"Worrisome" decrease in student housing supply as rents increase 10%
The availability of affordable student housing is a growing problem in the Netherlands. The average rental price for rooms across the Netherlands increased by 10 percent between 2020 and 2022, and the available supply showed a “worrisome” decrease, rental site Kamernet said in its Rental Report 2022.
With the return of in-person education after the pandemic, demand for student housing quickly skyrocketed back to pre-coronavirus levels, but the supply is lower than ever. “Now that supply is decreasing, we see that both Dutch and international students are getting into trouble,” Kamernet said.
At the same time, rents are rising faster than inflation. Throughout the Netherlands, the average rental price of a room increased by 10 percent. A studio became 12 percent more expensive, and apartments 5 percent. Several cities saw rent increases above the national average, including Amsterdam (+17.9%), Haarlem (+21.8%), Tilburg (+23.4%), and The Hague (+17.1%). “
“Students and young professionals are increasingly putting their dreams aside because there is no accommodation available or affordable in the cities where they want to study, do an internship, or work,” Kamernet said. “Especially in the big cities, demand exceeds the available supply many times, and prices have risen to unprecedented heights.”
Private landlords still offer most of the available rentals on Kamernet, though their proportion dropped from 49.7 percent in 2020 to 47 percent last year. The share of tenants looking for a roommate, on the other hand, increased from 26.2 percent to 34.5 percent in that time. According to Kamernet, this shows that there is simply not enough housing available for students and young professionals, and the increasing unaffordability is forcing more and more people to live together.
Kamernet expects the situation to get worse as the national and local governments take measures to discourage buy-to-let and house-sharing. The national government wants to regulate the mid-segment rental market, for example, and is imposing higher taxes on private housing providers. And municipalities are implementing purchase protection to discourage buy-to-let and keep homes affordable for first-time buyers.“However, these plans have the undesirable consequence that the business case of many landlords and property investors is considerably less - or no longer - profitable.”
“Taking into account the national and local measures, we expect that the supply on the rental market will continue declining to historic levels while the demand will only increase,” Kamernet said. “This will probably mean that rents in (university) cities will continue to rise.”