Landlords Selling Rentals Isn't Helping Internationals — It's Wiping Out the Mid-Market

When the Affordable Rent Act (Wet betaalbare huur) kicked in on July 1, 2024, it extended the point-based Woning Waarderingsstelsel to mid-market rentals, capping rents at €1,165.81/month for homes scoring under 187 points. The stated goal was affordability. The actual result was an exodus.

CBRE projects the investor-owned rental stock will shrink by 13% nationwide, from 751,200 to 651,400 homes, solely due to this legislation. In major cities, the decline reaches 20%. The mid-market segment, which makes up 32% of the total rental stock, is getting hit hardest.

Between Q3 2025 and Q2 2026 alone, 39,081 rental homes vanished from the rental inventory. The government's initial estimate was 23,500. They were off by nearly 40%.

And this isn't slowing down. Capital Value reports that rental supply in Q3 2025 was 37% lower than in Q3 2023. Edward Touw of Vastgoed Belang put it bluntly: the supply of mid-market rental homes has become practically non-existent.

The math stopped working. Take a typical 60 sq. m. Amsterdam apartment with energy label C. Before the Affordable Rent Act, the gross rental yield was around 4.0%. After the caps kicked in, it dropped to 2.2%. Net rental income fell by nearly half, once you account for maintenance, mortgage costs, and new sustainability requirements.

Then there's Box 3 wealth tax, which was increased on assets including property. And capital gains on the sale of rental properties, previously untaxed, are now subject to taxation. Add higher transfer taxes on buy-to-let purchases and municipal restrictions on purchase-to-let in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht, and you've created an environment where holding rental property is actively punishing.

The sell-off is concentrated among small private landlords, who own the bulk of mid-market rentals. Companies, foundations, and housing associations added about 19,000 new rental homes in 2024, but private individuals pulled 22,000 out. The net result is a shrinking private rental sector, especially in urban and student-heavy regions.

These landlords aren't selling to other investors. They're selling to Dutch first-time buyers.

Here's where the conventional wisdom falls apart. People say landlords selling rentals "frees up supply." It doesn't — not for internationals.

The homes being sold are ex-rental apartments, and they're on average €130,000 cheaper than existing owner-occupied homes. That makes them attractive to young Dutch buyers with NHG-backed mortgages. These buyers are moving out of social housing or their parents' places and into purchased ex-rental apartments.

The chain looks like this: a landlord sells a €1,400/month rental in Rotterdam. A Dutch first-time buyer purchases it with an NHG mortgage. The unit is permanently removed from the rental pool. The social housing unit that buyer vacated? It goes to someone on the waiting list — someone with a BSN, someone who qualifies for huurtoeslag, someone who's been waiting years.

Internationals are locked out of both ends. They can't access the social housing being vacated, because they don't meet the income thresholds or waiting-list requirements. And they've lost the mid-market rental that was sold out from under them.

The €1,200 to €1,800 band is where internationals actually compete. It's above the regulated cap of €1,165.81, so it sits in the free sector, but it's below the luxury tier where corporate expats with relocation packages operate. It's the sweet spot for PhD students, knowledge workers, freelancers, and young professionals who moved to the Netherlands for a job and need a place to live next month.

That band is being hollowed out. The homes that used to rent for €1,400 or €1,600 are either being sold or pushed into the regulated segment where the cap forces rents down to €1,165.81 — at which point landlords sell anyway because the yield doesn't cover costs.

The remaining free-sector rentals are seeing intensified competition, which drives asking rents up, even as regulated rents are capped. A De Hypotheker study found that a single average earner could afford only about 1,000 of the 85,000 homes listed for sale. Those who can't buy are stuck competing for a shrinking pool of rentals.

I hear this every week from House Hunter users. People with stable incomes, BSNs, all their paperwork in order, who set up alerts across Pararius, Funda, and Kamernet — and still watch listings disappear within hours. The problem isn't that they're not fast enough. It's that the homes simply don't exist anymore.

Amsterdam's market is cooling, and that's not the good news people think it is. House price growth in the city is just +3.6%, compared to +11% in Drenthe. ABN Amro identifies Amsterdam as leading a national trend, and it's directly tied to the investor sell-off.

The cooling is temporary. It's being driven by a flood of ex-rental apartments hitting the sales market simultaneously. Once that pipeline dries up, upward pressure on both sale and rental prices is expected to return — but with a permanently smaller rental stock.

CBRE warns that a 17% decline in investor-owned rentals will make the rental market, which they call the "flexible shell" of the housing system, much less accessible. This has knock-on effects for social housing and owner-occupied segments too. Workers, students, and expats can't move for jobs or education if there's nowhere to live.

The pattern is repeating in Utrecht, Rotterdam, Den Haag, Eindhoven, and Groningen. The cities that drive the Dutch economy are losing the rental flexibility that makes them function.

The Dutch cabinet is now considering easing some rent control measures in the mid-market segment. Proposed responses include targeted tax breaks for landlords who commit to longer-term rentals, enhanced rent-to-buy schemes, and increased funding for housing associations to build more social and mid-market homes.

These measures are still in early stages. They haven't reversed the trend, and they may not. The damage to the mid-market rental stock is largely permanent — once a unit is sold to an owner-occupier, it doesn't come back.

The policy approach was well-intentioned. Protecting tenants from excessive rents is a legitimate goal. But by targeting landlords with stricter regulation and higher taxes simultaneously, the government failed to account for supply elasticity. Landlords aren't passive — they sell. And when they sell to owner-occupiers, the rental pool shrinks permanently.

For internationals, the practical implication is this: the mid-market rental you're competing for is a shrinking target. The homes that used to be available at €1,200 to €1,800 are being bought by people who will never rent them out again. Setting up alerts and being the first to respond matters — but so does understanding that the pool you're fishing in is getting smaller every quarter.