Is the landlord levy a threat to the rented housing sector? The case of the Netherlands

Hugo Priemus

International Journal of Housing Policy, 2014, vol. 14, issue 1, 98-106

Abstract: In 2010 a working party made up of Dutch civil servants suggested a tool known as the ‘National Residential Property Tax’ with the aim of strengthening the public budget. Initially, this was intended as a tenure-neutral tax for both the owner-occupier and the rented sector. However, in the 2012 Coalition Agreement between the conservatives (VVD) and the social democrats (PvdA) it was narrowed down to a levy for landlords of properties with regulated rents – and thus ended up as a specific tax largely targeted at housing associations. On the one hand, the new government was offering housing association opportunities for annual rent increases above the rate of inflation but, on the other hand, it was getting ready to cream off the extra revenue to alleviate its own budgetary problems. By 2017 this new levy will have risen to 1.7 billion euros annually. This paper explains the background to this unique Dutch housing policy instrument and presents an ex ante evaluation of the impact of the landlord levy on housing associations, commercial real estate investors and tenants. It will also offer some conclusions and policy recommendations for housing policy in the Netherlands, which could be relevant for other European countries as well.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14616718.2013.876579 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:intjhp:v:14:y:2014:i:1:p:98-106

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REUJ20

DOI: 10.1080/14616718.2013.876579

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Housing Policy is currently edited by Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Gerard van Bortel and Richard Ronald

More articles in International Journal of Housing Policy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().