Professor of housing market on rent freeze: 'Disastrous consequences for new construction'
The decision of the cabinet and the coalition parties to freeze social rents for two years will have disastrous consequences for the housing market. Not only will the construction of new social housing collapse, but the construction of owner-occupied homes will also be hit hard. This is what professor of Housing Market Peter Boelhouwer says in the RTL Z Huizenindex.
"If nothing is done about this, it will be a big chaos," says Boelhouwer. "A huge industrial accident," he calls the decision-making around the spring memorandum.
180,000 fewer new homesThe cabinet and coalition parties decided in the difficult negotiations about adjusting the budget to freeze social rents for the next two years. This was conceived as a way to support people with a small wallet, but according to Boelhouwer it is a disaster for housing construction.
Because corporations are not allowed to increase their rents in line with inflation, they are already missing out on 1.2 billion euros in rental income over the next two years. Because this will continue to have an effect in the years after that, corporations will be able to invest almost 49 billion euros less in new construction over the next ten years. This will save an estimated 180,000 new social housing units, while hundreds of thousands of new homes need to be added to solve the housing shortage.
DramaticAnd it doesn't stop there, says Boelhouwer, because large construction projects must consist of at least 30 percent social housing. If those social housing units cannot be built, 'market housing' cannot be built either.
"This is dramatic. This is very bad. There is real panic in the tent," says Boelhouwer. The cabinet will have to come up with compensation for the housing corporations on Budget Day, in order to avert a housing construction infarction. According to the professor, this will require approximately one billion euros.
Affordable Rent ActWhat is particularly painful is that the previous government had already implemented measures that were counterproductive. The affordable rent law has restricted the prices of private rental properties in the middle segment. The result of this, however, is not so much that rental properties are becoming cheaper, but that owners are actually selling the properties.
Partly because of this, the prices of sold apartments have dropped a bit, especially in the big cities. But it mainly ensures that people who are looking for an affordable rental home in the middle segment, as a first step on the housing market, no longer have a chance. "That is serious for the functioning of the housing market."
RTL Nieuws
