Dynamics in the Dutch private rented sector: How will landlords act?

While governments have been promoting private renting in recent decades to increase housing supply, they have not necessarily facilitated this. The Netherlands is a case in point, as rent price control has been reduced in this century with the aim to give more leeway to private rental investment. Private renting achieved a turn-around in market share from 10 per cent of dwellings in 2009 to more than 13 per cent in 2023. Most of this growth can be attributed to the rental segment where rents were not controlled: it increased to about 50% of rental dwellings in 2021. Recently increasing housing shortages followed by societal unrest and elections caused the Dutch government to formulate new plans. Not only was the building of 1 million housing units programmed and stimulated, also plans to (temporarily) re-control rents of a large part of the de-controlled rental segment were formulated. Tax measures reducing the attractiveness of investment in private renting have been taken recently as well because of diverse reasons (protecting tenants; court decision on taxing wealth). To study these effects on private renting investments, this study aims to analyze the effects of these changes on the investment behavior of landlords in the Netherlands, in a context of rising inflation. The two studies in this contribution show that new supply will most likely lose out.