in the Netherlands are traditionally furnished. This means that you have a large bedroom with smaller rooms for any children. With two friends you have two buyers who are not in one bedroom. Then you are looking for a house with two spacious rooms, with comparable surfaces.”
The friends dealt with this flexibly. Karim: “Such a large master bedroom did not hinder us at all. We also started looking at houses with two small rooms that are next to each other. Then we could possibly have the wall between them removed.”
After six viewings, Ricky and Karim found the ideal home for them. And also in the city where they most wanted to live: The Hague. They fell for the two top floors of an apartment building with an area of about 82 square meters. Including construction deposit, they paid just under 300,000 euros. Karim: “This house originally had two small rooms and one large one, but the wall between the two small rooms had already been removed. That made it perfect for our situation. We were actually sold immediately.” Ricky: “We looked at each other and said: ‘Shit, we’re really going to buy this house.’”
Real estate agent Van Daal then assisted them as he does with couples in a relationship. Two buyers, two incomes – that was not the difference. “But it does involve topics of conversation that can be more obvious for a couple than for friends. For example, how do you divide the equity in the house? And in the worst case, what if one of them dies? These are things you also have to think about.”
Cohabitation contract
Karim and Ricky have chosen to sign a cohabitation contract and take out life insurance on each other. If one of them dies, the insurer pays out his outstanding mortgage debt to the other tax-free. When you buy a house together, you are not automatically each other’s heirs. You also see this in unmarried couples. Without a cohabitation contract, half of the house would go to the deceased’s family upon death.
In addition to the legal details, Van Daal thought it was important that buying a home should not interfere with friendship: “You are friends with each other and you choose to share something else in addition to your job, your education and your mutual group of friends. . Something very intimate. Eventually you start talking about large sums of money and you have to make choices about it. Even though they are good friends, things can still come between them. For me, part of the process was to ensure that the friendship between the two gentlemen would be maintained. I also took on a fatherly role in this. By having a good conversation with them and discussing the pros and cons of living together.”
Karim received many reactions from people around him. “Some people really thought we were crazy, since you meet each other as friends, at work and then also at home. But I’m not home all week. I also spend part of the time with my girlfriend in Rotterdam and we really have our own lives outside of each other. Our colleagues, friends and family have now gotten used to the idea and they see how smoothly and easily Ricky and I make decisions together. That’s because we have known each other for so long and are just very attuned to each other.”
Selecting tiles
Quite a few choices had to be made, as a lot of work had to be done on the house. Karim: “We are in the middle of the renovation and are not yet living in the house. We really want to tackle everything, from the bathroom to the kitchen. We are also installing new floors.” That requires additional decisions. Karim: “Suddenly you and your best friend are choosing tiles for the bathroom. Fortunately we have the same taste and we are not too difficult.”
Karim and Ricky say they also see their house as an investment. Karim: “We also checked out the house a bit. The housing market is picking up so much that we are going to make it a good investment. We want to keep the costs of the renovation as low as possible, so that we can get as much out of it as possible. Our kitchen was a showroom model. This way you save another 10,000 euros.”
After renovating their home, Karim and Ricky expect to live there for four to six years. They will have finished their studies during that period and hope to sell the house with excess value, so that they will both be stronger on the housing market. Both are flexible with regard to the future, Karim says. “The four to six years is a guideline. It may be that I want to live with my girlfriend in two to four years and move sooner. Fortunately, mortgage providers want to encourage home retention, so Ricky could possibly get a higher mortgage and continue living there.”
The friends have some advice for other friends who want to buy a house together. “Make sure you can trust each other and that you know how the other person works. Make good agreements and have them recorded by a notary, so that everything is properly recorded on paper. If you don’t have that open communication, living together is actually doomed to failure.”
Reading list