Expat Chronicles: Buying + Selling a Home in The Netherlands
If selling a home can be long and arduous in America, the opposite is true in The Netherlands. Selling is easy, but buying a home here - that’s the hard part. When we arrived in 2019, we met a couple who had shopped for 2 years before successfully buying a home! They raised their eyebrows and wished us good luck when they heard that we needed to buy in about a month, due to our immigration process.
Here are all the juicy details about buying and selling a Dutch home. Our experiences here have certainly been different than home-ownership in South Carolina.
Buying a Home
Market Tempo
The Dutch market is HOT and just getting hotter. There is a home shortage that’s not going to be rectified anytime soon. Thus, you need to figure out exactly what you want and need. When the right house comes up, aim to make an offer within 12 hours of your visit. That’s because the average selling time for a house is just 24 hours!
This atmosphere is pretty brutal on buyers. When a new property is listed on the market, requests to see the property pour in - more than can or should be booked. In striking situations, realtors can even receive 80-150 requests to view! After a limited number of viewing appointments are made, all other enquires are turned away, even if the house has just been listed.
With so much competition, shoppers tend to talk about “winning” a house as opposed to buying one. Getting an appointment to view has to do with speed and luck. We’ve now bought two homes in The Netherlands (2019 and 2020). Each time we were the first to view the house, and each time we made an offer that very same day. That’s how we won (wink).
Realtor
But a realtor can help with that, right? Wrong. Dutch realtors (makelaars) aren’t the secret weapon they’re expected to be in the United States. A realtor can give you an email subscription to early notice of homes as they are listed, but that’s about it as far as a buying advantage. You’re going to have to check that email yourself, evaluate the new listings as soon as you possibly can and call to make appointments asap if you see something you like.
That’s right - you call the realtor who is representing the seller and make an appointment to view. Your realtor doesn’t need to go with you, as is required in the US. In fact, she probably doesn’t want to attend unless you are fairly sure that you’ll be making an offer. Our first realtor suggested that we only ask her to come along for a second viewing, i.e. when we are serious. This never worked out though, since by then the house would already be sold.
Forget being chauffeured around town in your realtor’s car, à la the states. You’ll go alone, and if you get to see more than one house in a day, that’s impressive.
What do you pay for this awesome service? Fortunately, not much. We paid €1000 for our purchasing realtor in 2019. As a new expat it was worthwhile to have their help understanding the process. For the purchase of our second home in 2020, we ended up buying without a realtor’s assistance.
Making an Offer
It’s interesting that in the United States, buyers must show a preapproval letter from a financier to their realtor prior to getting started. In The Netherlands, no one has asked us for any proof during the shopping process. In fact, you can even make an offer on a home, contingent on getting approved for your loan. If you don’t get approved, you don’t loose any money and the contract is cancelled. I think Dutch people don’t abuse this system and are generally well-informed of their buying power. It’s a funny difference though, coming from the USA.
How much should you offer? Probably more than the asking price. Over 50% of homes in the Netherlands are currently sold for more than the asking price. If the house is a new listing, there’s no way they’re going to take less than asking. Ok, but how much more? Every time I’ve counted on my realtor to advise the amount, we didn’t get the house. It think that’s in part because realtors don’t want to drive the market up by advising high offers.
When you find the right house in this market, you’re so eager to end the demanding shopping process that the offers can get crazy. Some homes are even sold auction-style, where all prospective buyers are present and bidding live against each other. More common is the single-offer system. Here you are only allowed to make one official offer without any feedback from the seller. The seller looks at everyone’s offer at a set date/time and makes a choice. It’s fair, but aggravating as a buyer. What if I offer just a little bit more? Is that all it would take to make the difference? One chance to offer = lots of stress.
True story - last summer we offered €40,000 more than the asking price on a property, and still they didn’t choose our offer. It was a single-offer situation, so we gave it our best shot. Why offer so high? They had seriously underpriced the house, probably in order to get lots of attention and many offers. It worked for them! But, not for us.
Selling a Home
Prep Not
It’s easy to prepare an average home for sell in the Netherlands. Probably some paint, but not much more. The bathroom at our first Dutch house needed some work. If we were to stay in that home, we wanted to completely redo the bathroom. I wondered if the realtor would be concerned. Instead, he said it was no problem, “The new owners can make it exactly the way they like.”
It seems to be commonplace to redo a bathroom and/or kitchen prior to moving into a home in The Netherlands. Buyers aren’t turned off by needed updates, so long as it is reflected in the price.
Realtor
Most people hire a selling realtor, who might charge 2% of the asking price or a flat fee. We paid a flat fee of €3000 for our realtor.
In this market, you might think that a house will pretty much sell itself. I think you’re right! We used a realtor because we don’t speak Dutch and were unfamiliar with the process. It is nice to have someone else host the appointments, but I think the biggest advantage to hiring a realtor is gaining advice with setting the asking price.
Accepting an Offer
If your house is priced right, you’ll probably be accepting an offer within a week of placing the property on the market. Sellers have a lot of leniency to choose a closing date (the date that the house changes ownership) that is advantageous to them. A seller has likely already purchased a new house; thus, she might opt for a long escrow period to avoid an interim move. One Dutch buyer we encountered wanted an escrow period of 7-8 months, for example. Yowzers! Maybe they had plans to renovate their next home and needed extra time for the renovations in addition to a more typical escrow period. Well, they had no trouble selling.
The loan approval contingency is common, and so is the home inspection contingency. In America the inspection information is often used to negotiate a lower price or completion of critical repairs prior to the sale. Not so in The Netherlands. It is not normal to make an offer with any requirements like new carpet, roof repair, etc. What you see is what you get. As a buyer, this makes the process of selling so much easier. You’re not hit with unpleasant financial surprises after already making deal.
When choosing between offers, sellers will obviously consider contingencies involved. It’s not unusual to see offers with no home inspection contingency - then the buyer accepts all unknown risks in hopes of wooing the seller.
And guess what? Both buyers and sellers tend to be present during the home inspection! I don’t think that’s done in the United States. Also, it seems common for the seller to allow the buyers to visit a few times during the escrow period, after the contingencies are wrapped up. Buyers want to show the house to their children or close friends and/or visit with a contractor for practical reasons. I’d never heard of this before, but it is a nice custom indeed.
Now you can see why our first Dutch house (which we did mange to buy after only 2 weeks of shopping!) was not necessarily a forever home. We had to get in quick and just check off the essentials.
Our second shopping experience took more than three months. It was actually one of the most stressful experiences of our marriage (more stressful overall than immigrating to The Netherlands!), because we really wanted to get it right this time. Three months was plenty long enough.
I’m so glad that we’re here now, in what truly feels like home.
