Amsterdammers find themselves at the nadir of a Europe-wide housing shortage. But some bold initiatives offer hope
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In a pan-European housing crisis, the Netherlands’ is next level. According to independent analysis, the average Dutch home now costs €452,000 – more than 10 times the modal, or most common, Dutch salary of €44,000.
That means you need a salary of more than twice that to buy one. Nationwide, house prices have doubled in the past decade; in more sought-after neighbourhoods they have surged 130%. A new-build home costs 16 times an average salary.
The rental market is equally dysfunctional. Rents in the private sector – about 15% of the country’s total housing stock – have soared. A single room in a shared house in Amsterdam is €950 a month; a one-bed flat €1,500 or more; a three-bedder €3,500.
Why can’t taller apartment buildings be built in the city to fulfill the housing shortage?
its built on sediment, the bedrock is too deep to use economically.
Amsterdam is at the wettest end of a giant floodplane, so going up is hard. That said, moderately tall building ARE being made on newly made land…
Most European cities try to keep their historic cores intact, with Amsterdam being no exception. Amsterdam has nodes around the city that can facilitate denser construction, but those nodes are probably not enough and don’t give residents the historic character of living in the center city.
Shhh, the NIMBYs might hear you