Rental sell-off cointinues: First-time buyers benefiting, but tenants in trouble
Landlords are still selling off their rental properties. In the third quarter of 2025, investors sold 15,800 rental homes, over 37 percent more than a year earlier, according to new figures from the Kadaster, the Dutch Land Registry. At the same time, they only bought 6,000 homes. The sell-off of mostly cheaper rentals is benefiting first-time buyers, but the rental market is shrinking, the Kadaster said.
The rental sell-off started at the beginning of 2023, when the government started seriously working on rent regulations for mid-market rentals. “The number of sales continues to increase,” Matthieu Zuideman, a housing market expert at the Kadaster, told NU.nl. “Every quarter, more homes are sold than a year earlier.”
The former rentals tend to be cheaper than the owner-occupied homes on the market, partly because they typically involve smaller flats that would fall under the rent regulation in the Affordable Rent Act, and partly because former rentals usually need some work done. According to the Kadaster, buyers paid an average of €384,000 for a home bought from an investor in the third quarter, compared to an average of €511,000 for a home bought from another resident.
“So the homes are almost €130,000 cheaper,” Zuidema said. “There are two sides to this. The rental housing stock is shrinking, and that’s bad news for people who rely on it. On the other hand, they’re being bought up by people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them.”
Investors did buy nearly 6,000 homes in the third quarter of this year, 40 percent more than a year earlier. But 59 percent of these homes were bought from other investors, so it didn’t nearly compensate for the 15,800 rental homes sold. “This inventory is shrinking,” Zuidema told the newspaper. “There are about 300,000 of these rental properties, and that number is shrinking by about 7 to 8 percent each year.”
The sell-off started in the more expensive locations, like large cities, when the government introduced the Affordable Rent Act. Outside the large cities, where rents tend to be more affordable, the rent regulation did not have a massive impact, and landlords could still make some profit. But now, the sell-off is spreading to other areas.
“The changing tax rules mean that private owners of second homes are being taxed significantly,” Zuidema told the newspaper, referring to wealth thas regulations from the 2026 Tax Plan. “People are preparing for that. Even outside the major cities.”
