See more of Dutch Brief in your Google search results
People in the Netherlands who earn too much for social housing but cannot afford to buy a home are finding it harder to rent. New data shows the private rental sector is shrinking for the second year in a row, and the decline is speeding up.
The numbers
Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports that the number of homes rented out in the private sector dropped by about 22,000 last year. At the start of 2026, there were around 1.16 million left, a 1.9 percent decrease. This is the second year in a row the sector has shrunk, after a previous drop of about 3,000 homes, following years of growth.
Looking closer, there has been a bigger change in who owns rental homes. Private individual landlords (particulieren) reduced their holdings the most, selling 37,000 homes and bringing their total down to 492,000, a 7 percent drop. Companies (with a bv or nv structure) sold about 14,000 homes. On the other hand, “other” owners like foundations and associations added around 29,000 homes, but CBS notes that much of this is due to landlords changing their legal structure, not new rentals.
Why landlords are selling
The main reason for the shrinking sector is that private landlords are selling their properties, mostly to people who want to live in them. In 2024 and 2025 combined, a net total of 57,000 homes moved from private landlords to the owner-occupied sector.
This trend is mostly due to government actions that have made renting out homes less profitable. Five years ago, the cabinet increased the transfer tax (overdrachtsbelasting) for buyers who do not live in the property, which affected buy-to-let investors. In 2024, a rent cap for mid-market homes (the huurprijsregulering) was also introduced. For many smaller investors, renting no longer made financial sense, so they sold their properties, especially since house prices stayed high.
SPONSORED
You’re overpaying your accountant. And they still don’t call you back.
Neno gives you a dedicated bookkeeper, automated admin, real-time financial insights and a free business bank account. Everything your business needs, in one place.
No chasing. No surprises. No unnecessary costs.
Cheaper homes are vanishing
For people looking for a home, the hardest part is not just that there are fewer rentals, but that the cheaper ones are disappearing. The rental platform Pararius says that affordable rental homes are becoming less available. Before the 2024 rent cap, most private-sector rentals were just above the social-housing threshold (the liberalisation limit). Now, most new rentals cost 1,500 euros a month or more. The homes being sold are usually the more affordable ones, and those that move to the owner-occupied sector had a higher average property (WOZ) value. This means the remaining rental homes are, on average, more expensive.
There is also a geographic trend: private landlords sold the most rentals in Utrecht and Noord-Holland, which are already high-demand areas with the most rental pressure.
Policy dilemma
These findings highlight a tough policy dilemma. The government wanted to protect tenants from high rents and help first-time buyers, and many sold homes did go to owner-occupiers, which is a positive. But these same policies have reduced the number of rentals and made the remaining ones more expensive, especially for middle-income renters: the group the mid-market rent cap was supposed to help. In a country already facing a severe housing shortage and now the EU’s second most densely populated, this shows how difficult it is to fix the middle of the housing market.