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Find your way home in the Netherlands with 20,000+ rental listings at your fingertips!
© 2025 Luntero. All rights reserved.
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Small Investors Sell Off Rental Homes, Shrinking Dutch Private Rental Supply
Small private landlords in the Netherlands are selling more homes than they buy, reducing mid-market rental availability and intensifying competition among tenants.
NL Rental News
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The Dutch private rental market is experiencing a notable shift: small investors and private landlords are offloading more homes than they're acquiring. According to recent figures from the land registry office Kadaster, this trend began in 2023 and accelerated in the first quarter of 2025. As a result, the mid-market rental supply has contracted significantly, leaving tenants scrambling for available homes in cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
Several factors have contributed to the uptick in property sales by small investors:
Expanded Rent Controls: New regulations have extended rent control boundaries, covering higher-priced and more homes than before. Landlords face caps on annual rent increases and stringent rules on initial asking rents.
Higher Taxes on Rental Income: Recent tax reforms have raised levies on rental profits, reducing net returns for private landlords. Many now find the after-tax yield less attractive compared to alternative investments.
Market Volatility: With rising interest rates and concerns over future market performance, investors are reassessing the risk profile of residential property as a stable income source.
As Kadaster reports, small private landlords sold substantially more homes in Q1 2025 than they bought, dropping their market share from 3.9% to 3.6%. Meanwhile, institutional investors continued to acquire new developments, offsetting some of the supply loss but not filling the gap in the mid-market segment.
Small investors often manage portfolios of one to ten rental units. Their decisions impact the private rental sector disproportionately because they typically own mid-market properties—those with monthly rents between €900 and €1,200. These homes are vital for middle-income tenants who do not qualify for social housing (provided by woningcorporaties, or housing associations) and cannot afford the highest-priced rentals.
By selling to owner-occupiers, these landlords help meet the demand for owner homes, but the trade-off reduces the pool of available mid-market rentals. The overall rental sector saw only a slight decline—investors still control around 9.2% of the Dutch housing market (approximately 764,700 homes)—but the composition shifted away from smaller holdings.
Data from rental platform Pararius highlights the severity of the squeeze in the mid-market sector:
Pararius director Jasper de Groot warns, “The non-rent-controlled sector has become unaffordable for many households, but they cannot get a foot in the door in the mid-market sector either.” Tenants who do not qualify for huurtoeslag (rental allowance) or social housing are now squeezed from both ends.
For tenants, the reduction in mid-range options has several implications:
Millennials and young families are particularly affected, as social housing queues remain long and very few are eligible for housing benefits without meeting strict income requirements.
While small landlords exit the market, institutional investors—such as pension funds and real estate trusts—are building new rental portfolios. These entities often focus on large-scale developments and purpose-built complexes that can offer amenities ranging from shared workspaces to fitness facilities.
However, their projects typically target higher rent brackets and are located in prime locations, leaving the gap in the mid-market largely unfilled. Critics argue that unless policymakers incentivise mid-market development or adjust regulations, the shortfall will persist.
Policymakers face a delicate balance:
The Dutch government is considering proposals to streamline planning procedures and to pilot mixed-tenure developments, where social, mid-market, and free-market rentals coexist in the same project.
The trend of small investors selling more rental homes than they buy is reshaping the Dutch private rental landscape. Mid-market supply has dropped sharply, driving competition and affordability challenges for tenants. While institutional investors and policy interventions may partially counteract this shift, meaningful support for mid-range rentals remains crucial.
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