Is housing in Amsterdam that problematic? A friend recently moved there and would send me photos of places he was looking at for him and his family. He had plenty of really nice options at costs they could afford. It seemed vastly more affordable than NYC or the Bay Area.

When that's your comparison, almost every city in the world is more affordable compared to the Bay Area. Europe, barring London, is typically much more affordable in my experience (extensive transit systems helps as well). There's a reason cities like Berlin are hot spots, they're not just culturally fantastic, they're affordable for all working classes.

> There's a reason cities like Berlin are hot spots, they're not just culturally fantastic, they're affordable for all working classes.

This.

Last time I've looked, there were rental appartments in Berlin that were on the market for as little as 500€/month, while equivalent apartments in Amsterdam went for over 1200€/month.

You looked up a while ago then. More like 900-1600 euros and going up. At least if you want to live inside the Ring.

Just because something is more affordable than the two most expensive housing markets in the world doesn't make it affordable.

Yes, by Bay standards, Amsterdam is not bad (especially for rent). It's still bad for virtually everyone in Amsterdam who isn't on rent control.

On the (sad) bright side of living in the Bay for awhile, if you ever move anywhere else, housing will probably all look like a bargain!

You'll probably also take a massive paycut.

For sure. I haven't done any research, but I'm sure there are some areas, though, where the % pay cut is less than the % reduction in housing costs, though.

If you do know of such a place, please post it. When I do the math SF always comes out on top.

I have much more money left over in Austin than I did in San Jose (and living in a 4bd house instead of a crappy SJ 2bd apartment) despite a COLA adjustment from the company... And by the looks of it I could get the pay back up here anyway if I can be bothered to drive to the office of some local company.

Purely personal anecdata, of course, but it does work for me, and the quality of life is (for me, anyway) much higher.

It depends if you're single or have kids and/or a spouse that doesn't work or makes significantly less money. In those cases, a lot of places will beat the Bay.

If you're single or duel (tech) income with no kids, the Bay wins almost always.

Texas

It's fine for me. I mean, our house wasn't cheap, but it's a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, and I'm really happy to live here. We do need two good incomes to be able to afford it, though. Sure, I could live much cheaper elsewhere, but then I wouldn't be living here.

All things considered, Amsterdam is doing about as good a job at keeping the city affordable, accessible and diverse as is possible under these circumstances. Nobody wants it to become a rich people's ghetto, hence the big focus on rent-controlled housing and keeping speculators out.

It is certainly possible to get affordable housing that's not rent-controlled, but that's going to be either South-East, North or New West, which are fine places to live, but not as popular as the neighbourhoods closer to the center. The center itself and the older neighbourhoods around it are either rent-controlled with insane waiting lists, or simply too expensive.

Ultimately, there's simply a limit to the number of houses available here. There's not much room for the city to grow. Nobody wants it full of skyscrapers (and I've seen an argument that skyscrapers don't really help all that much anyway), nobody wants to tear down all the historic buildings. One of the most recent major expansions of the city, IJburg, doesn't seem to be terribly popular. The city is rapidly filling in all the gaps that can be filled with new houses without hurting living quality too much, but in the end, Amsterdam wants to stay a nice city to live in. That means a lot of people want to live here, but it also means not everybody can live here.

There's other nice cities here, though. Try Utrecht or Haarlem.

There's a huge middle ground between the current status quo and a completely deregulated zoning and construction policy. It's not a choice between either the current Amsterdam, or the Centrum becoming something like Midtown Manhattan.

Things like:

* Liberalizing height restrictions across the board from 4-5 story houses to something closer to 8-10.

* Finding some realistic compromise between the preservation of truly historic buildings, and the current policy which pretty much just enacts a blanket policy of preservation on the "look" of pretty much all existing houses in the Centrum.

* Liberalizing zoning within reason. E.g. ever wondered why there's so many phone shops in Amsterdam? It's because they're on an exhaustive list of types of shops that can be placed in certain areas. Huge inefficiencies in land allocation are created as a result of political lobbying driving zoning policy. Government subsidies via zoning for parking spaces (at the cost of residential land) are another example.

> IJburg, doesn't seem to be terribly popular

Uh, what? It was pretty much a sand field 10-15 years ago, and now 22k people live there at a density of 10k/km^2, compared to say 14k/km^2 in Amsterdam West, an already established district.

I think it's a relative disappointment that the density isn't at least 2-4x that, but IJburg's a fantastic example for their being a huge demand for housing, and the city's ability to fill that demand once it gets out of its own way.

> The city is rapidly filling in all the gaps that can be filled with new houses without hurting living quality too much[...]

I'd change that to something closer to "while tiptoeing around existing property owners, assuring them that prices won't fall, that the view out their window won't change" etc.

Nobody (well, few) are suggesting that the entire Centrum be bulldozed and replaced by Soviet-style tower blocks, just that we've struck the wrong balance between NIMBY-ism and new development.

> * Liberalizing height restrictions across the board from 4-5 story houses to something closer to 8-10.

Will that improve anything? There are places in Amsterdam where they builds higher, but those rarely turn out the way people hoped. Take the old Bijlmer flats, for example.

> * Finding some realistic compromise between the preservation of truly historic buildings, and the current policy which pretty much just enacts a blanket policy of preservation on the "look" of pretty much all existing houses in the Centrum.

But that "look" of the inner city is a big part of the appeal of Amsterdam.

Yeah it'll improve things. To a first approximation a 100 m^2 apartment in the center costs 500k. If you've got 4 floors of that it's a total cost of 2 million.

Once you can build higher the costs diminish since most of the cost is opportunity cost of the parcel of land it's sitting on, not the building itself. A real rise in supply will counteract rising prices. You can build 8x 100m^2 apartments for way less than 8 million.

> Take the old Bijlmer flats, for example.

Yeah exactly my point. Some centrally planned NIMBY high-rise project that had to be put in Zuidoost because of restrictive zoning policy, of course it was a disaster.

It's also can't be compared to what a re-development of the Centrum would look like. The population density is probably no more than two or single story apartment units. They're huge tower blocks surrounded by large parks[1]. I'm talking about re-development within the A10.

> But that "look" of the inner city is a big part of the appeal of Amsterdam.

Something has to give. If your definition of the "look" is "exactly the way it is now" then yeah, we can't change anything and we'll continue to have a housing bubble, and probably long-term Amsterdam becoming a backwater as jobs & development moves to somewhere like Rotterdam.

I'm not talking about demolishing the historic Prinsengracht and dropping something that looks like the (Soviet-style) Bijlmer tower block on top of the resulting rubble.

There's lots of places in the city where the houses don't have much historic value, e.g. here on De Wittenkade: https://goo.gl/maps/BzTLyvHGUvr

It's now illegal to change any minor detail of how those houses on the left look like (just replacing a window needs to have council involvement).

We could build something in the same style, except 6 stories instead of 4. Or (more cheaply) build something in the same style as the right side of that canal, but up to a 6+ story height. Neither would fundamentally change the look of the city, but would help a lot with the housing supply. Both are illegal.

I'm arguing against my own best interests. I own a house in the Centrum that's ballooning in price due to the municipal policy. Would some part of me like to live in a time capsule? Sure. But I think the interests of current and future residents matter more than NIMBY concerns.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gooiord,_Bijlmer.jpg

> Once you can build higher the costs diminish since most of the cost is opportunity cost of the parcel of land it's sitting on, not the building itself. A real rise in supply will counteract rising prices. You can build 8x 100m^2 apartments for way less than 8 million.

It's not that simple. Higher buildings need to be stronger, and they need elevators.

The are absolutely areas in the city that could have higher buildings, but plenty of areas in the city already have them. There are plenty of large apartment blocks in West, North, Buitenveldert and Bijlmer.

Inside the Ring, sure there are areas that could have higher houses, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but it's not going to gain as much extra houses as you think. Up to 4 floors, having no elevator is considered acceptable. Higher than that, by current rules, you really need an elevator. Do you want to have people walk up the stairs for 6 floors? Or make all the houses smaller to make space for an elevator?

There are trade-offs involved. It's not simply a matter of taller houses therefore more affordable houses.

I believe by the current plans, they intend to build high rises on Zeeburgereiland, but I've seen a very convincing argument that you can house just as many people there with lower buildings. The gain isn't as big as you'd expect.

In the Bijlmer, they're explicitly moving from large apartment blocks to low single-family houses. I don't know what the reasoning behind that was exactly, but I suspect some lessons were learned there. Maybe people actually do prefer lower houses. They're fairly affordable, and people actually get to have a yard, which is a rare luxury in Amsterdam.

I don't see the need to pack as many people as possible in the city. The city has to remain livable, and as far as I can tell, the city is doing a really good job at that. They do try to fill up all the unused spaces in the city, like de Omval 20 years ago, and Zeeburgereiland now (I'm still surprised they built IJburg before putting Zeeburgereiland to use).

It's not really a bubble when it's based on real supply and demand. The city actively tries to reduce speculation with measures like the one from the article, but because it's such a nice place to live, lots of people want to live here.

I don't see any reason for Amsterdam to become a backwater, and there already are plenty of jobs in Rotterdam. There are other towns around Amsterdam being built up, like Almere, Hoofddorp and Purmerend. Of course the Amsterdam will keep looking for places to create new houses, but opportunities for that will remain limited.

> Higher than that, by current rules, you really need an elevator[...]

You're really making my case for me :)

Of course there's trade-offs involved. The point of deregulation is that instead of us or some council meeting having to decide say if 4 floors, 5 or 6 is OK for a walk-up, people can just vote with their money.

And yeah, I'd argue that there's plenty of people who given the choice between paying an extra couple of hundred a month and a shorter commute would be fine with walking up 1-2 extra floors.

But the point is I don't need to be right. If it's deregulated and nobody builds 5-6 floor houses without elevators we've lost nothing, but if they do we've produced a lot of value for them just by getting out of their way.

> I don't see the need to pack as many people as possible in the city. The city has to remain livable[...]

There's plenty of European cities that are nice to live in that are ahead of Amsterdam when it comes to population density: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_...

> It's not really a bubble when it's based on real supply and demand.

It's based on an artificially restricted supply, which is politically motivated. The city's only needing to micro-manage the market it's already ruined because it started out with intervening in it. There's plenty of cities that historically have grown in size, density and population while real estate prices have stayed level or even gone down.

> Of course the Amsterdam will keep looking for places to create new houses, but opportunities for that will remain limited.

I 100% agree that it very likely will stay that way. I'm only making the point that it's almost entirely an artificially created problem.

Yes it's problematic in the sense that studio apartments typically go for €250k, whereas the median salary lets you borrow around €180k, and prices rose 10% last year, i.e. at a median salary even with 100% savings rate of net income, you can barely keep up with price increases. (although price growth is flattening these coming years).

In other words, purchasing the smallest housing unit is impossible for about 3 out of 4 people, many of whom are born and raised there, and it's getting worse.

Then there's the rental market. There's social housing, but the median salary is too high to be eligible for it. And even if you were low-income, the waiting list is now 15 years. So say you're 25 years old, there is no prospect of moving out of your parents' home unless you leaves the city you're born and raised in.

Then there's the rest of the rental market. Rents typically start at 1100 or so for the smallest housing units, and you're typically required to earn gross 3.5x the rent each month, which is more than the median salary, too.

And this concerns the smallest housing units. Not having your bedroom in your living room and in your kitchen is a luxury you can't easily find in this price range. Anything that's liveable long-term is going to require substantially above-median incomes.

As for comparisons with Bay Area, it's simply not appropriate in any conversation about affordable housing worldwide if you ask me. Nor is an anecdote of a friend with uniquely high-income who can afford a nice place, appropriate either, in a discussion about affordable housing for all.

> There's social housing, but the median salary is too high to be eligible for it.

It's worth noting that it's the salary at the time that you get the housing that counts, which creates a perverse situation where people now making say €200k/yr are still paying well below say €750/month in social rent. I've met some of those people.

So we've got a social program that benefits both those of lesser means, and also some very rich people.

But I guess "the poor (including because they're students) should get cheap housing" and "nobody should be forcibly evicted from social housing" are both things that sound good in isolation.

> So say you're 25 years old, there is no prospect of moving out of your parents' home unless you leaves the city you're born and raised in.

This sucks, but honestly it's hard to sympathize with the crocodile tears of people most responsible for creating and benefiting from the system that's now biting them in the ass.

The parents of that 25 year old have likely been either benefiting from the rising property prices of a house they own, or have been getting government subsidized housing for decades.

The real solution of aggressively increasing the housing supply would have gone against their short-term interests, and now it's gotten so bad that their kid can't apply for social housing at 18 and get it after they finish university (which used to be the case).

Meanwhile, families who for whatever reason didn't have established roots in Amsterdam but work there have been commuting on the train or bus for 1-2 hours every day for decades, since they weren't in a situation to vote themselves and their kids into a benefit granted by the municipality.

Nothing is problematic here if you have a 100k dollar salary.

For the rest of us, yes it is.

Where'd he move from? Because there are a number of things that really help people from outside the EU here in the Netherlands. First is the 30% tax discount they receive, which usually adds a couple hundred euros to their net income. Secondly, companies often help expats to find houses or even pay part of the rent. Then there's the fact that in order to hire someone from outside the EU, you need to prove that you can't find a Dutch person to do the same job. Companies do this in part, by paying them higher wages, which indicate that these people have rare skills.

Expats are actually a big part of why housing prices on the free market are rising, since they can often pay much more than Dutch people can.

The 30% ruling isn't for those outside the EU, but to a first approximation for anyone who's a highly paid professional that's hard to hire domestically blah blah who wasn't previously residing in either The Netherlands or in the border regions of Belgium and Germany.

There's plenty of Germans, French etc. who have the 30% ruling.

I suspect your friend is not in the middle class, there is a very attractive tax treatment to attract foreign knowledge workers that he likely qualifies for. If you have money there never is a problem.

Salaries in the Netherlands aren’t 100k a year for a starter for a regular programmer job. It’s more like 30-60k depending on experience.

Wouldn't this drive up demand for public transportation and construction in neighboring cities?

I live in Dublin (the one in Ireland) and my commute is about half an hour by tram. Prices are ridiculous in the center, but where I live they are much more reasonable.