ZERP Tenancy Law Project
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 290694. TENLAW: Tenancy Law and Housing Policy in Multi-level Europe National Report for the NETHERLANDS Authors from Delft University of Technology: Marietta Haffner Section 1-4, 9 Menno van der Veen Section 5, 6, 8, 9 Hafida Bounjouh Section 6, 7, 9 Team Leader: Hendrik Ploeger, Delft University of Technology National Supervisor: Jeroen Wolfrat Peer reviewers: Vera Horváth Montserrat Pareja Eastaway Nóra Tosics Age Värv National Report for the Netherlands Table of Contents 1 Housing situation 1.1 General features 1.2 Historical evolution of the national housing situation and housing policy 1.3 Current situation 1.4 Types of housing tenures 1.5 Other general aspects 2 Economic urban and social factors 2.1 Current situation of the housing market 2.2 Issues of price and affordability 2.3 Tenancy contracts and investment 2.4 Other economic factors 2.5 Effects of the current crisis 2.6 Urban aspects of the housing situation 2.7 Social aspects of the housing situation 3 Housing policies and related policies 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Governmental actors 3.3 Housing policies 3.4 Urban policies 3.5 Energy policies 3.6 Subsidization 3.7 Taxation 4 Regulatory types of rental and intermediate tenures 4.1 Classifications of different types of regulatory tenures 4.2 Regulatory types of tenures without a public task 4.3 Regulatory types of tenures with a public task 5 Origins and development of tenancy law 6 Tenancy regulation and its context 6.1 General introduction 6.2 Preparation and negotiation of tenancy contracts 6.3 Conclusion of tenancy contracts 6.4 Contents of tenancy contracts 6.5 Implementation of tenancy contracts 6.6 Termination of tenancy contracts 6.7 Enforcing tenancy contracts 6.8 Tenancy law and procedure “in action” 7 Effects of EU law and policies on national tenancy policies and law 7.1 EU policies and legislation affecting national housing policies 2 7.2 EU policies and legislation affecting national housing law 7.3 Table of transposition of EU legislation 8. Typical national cases (with short solutions) 8.1 - 8.10 9. Tables 9.1 Literature 9.2 Cases 9.3 Abbreviations 3 1 Housing situation1 1.1 General features The rental system in the Netherlands can be characterized with a few relatively unique features. - With 34% it has the biggest social rental sector in Europe.2 It is owned by housing associations. They are registered according to the 1901 Housing Act. - Tenancy law, especially rent control (found in the Civil Code), is not organized based on dwelling ownership (social rental versus private rental), but dependent of rent level of the dwelling. Therefore, the rent levels of 92% of the rental sector – dwellings with a monthly rent up to 631.73 Euro between 1 July 2008 and 1 July 2009 – are regulated (Section 3.2, 3.6 and 4.1). Dwellings with a rent level higher than the 631.73 Euro at the start of the rental contract have a deregulated or liberalized rent level. - Rent control is concerned with rent levels at the start of the rental contract (rent setting) and with annual rent increases (rent adjustment). The rent level is dependent on the quality of a dwelling which is expressed in number of quality points. - Officially, it is the social landlords that have a public task, while private landlords do not. Having a public task or not is therefore irrelevant for tenancy law. 1.2 Historical evolution of the national housing situation and housing policy The historic evolution of the national housing situation and housing policies. In particular: the evolution of the principal types of housing tenure from the 1990s on. Explain the growth and decline of the different tenures and the reasons why that happened (e.g. privatisation or other policies). The housing stock of about seven million units was dominated by the rental sector until 2000, when homeownership reached a market share of more than 50%, as Figure 1 shows.3 It continued growing and reached a share of almost sixty percent of stock in 2010. The share of social renting – renting with a public task; also called housing associations – increased until the 1980s. The decline thereafter left the sector with a 1 The information in sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 was compiled in February 2013. In July 2013 further information was added in response to the questions of the Project Officer of the European Union and the leading team. And in February and March 2014 the text was adapted to the comments of the peer reviewers and of the country expert. This exercise included adding in questions that were added to the questionnaire in August of 2013. The information that has been added cannot be considered as full updates of earlier information. 2 Kees Dol & Marietta Haffner, Housing Statistics in the European Union 2010 (The Hague: Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, 2010), 67. 3 From: Marietta Haffner, ‘The private rented sector in the Netherlands’, in Towards a sustainable private rented sector. The lessons from other countries, ed. Kath Scanlon & Ben Kochan (London: London School of Economics, LSE London, 2011), 61. 4 share of more than thirty percent in 2010. The Netherlands is still the country with the biggest social rental sector in North-western Europe.4 Renting Between the sectors of social renting and homeownership the private rented sector – renting without a public task – has been squeezed, its share dropping from 60 percent of stock in 1947 to less than ten percent in 2010, as Figure 1.1 shows. The decline of the private rental sector has largely been the result of a decline in the properties owned by private individual landlords (from 54% in 1947; not shown in this text, but can be found in Van der Heijden et al., 20025). Private individual (also called private person) landlords were not subsidized in comparison with social landlords (also called housing associations in this text) and owner-occupiers, while rents have been regulated since the Second World War.6 The declining necessity to invest in rental housing in order to produce income in old age because of the introduction of a state pension, will also have contributed to the departure of the individual landlords 7, as well as the sale of dwellings to social landlords, often as part of urban renewal8. Figure 1.1 Development of tenure distribution* in the Netherlands, 1947-20109 100% 80% 60% Social rented Private rented 40% Owner-occupier 20% 0% 1947 1956 1967 1971 1975 1981 1985 1989 1995 2000 2005 2010 * Social rented implies rented with a public task; private rented is the term for rented without a public task. Statistics do not distinguish any intermediate tenure form (as defined in the questionnaire) or rent free units As were the private person landlords, private organization landlords were also affected by rent regulation, but were compensated as they (mainly the institutional 4 Dol & Haffner, Housing Statistics in the European Union 2010, 67. 5 Harry van der Heijden, Marietta Haffner & Agnes Reitsma, Ontwikkeling van de woonuitgaven in zes West-Europese landen (Delft: DUP Science, 2002), 13. 6 From: Haffner, ‘The private rented sector in the Netherlands’, 61 and 73. 7 Peter Boelhouwer & Harry Van der Heijden, Housing Systems in Europe: Part I. A Comparative Study of Housing Policy (Delft: Delft University Press, 1992), 50. 8 Hugo Priemus, ‘Commercial rented housing: two sectors in the Netherlands’, Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 13, no. 3 (1998): 276. 9 1947-2005: Marietta Haffner et al., Bridging the gap in social and market rented housing in six European countries (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2009), 207. 2010: ABF Research B.V. Syswov 2010, 23 February 2013. 5 investors that have to invest the money of their clients10; e.g. insurance companies and pension funds) took advantage of subsidies that were available, pretty much on the same conditions as for social landlords.11 These subsidies came in the form of periodic bricks-and-mortar subsidies for new construction which were being paid out to the investors in social housing as management subsidies. As they were covering the gap between revenues and expenses for a period of 50 years and the number of subsidized dwellings increased from year to year, by 1988 about 60% of total government expenditure on housing (excluding taxation) resulted from these past obligations.12 In the 1980s an idea of privatization and responsible private actors started pervading government policies, as government spending for ‘social engineering’ in housing continued increasing and was considered as becoming unaffordable.13 In the White Paper of 1989 entitled Housing in the 1990s: from Building to Living, a greater role for market forces was set out, as well as an intention to reallocate responsibilities and financial risks away from government.14 When the subsidies for new construction were reduced sharply after 1989 and phased out by the end of the century, large capital gains as a result of rising house prices in the 1990s, partly compensated institutional investors.15 Their share remained relatively stable in the period 1947-1993 at around six percent of stock, and declined thereafter. In 1995 and 1998 the annual subsidy obligations (bricks-and-mortar subsidies) that were built up in the past were calculated as net present value per rental tenure and paid to the social and private landlords, respectively.16 This operation resulted in cutting the financial ties between the government and the landlords. In the social rental sector this cut made the social, non-profit, by government accredited landlords financially independent from government and they were to operate as social entrepreneurs from then on, running the risks of investment themselves while using the societal capital for the public task.17 In fact, they were to operate as a revolving fund.