95€ temporarily until the defects are fixed. Then the 20qm room is worth a rent of 477€.
The Huurcommissie scored the appointment on a point scale, and determined the reasonable rental price should have been 476.85 euros per month. The tribunal then noted that the tenant was unable to lock their own bedroom. Additionally, the wood-framed kitchen skylight had a 10 millimeter crack in it, causing drafts, and the toilet tank in a shared bathroom was leaking.
The tribunal further lowered the rent to 95.37 euros until the damage is fixed, saying it could find no evidence the landlord actually tried to fix the problems. This can gradually increase as repairs are carried out to the maximum of just under 477 euros. The reduction was also backdated to September 1 from the ruling, which was filed at the end of December and published more recently. As a result, the landlord must repay the overpaid rent in the intervening months.
Good. Fuck that landlord.
Fuck all landlords
No. There are good landlords. They’re definitely small scale. Normal homeowners that are able to scale their efforts to a few rental units. There’s also a real need for renting rather than owning.
The real problems are all large scale landlords and also bad landlords (of all sizes) that overcharge, abuse tenants, forgo maintenance, etc.
Yeah my FIL, just recently sold a condo in FL. He’s had it since the 1980s and for the last 25 years it’s been rented by an elderly woman for basically the cost of condo fees, taxes and maintenance (though I think he lost money upgrading the sliding door after a hurricane). It was supposed to be where he retired to (15 years ago), but his wife had Alzheimer’s, so he ended up selling it when his tenant finally died, and sunk all the profit right back into his wife’s nursing home.
*that scam people
And he owes around 5k€ in back rent! That is proper justice for once.
Not much of a hit considering the landlord is giving back the money they shouldn’t have received in the first place.
Would be better if they had to give back money out of their own pocket in the form of a fine.
Still, €477 to live on Keizeersgracht, not to mention the backpay. I’m needing a poo just thinking about it.
Me: Mom, can we please have Huurcommissie?
Mom: No, we have Huurcommissie at home.
Huurcommissie at home: landlord fined for charging ‘too little’ in rent
Not trying to defend the decision, but as far as I know, the reasoning is that if you charge significantly less than you could, it might be because you have other undisclosed agreements with the tenants, like them doing some extra chores for you, repairing the flat or something else. This way, you could avoid a lot of taxes. The sentence also doesn’t seem to be a fine in the narrow sense, but rather a demand of additional taxes. If I’m not mistaken, it’s perfectly legal to charge very little for a flat, but you still have to pay taxes as if you would have rented it out for a regular price.
It’s weird to me that the taxes are based on how much your charge your tenants? Not on land value, or land use
Income tax is not a thing where you live?
That should be separate & regardless of rent (or no rent), but rent is income and should be treated as such.
If rent was taxed at 95% we would see much less inflation pressures & more homeowners.
We would see construction grinding to a halt and owners not bothering to rent out their flats anymore because it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
Ofc construction would continue just as it did for thousands of years - and because of the exact same reasons rents can get that high: people just need to live somewhere. Homes have intrinsic value and are necessary regardless of monetary value.
It’s not like the housing market didn’t exist before the value increase in the western world (so in the last 70 years).
There would however be less investments into homes, less financial incentive to build extra homes you don’t intend to use personally. So yes, fewer places to rent, more homeowners. And secondary market would function just as good, people move around all the time, needs change over ones life, etc - buying and selling would be easier. Prices would still vary a lot, but would reflect the majority (more democratic prices?).
people just need to live somewhere.
For people to build or buy their own homes they need to be able to afford them. They can’t, which is why they rent. If landlords don’t offer flats for rent anymore, people don’t magically have more money to buy or build.
Corporation and private investors build rental properties because they aim to profit from them, and if that isn’t the case anymore, their construction activity slows down and then stops. As can currently be seen e.g. in Germany.
The only way to effectively counter rising rents in cities is public, non profit construction and decentralization efforts (so people don’t all flock to the few places that are hip to live in).
Well, no, flat prices wound crash in that case & again be affordable. It’s not like project devs wouldn’t build stuff & sell flats, it’s just that the financing wouldn’t come from financial industry directly (but via retail mortgages). Also less inflationary pressure on building materials and labor.
And … saying that ppl can’t afford to buy so they rent is bs if the rent is higher that the mortgage would have been.
That’s why socialist countries have less homeless ppl (and more homeowners) and why in a free market you would want to have homeless people (otherwise you are not maximizing your yield/rent).
Homes […] are necessary regardless of monetary value.
You just showed why prices would go up if rent were taxed that way (and why the prices are so high at the moment). No one thinks a small flat is worth 1500€/month (or what have you), but they need a place to live near their job. So they’ll pay whatever it costs. Same with deregulated health care, like in the US.
Also, for what it’s worth. Even without the construction costs and without any profit margin landlords must pay for home repairs. I don’t think 5% would even cover that
Taxes absolutely don’t effect market prices in such cases/markets. Because if your are saying that rent taxes would just fall on tenants (basically increasing rent) then landlords are stupid now because they could obviously charge more rent.
It’s like saying McDonald’s paying employees more would result in pricier burgers - it simply wouldn’t bcs McD is already charging the absolute max it can in given circumstances. It would however lower their profit margin. And still, anything resulting in real profit is still worth doing (that’s why we have McD franchises in Europe too). Or like saying giving a tax exemption to McD would lower the price or burgers - it wouldn’t, price is market determined and not in direct correlation with costs or taxes.
Where what your are saying is true is in markets with cost-based prices (ie minimal/competitive profit margins). In case of real estate that would mean the majority of rent wound go in repairs or upgrades. Which is not true for the last century, but RE yields are determined and tracked based on rent. So if I want to double my property’s value & have to double the rent. And since people need to live somewhere, they have to pay. If yields are not above market (like 10y local govies), money moves out of RE and into financial markets.
Or simply getting the “rest” of the rent in cash
Ah this is why you need you to pay your monthly minimum rent insurance.
NYC landlords renting out literal rat nests for $4000 reading this
Holy shit can I rent it
For €95 a month I would happily make some of my own little repairs and temporary fixes lol
But then the price goes up again :( It’s only €95 because of the problems in the room. When fixed it goes to about €470, which is still all right I guess for that location in Amsterdam.
You love to see it. The landlord in question is a notorious piece of shit here.
Is he? Who is it? Never heard of an infamous landlord in Amsterdam.
It’s Cees van Leeuwen. Someone went into a lot of detail about him in this reddit post:
And his bullshit has been covered in the news before:
God damn that was a depressing read.
Right? Dude is ridiculous.
Just came.
Based Netherlands.
I live in Bristol. A shithole like that would probably cost you £1050 PCM.
