Housing minister Hugo de Jonge has published finalised and long-awaited legislation aimed at cutting red tape and speeding up the Dutch house building programme.

The draft law will give local, provincial and national government more powers to steer planning procedures and meet government targets of creating 981,000 new homes in the Netherlands by the end of 2030. 

“For too long we have thought that the market will bring supply and demand into balance,” De Jonge said. “But we realised that all the local decisions do not add up to what we need… this legislation will bring back our tradition of public housing.”

Location, location, location

One problem facing investors and developers at the moment is the lack of suitable locations to build the nearly one million homes needed. The new legislation requires all layers of government draw up zoning plans for a pre-determined number of properties, some of which will cater for specific groups such as students or seniors. 

Some two-thirds of these homes will be classed as affordable rental or owner-occupier properties and housing corporations, which own most of the Netherlands’ social housing, will also have a key role in this, the housing minister said.

Councils with relatively little social housing will have to ensure at least 30% of the new homes within their boundaries fall under rent controls. Those with a lot of social housing will have a target of 40% affordable rentals (currently up to around €1,100 a month) or owner occupier (up to €390,000) for new developments. 

The legislation also tackles red tape and simplifies and speeds up legal procedures and protests about developments. “You will still be able to protest… but at the moment the right to a view is considered more important than the right to a home,” De Jonge told the AD newspaper. “And that is absurd.” 

Village homes

There will be a specific emphasis on small locations on the edge of towns and villages which, De Jonge said, will ensure the country’s rural areas remain attractive places to live. In particular, projects involving fewer than 50 units will be less complex to get off the ground. 

People will also have to get used to living in smaller homes, De Jonge said. “Some homes will be smaller but houses in our busy little country are, on average, bigger than those in Germany and France. And we have an increasing number of single person households, when we primarily build family homes in the past.”

De Jonge hopes the legislation can pass quickly through both houses of parliament and come into force on July 1. 

Holland Metropole partners are among the 12 real estate sector groups which have called on the government to take urgent action to tackle the country’s “huge housing shortage”.

Developers, investors, local authorities, home owners, and tenants’ organisations have signed up to a new agreement to accelerate plans to build at least 100,000 new homes a year. Housing has become unaffordable or unattainable for an increasing number of people, the organisations argue.

In particular, there is a shortage of affordable homes for people starting on the housing ladder, seniors and people in need of care. This, they say, is partly due to increased construction costs, interest rates and government policies. But at the same time, many plans for new residential developments fail to get off the ground.

“We need to combine the forces of the private sector, public housing bodies and governments,” says Martin van Rijn, chairman of housing corporation umbrella group Aedes. “We should stop waiting for each other and start working at the same time, and get locals involved at an early stage.” 

In particular, the alliance is calling on the government to reduce the options for objecting to new developments, strengthen the capacity of the administrative court system and give more weight to the interests of house hunters in planning applications. Caretaker housing minister Hugo de Jonge said last year he planned to slash red tape and limit the right to appeal. 

In addition, ensuring that one third of the 100,000 new homes each year are rent-controlled and a further third are affordable will require financial backing from the government – of between €3 billion and €5 billion a year, the alliance says.

“The money is needed to build new infrastructure and for investments creating green spaces and for climate-adaptive measures,” says Tobias Verhoeven, director of developer Synchroon, and Holland Metropole member. “Without practical and financial support in the short, medium and long term, it will not be possible to realise the required numbers of homes of the desired quality.”

The groups involved have already agreed to standardize the requirements for new buildings and to promote prefabrication and called on the government to standardise its requirements for new and affordable housing at a national level.

Last November, the government announced it had set aside €300 million to help pay for the development of 31,000 homes, 80% of which are classed as affordable.

There is enough space to build hundreds of thousands of new homes in post-WWII parts of Dutch towns and cities, according to research by a Dutch architects’ office on behalf of the country’s housing corporations. 

The researchers said they had identified locations for 26,000 new homes in a quick scan of Amsterdam, The Hague, Almere and 10 other towns, and that building work could be carried out in tandem with an upgrade of residential areas that were built at least 40 years ago. The research focused on housing estates built between 1950 and 1980. 

“It is daft to build a neighbourhood and then do nothing more with it,” KAW board member Mathieu Kastelijn told the AD newspaper. “You have to make changes from time to time, to make sure places remain pleasant locations to live.” 

Reduce parking

Several factors still limit the number of homes that can be built to boost the density of existing residential areas. For example, rules on how many parking spaces are needed could be changed and public transport improved, the architects point out. “If locals are less dependent on their cars, you need less room for parking and that frees up room for new homes,” the KAW report said. 

Housing minister Hugo de Jonge suggested earlier that adding new floors to existing buildings and making it easier to split large homes into smaller units, would be ways of boosting the number of homes within the available space. 

A combination of adapting existing buildings, using up left over space, demolition and new construction, and expanding residential areas slightly would allow housing corporations to boost the number of rental homes in post-WWII locations by 25%, the KAW report concludes.  

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Housing minister Hugo de Jonge has made a major concession to developers who are concerned his plans to extend rent controls to cover more residential property would hurt investments, by allowing them to add a 10% supplement to the rent for new build. 

The 10% top-up, aimed at encouraging developers and investors to build more new homes, was originally 5% and would have been restricted to 10 years. De Jonge has now changed his position, doubling the supplement and removing the time limit, after developers said the new rules would seriously impair their ability to invest in the pipeline. 

The supplement will cover all new build rental property on which work is started in the next two years. 

Concerns

Institutional investors organisation IVBN and developers association NEPROM said in a joint reaction to the revised plans that more needs to be done to make sure construction does not slow further. In particular, they say, the supplement should apply to property built after 2025, and they want the transfer tax on the sale of real estate to be cut from 10.4% to 6%.

“Institutional investors need to be able to count on having a trustworthy and attractive investment climate to be able to continue to invest in mid-market rentals,” said IVBN director Judith Norbart-ten Hoor. 

“Over the past five years, institutional investors have added some 9,000 rental units to the market, or some 15% of the total new build in the Netherlands. And we want to keep doing that. Ultimately, people looking for a home will benefit most from that.” 

Rent controls

Developers also remain concerned about the minister’s plans to increase the limit for rent controls in the Netherlands to property worth up to €1,100 a month in the Dutch “points” system, a way of calculating rents based on a score for size, value, quality and outside space. 

However, the point system itself is also being overhauled to give more weight to properties that are highly energy efficient, have gardens or balconies, and high-quality kitchens and bathrooms – which will also benefit newly build property, De Jonge said.  

Landlords had lobbied hard against the introduction of the new rules, arguing that they would lead to a wave of sales as it becomes less profitable for landlords to rent out property. 

Nevertheless, at the beginning of February, the Dutch land registry office Kadaster said that the number of rental properties in the Netherlands increased last year. In 2023, investors owned 9.4% of the country’s housing stock, compared with 9% in 2022 and 8.6% in 2021, the Kadaster figures show. The increase is largely down to investment in newly-built properties by large real estate investors.  

New homes
Developers completed some 73,000 new homes in the Netherlands last year, well below the government’s target of 100,000 and fewer than in 2022, according to national statistics agency CBS.

But this year the total number of completions will fall still further because fewer permits were handed out in 2021, the CBS said. It takes an average of two years from permit to completion.

According to research carried out on behalf of the home affairs ministry, plans have been drawn up to build 1,075,000 new homes in the Netherlands between 2022 and 2030 – in line with government targets.

MPs decided on Thursday to press ahead with the legislation, pending the formation of a new government.