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Lungboy
Aug 23, 2002

NEED SQUAT FORM HELP
I've applied for a job in Delft, so I'm investigating a move from the UK to NL and would really appreciate any hints and tips that someone who lives there might know better than the random websites I'm reading that are great for general stuff but are sometimes out of date. For example, energy costs are so crazy right now that comparison sites simply don't work and lots of places won't take on new customers, but this wasn't mentioned anywhere. So far my outgoings are: rent, electric (seems that I need to find somewhere without gas as the gas costs are *insane*), water, sewage, various insurances, food, petrol, clothes, internet/tv/phone and rubbish collection. I'm struggling to find any info on things like a Dutch equivalent to council tax for the Delft region so help there would be appreciated, as would help on places to live (Delft itself is too expensive on the whole), primary schools etc if anyone knows about them, and any other tips and pointers that might be useful.

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Saladman
Jan 12, 2010
Reddit in general blows but for a highly specific question like that it’s probably a better place to ask, or at least to find out if there’s an even better NL-specific forum. I do think we have a couple Dutch-living-people on T&T though, maybe ask in the Europe thread if this one doesn’t get traction.

Lungboy
Aug 23, 2002

NEED SQUAT FORM HELP

Saladman posted:

Reddit in general blows but for a highly specific question like that it’s probably a better place to ask, or at least to find out if there’s an even better NL-specific forum. I do think we have a couple Dutch-living-people on T&T though, maybe ask in the Europe thread if this one doesn’t get traction.

Thanks for this. I tend to avoid Reddit as much as possible but I'll take a look.

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

there are municipal taxes but no council tax, that's a british thing. remember to register yourself with the local government once you move in, i remember i didn't have to do that in the UK. everything basically goes through the municipality. get a house with a heat pump

Lungboy
Aug 23, 2002

NEED SQUAT FORM HELP

Shibawanko posted:

there are municipal taxes but no council tax, that's a british thing. remember to register yourself with the local government once you move in, i remember i didn't have to do that in the UK. everything basically goes through the municipality. get a house with a heat pump

Thanks. The heat pump is something i've learnt just from looking at the energy prices and spotting some houses have pumps or even district heating. It makes house hunting even harder in an already crazy market though.

codo27
Apr 21, 2008

Great time to start learning to play darts

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

Lungboy posted:

Thanks. The heat pump is something i've learnt just from looking at the energy prices and spotting some houses have pumps or even district heating. It makes house hunting even harder in an already crazy market though.

i have no idea how you would buy a house here right now. inflation and prices are insane and everything is overheated. in the UK i would just rent but here that's nearly always a terrible deal. i don't know about the west because i never lived there but i guess zoetermeer is a relatively cheap place to live, although it has a reputation for being boring. there's a few villages around delft too but i guess they're all also expensive. maybe rijswijk/den haag still has something but den haag has a few bad neighborhoods, although i don't know how bad those actually are now

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

also keep in mind that the current housing market is almost certainly a japan-style bubble and that it will crash, the netherlands has the highest debt per capita worldwide because of mortgages, when the bubble finally bursts it'll be a disaster and that moment does seem to be close. if you buy a house now there's a chance it will still gain in value for a while or remain stable at best but there's a very good chance that the value will crash

Saladman
Jan 12, 2010
Yeah also to add on that, interest rates are skyrocketing right now. We bought a place in January at 1.65% for a 20 year fixed. We had an offer at 1.5% in early November for the same bank when we offered on a place we didn't get, and the rate again at the same bank was 1.85% two weeks ago; I asked our mortgage guy how much it had changed for our same offer within the last 2 months.

Still way lower than most other places, but it also means that even if your house value crashes after you buy it, it would have to crash pretty hard to be a worse deal than renting. Still imho rent for a couple years before buying, just so you know the area, if you want to stay, etc. I don't know how it is in NL but some EU countries have significant taxes if you sell after owning for less than some period of time (e.g. 2 years). There are also EU-wide standard bank penalties if you do early repayment on a fixed rate mortgage with > €450,000 remaining on it at time of repayment (so e.g. if you have a €700k loan, then you have to worry only about the 'excess' €250k) although iirc even that is capped at 6 months of interest @ the current payment amount + some random amount determined based on the difference in the current interest rate & your fixed rate mortgage, which could easily be like >€20k, but it's not going to bankrupt you, unless your house was an apocalyptically bad buy.

It also depends are you planning to immigrate to NL, or are you planning like a no more than 5 year stint? In the latter case imho I'd suggest renting unless you have quite a lot of money, which I'm guessing is not the case since you are working a normal job and you mentioned electricity and gas prices as being insane.

Saladman fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Apr 7, 2022

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Dance Officer
May 4, 2017

It would be awesome if we could dance!
If you're looking to rent in the Netherlands, and you don't mind living in a single room or studio apartment, I recommend looking at Kamernet. You'll mostly find student housing there, but it's also the biggest platform for finding cheap living space, in my experience. Rental agencies also use it to advertise their stuff.

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