Anyone who wants to buy a new-build home from July 1, 2024 with a sales price of up to € 390,000 will need a housing permit. The municipality grants this permit if the buyer has a household income that does not exceed the national limit for middle incomes; €62,191 for single-person households and €82,921 for multi-person households.
Councilor Dennis de Vries: “The municipality thus ensures that affordable owner-occupied homes actually go to the people for whom they are intended: people with a middle income. In addition, the permit requirement can contribute to mobility from social or mid-range rentals, which is good news for people who rely on those homes.” The permit requirement is part of the Housing Regulations, which the council sent to the council today.
De Vries: “With the Housing Regulations we want to distribute Utrecht’s living space in a balanced and fair manner. The regulation is intended to give as many people as possible the opportunity to find suitable, affordable housing. And because we are constantly looking at what can be improved, we regularly adjust the regulation.”
Priority rules
As of July 1, the council also makes it possible to apply existing priority rules to affordable new-build owner-occupied homes, such as priority for vital professions or transitioners from social rent or mid-range rent. The municipality does this through an experiment. In this way, experience is gained with the operation in practice and the municipality seeks cooperation with market parties. The experiment has a duration of two years and concerns a maximum of three new construction projects for affordable purchase. The experiment will be evaluated after two years.
Vital professional groups
The council also proposes to add two professional groups as of July 1 to the vital professions that are given priority in social rental housing and in mid-range rental housing. In addition to the education, healthcare and police sectors, the childcare and fire brigade sectors are now also being added. The municipality also wants to make it possible for these vital professional groups to be given priority for part of the allocations in new-build mid-rental housing, in addition to people who have already been given priority for a mid-range rental home because they leave a social rental home in the region (transitioners).
Expanding the vital professional groups is in line with the current situation on the Utrecht labor market and focuses on the most vital sectors that are of economic and/or social importance to the city. Before July 1, the municipality will further elaborate which professions within the vital professional groups can actually make use of the priority and which criteria will apply.
Priority rules
The existing priority rule from Big to Better will temporarily be higher in the ranking as of July 1 and will then take precedence over most other priority rules. From Big to Better means that people who leave behind a social rental home of a housing association of at least four rooms (in the housing market region) are given priority to move on to a home of up to three rooms, because in this way they leave behind a large home that is better suited to their own needs. going to live.
Neighborhood priority
Corporations recently have the option to apply neighborhood priority within both social and mid-rental housing. This means that in residential complexes with a youth or senior label, they can – under certain conditions – allocate homes with priority to young people or elderly people from the neighborhood. If this applies to a complex, the corporation will communicate about this and also indicate how people qualify for this. On March 19, 2024, the Utrecht Housing Regulations for Neighborhood Priority were adopted.
