It was all over the Dutch news this week: a starter needs an average of 91,073 euros of own money to buy a house. That’s a lot of money. And if that were a fixed point on the horizon, it would still be something you could work towards in years. But the problem is that it will be much more next year. You will never ‘catch up’ to the amount as a starter. Imagine that you could save 1000 euros per month, which is often too much for a single starter. Then it would take 7.5 years (!) before you have saved that much. And then the amount needed is already much higher due to inflation, the housing shortage and rising house prices. This point is illustrated by the past seven years: the money you needed in 2024 was three times as high as what you needed in 2017.
Tikkie campaign
The Tikkie campaign that I started three weeks ago as an alternative to the crowdfunding mortgage due to the excessively high (administrative) costs of the platforms certainly did not yield 91,073 euros, but 758 euros. And that is symbolic of course, I cannot buy a house with this, but it did warm my heart. Loved ones, business contacts and strangers alike who simply transferred me a euro or even more. A boost for my perseverance. There must be a way, my turn should come at some point after all my hard work?!
When I heard in 2017 how much I had to save at the time (a rough 30,000 euros), I thought ‘with hard work it’s possible’. And I saved, but I still had to grow in my career and therefore could not save that much at all. I also had a student debt that I still had to pay off at the time. I paid it off, slowly started to grow in salary as well as with my company and then the housing prices started to rise. Flash forward: now you have to bring 91,000 euros of your own money. In my region even more. And then I haven’t even mentioned the buyer’s costs, which quickly go up to another 15,000-20,000 euros. And in the meantime my rent continues to rise merrily and so does inflation. It’s like a leaky bucket with money leaking out everywhere and it will never get full enough to reach the necessary amount.
But of course I want to thank everyone who supported me through the Tikkie.
Yes, I always participate in the housing lottery
In the meantime I have also participated in lottery houses, a tip/question that I often get. I respond to just about everything in the broad region that is raffled and falls within my price category. And I have never come in 1st place in all those years. Once I had place 4, but then number 1 accepted the house immediately. I was afraid that would happen from the beginning because it was also a beautifully maintained house, a rarity in former rental properties.
The situation frustrates me even more because those lottery houses, so former rental houses, are also becoming increasingly expensive. Most of them now already have an appraised market value of 390,000-450,000 euros! Almost unbelievable when you see the average condition of those houses. And every month that it takes longer for me to get 1st place, I will pay more in the end. A house that recently came on the list and was also listed a year had already increased by 100.000k (!) in value. Shocking.
8 more weeks
In addition, I am now almost 35. Only 8 more weeks. That means that I will also have to pay transfer tax: another minimum of 6.000/7.000 euros that I will have to pay extra and that I can no longer outbid.
Honestly? I find it hard to accept. It feels like a failure to still not have this sorted out at the age of almost 35 and therefore not being able to buy a house within the defined ‘starter age’. I would almost like to say as a joke: maybe people like to bet on me when I will succeed?! :’)
