Some 160,000 people are living in temporary homes and caravans on run-down holiday parks throughout the Netherlands, the Financieele Dagblad reported on Monday. The presence of so many people living illegally in holiday accommodation is making it difficult to draw up a national plan of action to boost holiday park standards and reduce crime and illegality, the paper said. Tens of holiday parks are on the list to be closed down. 'Demolition is unavoidable,' Cees Slager, chairman of the holiday industry lobby group Recron said. 'You can chase the people living there away, but you have to ask where they will go?' Migrant workers from eastern European and refugees are among the population groups which live temporarily on holiday parks. 'Local authorities don't know know what to do with them, so they approach the park owners,' Slager said. 'This means they can make more money and delay the closure for years.' Poor quality Research by ZKA Leisure Consultants for the FD found that 34% of holiday villages are of too low quality to survive - that means 1,500 holiday parks nationwide do not meet today's standards. Changing holiday habits and the rise of cheap package holidays abroad have also hit the sector hard and banks are no longer willing to finance improvements, Slager told the paper. The home affairs ministry is holding a summit on the problem later this month.  More >

The cost of renting a home in Amsterdam has risen again, despite a marked slowdown earlier this year, according to new figures from housing rental platform Pararius. New tenants in the Dutch capital are now paying an average of €22.83 per square metre, or nearly €1,600 for a 70 square metre flat. Even in the outlying district of Amsterdam Nieuw West, rents for an average flat have reached €1,300 - a rise of nearly 12% on a year ago. The rise in rents have been much sharper outside Amsterdam, with the biggest jump - 20% - recorded in Almere. 'Higher rents are spreading out like an oil slick, just like they do with house prices,' Pararius director Jasper de Groot said. 'The high prices in Amsterdam are having a knock-on effect on places like Haarlem. Renters are moving out to other, cheaper areas which are further away, or which they did not think of as an option at first.' Rents in Rotterdam have risen 14% year on year and have been higher than in The Hague since the summer.  More >

The use of big data is putting up home insurance premiums but often the information being used is wrong, according to consumers lobby group Consumentenbond. Big data company Infofolio collects publicly-available information about residential property - such as type of home, construction year and building costs - and develops information about the likely home contents and the rebuilding costs on behalf of insurance companies, the Consumentenbond says. This information has led insurance companies to up the premiums for some households by tens of percentage points. In one case, a home owner's premiums rose 30% in one go because Infofolio said it would cost an additional €150,000 to rebuild the property. The consumers lobby group says it has had a 'notable' number of complaints about rising insurance costs. In some cases Infofolio, which does not visit the property or communicate with home owners, has overestimated the size of the property or got its location wrong, the organisation said. The body is urging home owners to check their home insurance policies carefully and alert their insurer if costs are rising well above the annual inflation increase.  More >

House prices have continued to soar in Amsterdam and the city remains on the UBS list of potential real estate bubbles after debuting last year, the Swiss bank said on Friday. Amsterdam is one of six cities listed as places where the fear of missing out is driving people to pay too much for a home. The list is headed by Hong Kong and London is in sixth place, behind the Dutch capital. UBS says real housing prices in Holland’s largest city have soared by 45% in the last three years. 'The bubble risk soared in Munich, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. In Vancouver, San Francisco and Frankfurt, too, imbalances continued to grow,’ the Swiss bank said. The research shows a skilled service worker needs to work for 10 years to be able to buy a 60m2 flat near Amsterdam city centre, well below the 15 years need in London, and 14 in Paris. UBS says that since 2013 real prices in the Dutch capital have increased by 60%. 'Their ongoing explosive growth was fueled by the strongest income increase since 2013 among all cities and attractive financing conditions,' UBS said. 'The city’s housing price rise has more than doubled nationwide averages in the last five years. Given the highly strained affordability, a tightening of lending conditions might end the boom rather abruptly.' One-bed flat Research last year showed that some 80% of new owner-occupier properties within the A10 ring road cost more than €400,000, while rents of €1,500 for a one-bedroom flat have become the norm. The city council has decided that 40% of new homes built within the city’s boundaries must fall under social housing rules, meaning the rent can be no more than €710 a month. A further 40% must target middle income households with rents of around €850 per month or be affordable to middle income home buyers. The remaining properties will target high earners.  More >