Further rent hikes in the Netherlands likely to go ahead in July

Landlords in the Netherlands will likely be allowed to increase rental prices from July as planned, despite several coalition parties calling for lower rents. While the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) has advocated for reducing the cost of renting a home, they are not prepared to arrange for this soon enough.

Dutch tenants likely to see higher rents from July

In a parliamentary debate on Wednesday, it became clear that though the PVV are all for lowering rents, they are not willing to initiate measures to actually do this, reported NOS. PVV member Jeremy Mooiman argued that rent reductions should be arranged in the upcoming negotiations for the Spring Memorandum - an update to the government’s budget. "We are going to fight for a rent reduction there," he said.

This earned some flak from opposition parties such as GroenLinks-PvdA, SP and Denk, which argue that this will be too late. According to them, negotiations could last until May, which means it would no longer be possible to elicit change in time to prevent the rent increase planned for July 1. 

“The tenants can’t wait. Come on, join in,” GroenLinks-PvdA MP Habtamu de Hoop tried to persuade the PVV, emphasising that the debate is the last chance to prevent the rent increase. However, pleas fell on deaf ears as Mooiman disagreed, stating that measures “that are positive for tenants”, such as a higher rent allowance, have already been implemented.

Coalition parties against rent reduction

During PVV’s campaign, the right-wing party promised a rent reduction of 20 percent. "You are pulling the wool over the tenants' eyes," said SP member Beckerman at the time. Instead of lower rents, last year tenants saw the highest rent increase in over 30 years.

Now, as rents are due to see a further sharp increase of up to 7,7 percent, PVV leader Geert Wilders continues to state on social media platform X that lower rents are part of his top three priorities in the financial negotiations for the Spring Memorandum. 

However, this won’t be an easy feat as PVV will need to convince coalition parties such as VVD and BBB to go along with a rent reduction that they find irresponsible. The parties believe that lowering rents will leave landlords with less money to build new housing. PVV member Mooiman still thinks both are possible and is continuing with plans to build thousands of new homes each year. "But it is also important that we do something about the direct affordability of rental homes."