The Dutch government has decided to protect private housing tenants. From 2023, rules will come into effect that will not allow landlords to arbitrarily increase rents and justify this decision with a general increase in prices in the country. The current inflation rate in the Netherlands is so high that the government fears that tenants will not be able to pay rent or will not be able to make ends meet on other necessary expenses. This was announced by the Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning Hugo de Jonge (Hugo de Jonge).
The Government is proposing to Parliament to amend the Rent Increase Limit Law. According to the government project, changes in the amount of rent should depend on changes in wages, and not on general inflation in the country. Such a system is expected to better protect tenants. The current version of the law is not designed for a period of extremely high inflation, and in fact the pace of overall price growth in September 2022 was a record. The last time such inflation was observed during the Second World War.
Under the new rules, the maximum rent increase is wage growth plus 1%. Currently, inflation is used instead of wage growth. In 2022, inflation was 2,3%, respectively, landlords could increase the rent by 3,3%. From 2023, landlords will have to focus on wage growth. What this indicator will be will be announced in December 2022 by the Central Bureau of Statistics (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) of the Netherlands.
Rent growth restrictions apply to housing where the rent does not exceed 763 euros per month. The government reports that there are about 648.000 such dwellings in the Netherlands. It is assumed that government measures to control the growth of rents will help the Dutch to more easily survive a difficult period in the country's economy.
The Dutch government has long struggled with a housing crisis. Periodically, new programs are introduced to resolve it - for example, it is planned to make housing in municipalities more accessible to permanent residents of these territories. Learn more about it from our Articles.
Publication Date: 17.10.2022
