Making your home in Delft: the results of the housing poll

When brainstorming blog post topics related to living in Delft, Delft Mama Xenia Gabriel and I quickly realized that there are so many aspects of the housing situation in Delft (and the Netherlands) that one post clearly wasn’t going to be enough. Xenia’s post in October provided the start of the housing series, giving an overview of finding a home as an expat family in Delft. In order to get a sense of more experiences of the Delft Mama community, I set up a very short poll for people to respond to. Read on as I summarize the results of the housing poll.

The poll

The housing poll was a very simple one, composed of the following multiple choice questions:

Do you own or rent your home in Delft? (Yes; No)
Do you own property elsewhere? (Yes, in the Netherlands; Yes, in another country; No)
If you bought your home in the Netherlands, did you find it an easy process? (Yes; No; Someone else handled everything; Other)
If you rent your home in the Netherlands, did you find it an easy process? (Yes; No; Someone else handled everything; Other)

The four multiple-choice questions were followed by 2 open-ended questions for people to respond to if they wished:

5. How is the Dutch housing process different compared to other places? (Including types of homes, too!) (open-ended question)

6. What would you do differently the next time you find a home in the Netherlands? (open-ended question)

The responses

Now for the fun part… seeing the responses! Ten people filled out the poll.

Some numbers:

Nine of the ten respondents own their homes in the Netherlands.
- Four stated that someone else handled everything when they bought their home;
- Four said buying a home in the Netherlands was an easy process; and
- One respondent thought it was no different from their experience buying a home in the US apart from it being a new experience.
Two respondents indicated that they own property in another country.
Regarding renting a home in the Netherlands, 5 respondents have stated that it was an easy process.

Some comments:

The open-ended questions were optional to answer. Seven people responded to the first open-ended question, and five people responded to the second one.

In response to the fifth question: How is the Dutch housing process different compared to other places? seven respondents chimed in:

Having to deal with much smaller space for our budget, and learning about apartment life as opposed to living in a house (with a yard)
I cannot say, before living here I lived with my parents.
Good
Basically I do not see it much different compared to Slovenia.
High prices, low-quality buildings
Home inspection is very different here. Most people don’t bother with the new homes and only do it for older properties. In the USA when you do a house inspection everything is checked: how dishwasher works, how all faucets work. It is so much more detailed in the US. In NL we bought a 25 year old house and inspection was useless really – they just said everything looks fine and roof might need to be replaced but did not notice a bunch of plumbing issues that they did not check for. For example, some faucets were not hooked up at all and it would have been obvious if they tried to use those. Disappointing to us but ultimately the expectation was just different.
It is not so easy to buy a house as it is in my home country.

The last question, “What would you do differently the next time you find a home in the Netherlands?” had five responses:

We want to have more rooms, and pay more attention to proximity to green spaces and places to wander.
Find somewhere more modern.
Nothing, we used a makelaar and they handled everything.
Nothing
I would not rent but try to buy faster my own place.

My observations:

Although it was a simple poll, and only a handful of people responded (out of the 1,700 members on the DMM Facebook page (!!!)), it is always interesting to see how people respond. In fact, the responses led to more questions, at least for me. Overwhelmingly, people felt that finding a house in the Netherlands was an easy enough process, regardless if they bought or rented their home. I don’t know if these responses reflect the experience of people looking for houses with the current market. Comment away if your experience was different!

A large number stated that someone else took care of everything, with one respondent clarifying that it was the real estate company that did this. It seems that may be sound advice, particularly when dealing with possibly new/different rules and procedures. Has anyone bought a house without using a real estate company? What was your experience?

One person commented on low quality for the price and another commented on changing expectations in regard to the inspection process. I would think this is a very important issue especially when dealing with major renovations or buying a newly-built home! Anyone else want to chime in?

Conclusion

Having come from different places, it’s always helpful to see what other people experience in the new place in order to put our own experiences into perspective. Although there were only ten responses, I hope that people can continue to share their experiences/thoughts in the comments section. If you prefer to stay anonymous but still want to comment, contact us (be sure to put “DMM housing poll comment” in the subject heading) and we’ll post your comment for you.

Coming up…

We still hope to see at least two new posts to round out the housing series. If anyone would like to share their experiences or if anyone would like to compile experiences of different people in a single post, please contact us!

Coming up in our next post in February, our very own Onica King will be sharing the results of the Valentine’s Poll (you still have time to fill it out! Link here). See you then!