While the crisis on the housing market continues to deepen, Minister Hugo de Jonge of Housing and Spatial Planning is making frantic efforts to stay ahead of the problems. ‘Hardly a week goes by in which we get a plan to give an impulse to the building assignments for the Netherlands,’ says political reporter Leendert Beekman.
De Jonge expects a dip in housing construction next year, mainly due to migration, the demand for housing is growing faster than expected. 2024 therefore seems to be a disaster year for housing, because where more than ninety thousand homes were built last year, a drop to fifty percent is expected for next year.
Also listen | Studio Den Haag – The crisis on the housing market is getting worse
According to Beekman, De Jong finds it difficult to get the housing crisis under control, ‘because as a ministry you don’t build houses.’ But he has succeeded in the goal of taking back control of public housing. “He really put his stamp on it, but he has the wind against it,” says Beekman. ‘Because of the high interest rates, he cannot get a grip on the market.’
“He really put his stamp on it, but he has the wind against”
Everyone in political The Hague understands that a perfect storm is raging on the housing market, thinks Beekman. According to Sandra Beckerman of the SP, the building of homes should continue, with the focus on the cooperatives. As far as VVD MP Peter de Groot is concerned, there are two issues. ‘Good locations where you can build affordably and where construction will eventually take place.’
Permits
According to housing market professor Peter Boelhouwer, however, there is more to the problem than a lack of cheap building land. ‘You can see that the building permits have been sinking for six quarters. That means that you cannot build those homes in 2024, because the permits will not be issued.’ Partly for this reason, Boelhouwer thinks that the housing market can only be revived in 2025 or 2026. “Earlier is really impossible.”
The decrease in the number of building permits issued has already started before interest rates start to rise, says Boelhouwer. ‘And now we see that construction costs have also risen, interest rates have risen. You can blame the government for that.’
“You can blame the government for this”
The cabinet wants to regulate the rental sector and, on the other hand, also build affordably, ‘but that doesn’t help at all’, he thinks. ‘You will have to make money available for that.’ As far as Boelhouwer is concerned, cooperatives do not hold the key either, as SP Member of Parliament Beckerman suggests. ‘They don’t have the resources for that.’
Second homes
There is nothing to do but pull out the wallet, he thinks. “We have always done that in the past. It’s either one or the other.’ Temporary homes, adapting existing homes can bring relief. ‘That can be done faster. We have a whole stock of second homes that are empty and could be recovered and you can start using holiday parks. But that goes much further than the cabinet is doing now.’
