Opinion: ‘A small real estate investor has nothing left’
Dear Hugo, Sigrid and Marnix,
Renting in Amsterdam even more expensive, heads The parole on 12 Jan. Investors are fleeing from real estate en masse, number of rental properties are falling rapidly, says RTL. Suppose I am Minister of State for Finance for Housing and I use fictitious values and returns, as you do. Then I would assume from January 1, 2023 that you have a fictitious income of 500,000 euros. In the free market, if you didn’t already have a nice job, you would be worth at least 500,000 euros at a company like Deloitte or a bank like ING. I would skip that amount at a rate of 32 percent. That would be included in an amount of tax payable that is exactly equal to your actual income. You have nothing left to live on.
How would you like that? It seems fiction, right? A nightmare? That’s not it. It is the reality of the small real estate investor. My reality. I own a house in Amsterdam with four apartments. I rent three homes within the social system and I rent one in the private sector. The return on my consumption power is zero. I have to pay everything that comes in. I have nothing left to live on.
Big loss
In other words: the more socially you rent out, the greater the gap between actual and fictitious return, and the harder the blow to the housing market and the investor. I have suffered a major loss in value and I have to pay a notional rent that I never received.
If people like me, the smaller real estate investor with social and mid-rent housing in their portfolio (90 percent of private property falls into that category) can no longer afford their own investment, who will take care of those poor social tenants? The government has stopped doing this since the grossing-up operation in 1992, and the housing associations have squandered as many social housing units as possible because they are not confused.
Dear Hugo, Sigrid and Marnix: wake up! You are ruining us and you are undermining the housing market. Give me an hour and I can file the housing market for you with facts, knowledge and a lot of experience and exchange where the pain is. Grant me that, grant our tenants that, grant our country that and stop destroying more than we would like.
Simone Carree, Amsterdam