Assigning owner-occupied homes unholy idea

In all the frenzy surrounding rising energy costs, skyrocketing inflation and rising mortgage rates, it may have escaped many people’s attention that Housing Minister De Jonge has launched yet another regulatory idea for the housing market. Or actually it is more than an idea: he has already sent a proposal to the House of Representatives. According to this plan, municipalities will soon be allowed to allocate 50% of homes for sale up to the NHG limit (currently €355,000) to certain target groups. These include, for example, “own residents,” but also people with crucial professions, such as teachers and nurses. This would apply not only to new construction, but also to existing homes.

Fortunately, the umpteenth plan to move to redistribution of scarcity (how many more homes are sold cheaper than those three and a half tons) has already been strongly criticized from many quarters. Government party VVD already turned against it, but the Home Owners Association also has “major doubts. Because it creates substantial legal inequality between homeowners. The owner of a house that is sold under the National Mortgage Guarantee limit, thus runs the risk of no longer being free to decide to whom the house is sold. And how will the municipality decide which property under that limit should be sold to a resident/teacher/nurse and which should not? Leaving aside the question of whether, for example, an ASML employee from abroad is not also very crucial for all municipalities in our region.

But perhaps even more important is that all energy goes back into regulation, redistribution, control, etc. And not in the very necessary efforts to enable and encourage the construction of many new and affordable housing units. Another army of officials to make and control regulations. While all hands should be on deck to enable new construction plans and money is needed to keep land prices low and finance needed infrastructure. I fear that there are too many people working in our ministries who surely mean well, but who always tend to think in terms of laws and regulations and control systems. Whereas now we need people who can think outside the rules, who want to make the impossible possible, who want to incentivize and can come up with unorthodox ideas to reduce costs. Instead of coming up with this bogus idea.