Should private landlords be responsible for social housing in the Amsterdam canal belt or the city center of Utrecht?
Real estate investor Toon Mans doesn’t think so. With his claim foundation Fair Huur voor Landlords, Mans summoned the Dutch state last week. He wants to challenge the regulations for residential rental. The rule that Mans and his foundation are particularly fighting against is shifting the calculation limit with the Woz value of homes. Since May 1 last year, this value may only count for 33 percent in determining the number of points: the so-called WOZ cap. As a result, rental properties are less likely to fall into the private sector, but remain social rentals – with a rental price limit for the landlord.
Residential investors lobbied in vain against the introduction of this rule, and see it as yet another measure that affects them. Outgoing Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Housing, CDA) is working on a package of new rules that will further regulate renting. There will also be tax rules that make renting more unattractive.
The aim of the Woz rule is to create more social housing in neighborhoods where almost only private sector rental housing can be found. When introduced, some rental properties from the private sector fell back into the social rental sector, causing landlords to see their returns decline.
The Fair Rent for Landlords foundation was founded in 2010 under a different board with the aim of bringing a European case – also about property rights. The case was won, and the foundation continued on the pilot light. Four years ago, Mans said he thought he would become chairman of a ‘sleeping club’, but is now summoning the Dutch state. The foundation has opened a donation form, of which the chairman himself donated almost half of 10,000 euros.
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Who is actually behind this mass claim?
“There are about four hundred sympathizers who support our foundation. We represent private individuals with one or a few properties up to a management office with 2,500 homes. One of the people I represent is a woman in her seventies. She rents out a few homes in Amsterdam as a pension provision, and suddenly sees her pension disappear due to this arrangement. I personally notice relatively little of the rule change, but I am in it for reasons of principle and without a profit motive. This rule is ridiculous.”
What do you think is the problem?
“We believe the WOZ cap is an infringement of property rights. For years, housing associations have sold social housing in expensive places and made a lot of money from it. Now those homes are no longer there, and politicians want to get them back by pushing the homes of private landlords below the social rental limit. I don’t think that’s appropriate. I would say: provide more subsidies to housing associations and let them buy back those homes so that they can rent them out socially.”
So from the private landlords?
“For example. Look, I understand very well that there is a desire for more social housing in certain neighborhoods. But in a social country like the Netherlands, we all fulfill it together. So then you don’t ask those few private landlords to make it possible for someone who can’t actually afford it to live in an expensive location. You have to do that as a society.”
There will be people who say: what are those home investors whining about? Haven’t they had some pretty good returns in recent years?
“A wave of negative images has come over us in recent years. You hear all kinds of things about private landlords being the bogeymen in the housing market, who steal homes and rent them out for insane rents. We don’t want to win a popularity award, we are there to get our rights.”
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You choose strong words. Isn’t that adding fuel to the fire if public opinion is already against you?
“We are not going to win this case in the press, but hopefully in court. Lady Justice is impartial.”
Isn’t that perception also due to the fact that real estate prices have risen sharply in recent years?
“They certainly are, and that is very nice for those who bought real estate in 2015. I have been in it since 1996, and when prices plummeted by 40 percent between 2008 and 2014, no one was there for me. Can things go well for once?”
There is no divine right to a certain return, is there? Isn’t there such a thing as entrepreneurial risk?
“Of course there is. But this affects a very small group of people. There is no price on which the government intervenes as much as with rent. Why should there be an intervention in the rental price of homes where there is apparently market forces that determine the price of that home? And what is the result: that the rental properties are no longer there – because private landlords can no longer rent them out and are putting them up for sale.”
In fact, things went so well that for years, buildings were bought up en masse in city centers and then rented out.
“This is being tackled with purchase protection by municipalities. We are not against that in principle. When it comes to expanding the social housing stock, we advocate a greater role for housing associations. They must buy back homes in popular neighborhoods and, because they cannot perform their task, be properly subsidized. As far as we are concerned, that is the most obvious route.”