Rising Amsterdam home prices push people to other cities

When Michel Oosterman became a dad last year, he was forced to say goodbye to Amsterdam.

The 34-year-old and his girlfriend were tired of carrying a pram up to their third-floor 50-square meter walk-up apartment in the Dutch capital’s eastern part. And finding a bigger, affordable place in the city proved futile. So when he spotted a house in a quiet residential neighbourhood in The Hague, about 60 kilometres away, that was twice the size and even had a 90 square-metre garden, it was “tot ziens” to the capital – after 13 years.

“A house with a garden that big in Amsterdam? Forget it,” Oosterman, an employee at energy firm Eneco, said in an interview.

Oosterman’s move to The Hague – home to the Dutch parliament and international courts – is part of an ongoing overspill noted by Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot of people fleeing Amsterdam’s red-hot property market. The phenomenon is accelerating and is heating up the real estate market in cities such as The Hague and Rotterdam, where prices are now rising even faster than in the capital.

A confluence of fewer properties on the market after a 50 per cent cut in construction projects during the financial crisis and soaring prices are driving people not just to adjacent towns but further afield, according to Nic Vrieselaar, an economist at Rabobank. Some were selling their Amsterdam homes to profit from the high prices and seek cheaper options in other locations, he said.