The old market vendor’s garage on the corner has been demolished, and there is now a new building full of expensive studios, piled three high, built as cheaply as possible by Poland. Charlotte Marell was one of the first new residents. A cool appearance with her earpiece, her self-confidence and her black BMW X5 – one of those SUVs in which heads of state are driven around.
My neighborhood in Utrecht was built in the 1920s. Small terraced houses for the humble middle class, originally. The old Utrecht painter who recently worked on our window frames lived a block away as a child, with parents and nine brothers and sisters, they shared their beds. Now a divorced co-parent lives there.
When we bought our first house here twenty-three years ago, you had to offer a lot within a day, as the housing market was already booming. That was scary, but not nearly as bad as today’s market. Nowadays almost no one wants or can leave. Half the street has built an extra floor, the first expats arrived.
And Charlotte Marell, who turns out to be a pioneering real estate investor. She is only 22 years old and her company PROPRT Homes already owns 31 homes. Quote described Charlotte as a fresh alternative to the bad slum landlord.
She got the idea when she rented this apartment, she says at her home, while making tea. Charlotte and her friend pay the blood curdling amount of almost 2,000 euros per month for these 60 rather dark square meters and a courtyard.
They will leave in a year for an owner-occupied home. For other starters, it had to be smarter, thought Charlotte. So she looked for financiers to buy her homes. For example, Charlotte can outbid without funding, the way investors beat starters in this market. The difference: Charlotte then rents the purchased home to starters who are allowed to buy the home from her company after three years. The rent they pay until that time is fully deducted from the purchase price. The purchase amount in three years for which they are now signing is higher than the price that Charlotte is now paying in connection with the expected increase in value. ‘That’s where the profit lies for us.’
Charlotte tells how her father, a tax specialist, financed her start-up with two retired friends. How the purchase financiers are then solely her responsibility. All this with a hockey accent – as a baby of eight months she and her sister from Haiti were adopted by a couple from Bilthoven, a rich and white village.
How was that? She has been ‘very lucky to have very sweet, caring parents’ and therefore does not want to ‘complain’, but then tells reluctantly about the many times that she was stopped by the police. Her mother wanted to make a business of it. “But this happens to a lot of black people, I would say, and they have it much harder than me.”
Charlotte was put aside in her first second-hand Golf (‘a burglar’s car, they thought’), in her first Mercedes (‘too expensive’) and of course in her black BMW, which is now equipped with cameras. ‘I’m recording everything now’, she says curtly. A car like a fortress.
Charlotte played hockey and went to De Werkplaats, the school of princesses Beatrix, Irene and Margriet. Then a training in real estate and brokerage. She wants to become a millionaire (“I’m a copycat of my father”), but in a way “that’s good for others too.”
Her first company was called De VastgoedPromotor, she made nice pictures of houses for real estate agents. A few years later, she sold it, set aside the profits for a house of her own, and bought three bitcoins for fun.
She was soon able to buy her BMW with the bitcoins, in which I drive to Amsterdam with Charlotte, to a three-room apartment on the third floor in Geuzenveld-Slotermeer. The asking price was 340,000 euros, Charlotte outbid 390,000 without reservation of financing. The sale price for its tenants is EUR 450,000 over three years. Just one last inspection, then we drive on to a notary in South, where Charlotte signs her umpteenth purchase contract with her financier in a relaxed manner.
Yes, it helps maintain investor dominance. But 3,700 young buyers are on a waiting list for Charlotte Marell, who is pushing starters into the market by broadening its scope. She learned that sometimes you have to.