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News from our ‘Home Search’ collaboration partner EMG

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As of July 1st, the Dutch government introduced the Affordable Rent Act. This law has removed the option for temporary contracts, where tenants could rent for two years and cancel with one month’s notice from the start.

Now, only indefinite leases with a minimum term of 12 months are available. The tenant cannot cancel the lease during the first year or rent a place for a shorter term than a year. There is a small exception in rare situations, which we will consider if that would be a solution for a particular request.

The law also restricts owners from asking the rental price they wish. All properties are measured via a point system, requiring properties to score at least 186 points to be rented on the free market, and the government limits the height of the rental prices for all below these 186 points. The properties that are within the budget for most of your internationals are especially affected by this (appreciated lease price roughly between €1,400 and €2,000): the government now forces owners to rent them out for considerably lower rentals. As a result, many owners are selling their properties, as letting them is no longer profitable. Therefore, apartments that used to cost between €1,400 and €2,000 are disappearing from the market, and those priced over €2,000 are becoming rarer and more expensive.

At this point, we are more than one month into the new law, and even realtors are unsure of the direction in which the market is turning. We expect it will take at least a few months until the rental market stabilizes to a new normal.

We continue to inform all internationals and manage their expectations on the current housing market and home search process. More important than ever, one must be flexible when looking for a permanent rental.

Our advice is:

Be flexible on:

• Location
• Furnishing
• Budget, and look into
• Sharing a property, so that the budget can be increased to reach properties in the higher segment.

The number of properties that can be presented will be considerably lower than before, and we hope your new colleagues can make a decision without seeing many comparisons.

We continue to put all our efforts into making every home search a successful one. When we set the right expectations from the start, we can usually still make sure to find a nice, good, and safe property within the first few weeks after arrival.

Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or if you like to discuss this topic further. Of course, we are also happy to hear from you for any other questions you might have.