‘Private investors are putting rental properties up for sale en masse’

Despite soothing words from outgoing housing minister Hugo de Jonge, real estate investors sold rental houses on a large scale last year. There is a wave of ‘single-off sales’, especially among private investors, partly due to stricter (tax) legislation. That is real estate jargon for selling rental properties to people who will live there themselves.

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According to the FD, three housing market researchers draw this conclusion in an article in economists’ magazine ESB. Investors mainly sold relatively cheap homes in the big cities. This threatens to reduce the supply of rental houses in the middle segment in the coming years, something that De Jonge is trying to prevent.

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Reverse development

‘For years the story was that investors were withdrawing houses from the owner-occupied housing stock en masse by buying them up and renting them out,’ says Marc Francke, professor of real estate at the UvA and one of the authors. ‘We are now seeing an opposite development.’ In total, investors sold 11,700 more homes to owner-occupiers last year than they bought that year.

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Since 2009, investors sold 48,000 more homes to owner-occupiers than they bought from them. Between 2016 and 2020, private investors bought a net of 25,900 homes, and in 2023 they sold a net of 6,800 homes. The transition from sales to sales is strongest for private rental properties in the low segment in large cities.