Private landlords in the five largest cities raised rents for new tenants in the first quarter of this year, housing platform Pararius said in its latest report on the rental housing market.

Some agents report that hundreds of people are applying to rent individual properties when they come online, sometimes engaging in bidding wars to secure the lease, Pararius said.

In The Hague, for example, rents for new contracts were 6.4% higher than in the first quarter of 2022, while in Amsterdam rents were up 5.8%. In Utrecht, by contrast, the increase was only 1.4%.

The increase is in line with expectations following the rental housing market reforms which the government is introducing, and which are likely to further reduce supply, Pararius director Jasper de Groot said.

In Amsterdam, for example, the number of properties coming on the market halved in the first three months of the year compared with the same period in 2022.

In particular, the plan to extend rent controls to most of the market will reduce availability still further at a time when demand remains high, De Groot said. ‘There will always be people who can’t or don’t want to buy and who don’t qualify for social housing,’ he added.

Nationwide the price for unfurnished properties rose 2.5% but fell 4.2% for furnished accommodation.

Two-year contracts

Meanwhile, MPs have voted to stop landlords issuing two-year rental contracts which were first introduced in 2016 in an effort to encourage more people to rent out property in the non-rent controlled sector.

However, research has shown that some landlords have been taking advantage of the shorter contracts by hiking rents massively at the end of the two-year term.

There will be some exemptions – for example, to cover people who have to be housed temporarily and for student housing, MPs agreed.

Housing minister Hugo de Jonge wanted to keep the two-year contracts and says landlords will be unable to hike rents once rent controls are extended to cover more properties in 2024.