Rental market restricted: Chamber approves much-discussed law | Politics

The House of Representatives debated for two days this week about the far-reaching bill of outgoing Minister Hugo de Jonge (Housing). He wants to protect tenants who currently pay too much given the quality of the home.

A very large majority in Parliament supported the law. Only VVD, BBB, FVD, SGP and JA21 voted against on Thursday evening. The proponents also have a majority in the Senate.

If the law does indeed pass the Senate, landlords will no longer be allowed to simply charge whatever they want for rent for some of the houses in the private sector. This is because the points system that already exists in the social rental sector is being further extended.

These rules only come into effect when there is a new tenant. People who currently live in a rental property that is too expensive will therefore not suddenly receive a lower rent.

The law has received a lot of criticism recently. Investors and private landlords fear that renting will soon no longer be worthwhile. As a result, landlords will sell their properties. This is also called selling out.

According to De Jonge and the proponents in the Chamber, this will indeed happen. But they don’t necessarily see this as something negative. As long as this doesn’t happen on a large scale.

The minister and the MPs believe that the liberalization of the housing market has gone through in recent years. If you want to put the genie back in the bottle, it will hurt somewhere, they say.

However, the House has called on the minister to closely monitor the single unit sales, so that action can be taken if things go in the wrong direction.

Another concern of opponents is the standstill of housing construction. To prevent this, De Jonge, with the support of the Chamber, has included in the law that landlords of newly built rental houses may charge slightly more rent than the points system indicates.

These compensations were not enough for VVD and BBB. This week they tried to convince other MPs to vote against the law, because they think the negative consequences will be incalculable.

“I would almost say: don’t do it! It sounds very dramatic, but I would still like to say to the House: think about this very carefully!” said Mona Keijzer (BBB) ​​for example. It did not help. Formation partners PVV and NSC also continued to support the law.