Exclusive complexes with million-euro villas increasingy common in Randstad

Towers filled with luxury homes and offering extras like private gyms, coffee bars, dry cleaning services, and a concierge for receiving packages are increasingly common in the Netherlands, and in the Randstad in particular. Paying over a million euros for an apartment in one of these complexes is no exception, and service fees commonly run into the hundreds of euros, AD reports.

The newspaper visited the open day for The Mayor residential complex in Amstelveen and witnessed a young family buy a 174-square meter villa with a south-facing yard for 1.5 million euros. “There were so many candidates for this house,” Onno van Denzen of project developer De Nijs told AD. “Whoever signed first got it.”

The Mayor is located along the A9, where KPMG’s headquarters stood until 2008. After years of vacancy, the building was converted into this complex with 315 luxury homes selling for between 1.5 and 2.25 million euros. Most were sold before the building was completed.

The Amsterdam region has several other newly built complexes, like The Mayor, catering to people with more borrowing capacity than the average Netherlands resident. These include Elements and De Oosterlanden, the apartments of which are now for sale. Most cost more than a million euros, and none are cheaper than 600,000 euros. Rotterdam has Bay House on the Rijnhaven, with apartments between 1.09 and 2.54 million euros.

“There are several places in the Netherlands where you can do this kind of thing on such a scale,” Dick Sniekers of Lunshof Makelaars told AD. “Here in the Amsterdam region, you know that the average income is a lot higher than elsewhere in the country. It is possible here. And it is also possible around other large cities. But in Alkmaar, for example, you shouldn’t try something like this on this scale.”

Meanwhile, the housing market is still inaccessible for the majority of Netherlands residents. After a short period of price declines, home prices started increasing again in June last year and have now topped the 2022 records. In June, an average home cost 441,000 euros, almost 10 percent more than a year earlier. Research agency Calcasa recently calculated that 197,000 homes in the Netherlands have a market value of more than 1 million euros, compared to 14,000 ten years ago.

“How long can this continue?” realtor Sniekers asked AD. “We see that there are too many people for too few homes. The government regulates, but does not produce. There simply needs to be more construction.”

ABN Amro also recently asked the Schoof I Cabinet to expand on its housing market plans. The PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB coalition agreement states that the new government plans to maintain the previous one’s goal of building 100,000 homes per year, but it doesn’t say how the government plans to achieve this.