To buy a house full of squatters, you must be a bit crazy. Yet Sven Koedoot did it last summer. On the Molendijk in Standdaarbuiten, he bought a house with a shed for 400,000 euros, while there were about forty squatters in it. “It would have been much more expensive without the squatters. This is my dream house, this is my dream location,” says Koedoot. But after the purchase, the dull misery began.
Sven has had the key to the house since October 17, but the squatters only left two months later. What they left behind: a meter of junk in every room, mice and rats, pots full of piss and an enormous stench.
“I thought I could get them out easily.”
Koedoot had been looking for a house with a shed in the west of Brabant for two years. When he went to look at the house in July, the squatters were already inside. “This is the perfect place to live with my wife, for my horse and for my cars,” Koedoot begins. For four tons he could buy the house, the barn and the whole land around it, including the squatters. “Without squatters, the purchase price would be much higher. I thought it would be easy to get them out.”
That turned out differently. “Squatting has been banned since 2010. All the lawyers I spoke to said I would get them out.” Initially, Sven made agreements with the squatters. They would leave the site in early September. “But the tone got louder and louder, they didn’t leave. Only when it was officially my property could I go to court. I thought they were normal people with whom I could make arrangements, but that turned out not to be the case.” It cost Sven more time and money.
Just before Christmas, the brand new owner was finally able to start building his dream home. “The stench is already gone,” says Sven as he walks into the shed. Yet there is still a sickening smell throughout the building. “Had I known beforehand, I don’t know if I would have bought it. Financially I ran a considerable risk, more than I thought. I was able to estimate the cleaning up of the mess and the stripping of the premises in advance. But in recent months they have made a bigger mess and the costs are much higher.”
“Every day I have to change my bed because the mice and rats just walk through the bed.”
The squatters held dance parties on the property; parts of stolen copper and car keys from garage companies lie on the property. “What happened here? I can only guess,” says Sven. “There was a handbook for squatters. It literally describes all the legal steps to remain seated as long as possible.”
Sven does not have sleepless nights because of the squatters, the renovation or the higher costs. Of mice and rats. “I sleep in the attic of the barn, where there was the least mess and smell. Every day I have to change my bed because the mice and rats just walk over the bed.” Until the house is ready, Sven camps here, without his wife.
When it is finished? “That is a multi-year plan. I hope to be able to go in March, but that will be the summer. Disposing of the rubbish takes me one day a week and then I also have to renovate everything.”
