Buying a house

What you need to buy a house

Costs

Looking for a property

Bidding on a property

Applying for a mortgage

Evaluation and technical inspection

Insurance

Handover and the notary

Setting up the utilities

Registering at the Gemeente

Recommendations and useful links

We decided in late October of 2021 that we wanted to buy a house as it would be less in terms of the cost of a rental as well as easier with 3 dogs. We did not want to have to find another rental or renew our lease for another year.

I had arrived in NL in June and started working on the 1st of August. I had just finished my trial period (2 months) and I had an indefinite contract. That put us in a good space to start the process. It was mentioned to me by our mortgage broker that normally the bank wants at least 6 months history before they will approve the mortgage, which worked out perfectly in the end as the transfer was done 7 days after being in NL for 6 months. If the transfer had been set earlier, we would not have been approved for a mortgage or they would've pushed the transfer date further out.

So if you are planning on buying a house but you've been in the country less than 6 months, make sure you plan accordingly that the transfer would only happen after the 6 month mark.

There were a few things we needed in order to qualify for a mortgage:

• Indefinite employment contract and trial period must already be completed.

• Statement from your Employer with your salary details.

• Latest payslip.

• Bank Statements (with 6 months history).

• Passports and residence permits.

• BSN confirmation document.

• IND approval letters.

• Statements of any loans or credits that you have - we did not have any at the time of our application.

• Proof of savings (for the buying costs and deposit).

  • This is the bank statement that shows you have the money

  • But also proof of where the money came from, I had to submit the final invoice from Miltons attorneys in SA from the sale of our house in Cape Town

You also need to know what amount you can buy for. Use the mortgage calculators that your bank provides or the ones I linked in the last section, this will give you a rough idea what you can afford. When you contact you mortgage broker, they will also do a check to tell you what you can buy for. If you have the 30% ruling, it has no effect on your borrowing amount, this is due to the fact that it will expire after 5 years so they will give you a loan based on normal tax rates.

I would also suggest that you check what your nett income will be after the 30% ruling expires and calculate the budget accordingly so that you don't over extend yourself.

The costs for buying a house will vary depending on your situation and how much savings you have. Banks typically give 100% loans based on the market value of the property. You will need to have enough savings for the buying costs.

Most of the bank or property websites will give you an estimate of the buying costs, I have created a sheet that you can download that included the costs we paid in December of 2021. As mentioned, these will vary depending on the providers you use.

You can opt whether all these costs get added to the notary account and you pay them a deposit and the final bill is done on the day of the transfer or you can opt to pay some of the providers yourself immediately.

Download the costs sheet here

Breakdown of costs:

Maakelaar +-  €3000

I would suggest using a maakelaar (estate agent) when looking for a house, they can provide you with a lot of valuable information about the area or what questions to ask the estate agent selling the house. They will generally deal with the different estate agents and organise your viewings for you. They will also attend viewings with you and help you with navigating through the dutch housing market. When you are ready to put a bid in on a house, they will facilitate that for you and advise you on what amount to offer based on sales within the area. They will also ensure the offer to purchase contract is correct with no surprises and weird clauses or terms. They will be with you up until the handover of the keys and our maakelaar even helped us afterwards if we had questions or needed help with something.

Mortgage Broker: +- €3000 

The mortgage broker will apply to all the banks for you to get a mortgage and they can arrange the best interest rates and terms. The mortgages are a bit different in NL than in SA so they will explain how it works and what the payment breakdown will be. You send all your documents to them once, and they will complete all the application forms and deal with all the banks. They also have direct contacts within the bank and can get approvals extremely quickly.

Evaluation: +- €700 

The bank will require a market related evaluation to be done on the property, the maakelaar will normally have one that they use all the time that will do the evaluation once the bid has been won and the offer to purchase contract signed. They will determine what the market value of the house is which your mortgage broker will need when applying for the mortgage. The bank will only finance the market value of the house so if you have made an offer that is more than the evaluation, you will have to use your savings to pay that amount in.

Technical Inspection: +- €500 

All the banks now require a technical inspection to be done before they will approve the mortgage. Once again the maakelaar or selling estate agent will have someone that they use for this. They will make an appointment with the estate agent and seller to do a inspection as soon as the offer to purchase is signed by both parties. They will check everything within the house from foundations, to windows, to stair rails to the roof. You will receive an extensive report from them with photos and costs to repair everything that is noted. Normally, the provide 2 categories of fixes that must be done, either ones that must be done immediately (in the next 12 months) and ones that can be done later (after 12 months). We had a clause in our offer to purchase that said the immediate costs should not be more than €5000 otherwise the contract would be cancelled. You also attend the inspection and you can go with the inspector and he will explain everything to you while he is doing the inspection. Once you receive the report, you need to send it on to your mortgage broker.

Translator: +-€250

When its time to go to the notary to sign the documents, everything is done in dutch and you will need a translator to take you through the process and translate everything the nortary says to you. I can't recall who organised the translator for us, if it was our maakelaar or if it was the notary. We met her at the notary on the day of the transfer.

Notary Fees: +- €1800

On the day of the transfer you will go to the notary to sign all the documents, both you and the sellers will be there and you sign the documents together and get given the keys. The costs of the notary will depend on which notary you use, this is the breakdown of our costs (rounded up):

• Deed of transfer: €710

• Mortgage contract: €710

• Kadastral (erf transfer): €160

• Notary admin fees: €180

Property Tax: +-€400

You will also need to pay the first year of property tax, this is based on the WOZ value of the house as at the 1st of January the previous year. 

Transfer Fee: +-€7500 (2% of purchase price)

You also need to pay the transfer fees, this is 2% of the purchase price (not the market value) of the property as long as you are going to live in the house for the first 4 years. If you are buying a house to rent it out, the transfer fees are then 8% of the purchase price.

So the estimated total fees for buying a property is about €17 000 depending on the purchase price. This exclude any difference that you would have to pay in between the market value and the purchase price. We bought in the middle of the overprice period and we had to pay €25 000 in for the difference between market price and purchase price. Our property has now lost value and is valued at €15 000 less than the market value when we bought it (so €40 000 less than what we paid for it).

We used www.funda.nl to look for a property when we were ready. There is still a housing shortage in NL so you have to be quick when requesting to view a house. We set up notifications and filters for what we were looking for so that we could be quick when scheduling viewings.

We looked at the areas that we could afford for the type of house and garden we wanted and that still had good train connections to Amsterdam (where I worked). I think we were a little naive in the beginning as we thought we could find a similar property than what we had back home in Cape Town. We did not get what we originally started looking for.

We also tried to look exclusively for the end unit on the row houses (tussen wonen) but a lot of the ones we viewed had foundation issues and I read in a few articles that the ones in the middle are normally more secure - this is just what I read and not an official opinion.

We also wanted to find one with a big garden but unfortunately we didn't. A lot of the properties here have storerooms in the backyard which take up garden space and a lot of them didn't have garages or even driveways. No doubt this was due to our budget as well.

You will also find places that have no floors or has peeling wallpaper, once again, you need to find something that you are comfortable with, be it either fully renovated already or something that you will renovate yourself. Contractors do take time to schedule you in, when we moved in, we wanted to replace the wooden window frames with uPVC and we got the quote in Jan of 2022 and they finally installed the windows in Feb of 2023. Similarly, we got a quote for the solar panels in the first week of August and they finally installed it in the 2nd week of December (which was early, they had originally said it would be April 2023). A lot of the time the sellers take the light fixtures, cupboards and curtains/curtain rails with them when they leave.

Most properties come with a fridge and dishwasher built in, you can see this by looking for vents at the bottom of the kitchen cupboards (for the fridge freezer), when we originally looked at our rentals before we flew over we were very confused why none of the rentals had fridges until we actually moved in.

When selecting a property to view, the sellers estate agent will provide you with a brochure and a checklist/question list. The brochure will contain photos and details of the house and the checklist/question list will contain a list of what is in the house, which items are staying and which items the sellers are taking with them. Its important to read this so that you know what you are left with when you move in. The question list also touches on all the maintenance aspects of the property, for example, if the roof leaks, the last time the cv kettle was serviced, if there are any defects or issues. Make sure you go through this in detail so that you can see if anything stands out as a risk or something that you might have to repair after the fact. The bank will also ask you for these documents when you apply for your mortgage.

I would say to view as many properties as you can until the find the one you are happy with, in NL you need to be careful when putting in multiple bids on different houses and they can be legally binding. There is a cooling off clause where you can cancel a bid after a certain number of days but you need to make sure that is in the contract you sign. A friend of mine put in a bid on a house that they liked but were not overly happy with and the next day they found a house they really liked and put a bid in as well, they won both bids and then cancelled the first one within the cooling off period. I have too much anxiety to try and do that so we stuck to being safe and only putting in one bid but your maakelaar will give you the best advise on this (another reason to use a maakelaar).

When we were doing the viewings, there was only 1 or 2 days that were allocated to viewings and the sellers estate agent would give you an option of 1 or 2 timeslots and if you couldn't make it then you would not be given another option. When you viewed the house they would also tell you that they had a cut off for submitting bids (which was usually the next day at 12:00) so be prepared to have to make a quick assessment and decision otherwise you could lose out. I think today its a bit less hectic than what it was when we were in the process so hopefully its a bit calmer now.

One other thing to note, when you are looking at properties, on Funda some of them will list when the transfer date can happen, but others do not. When you view the house, make sure you ask the agent when the seller wants to do the transfer. Its common for the transfer date to be 6 months or even 12 months in the future. I think the soonest the transfer date can be is 6 weeks. We won our bid on the 24th of November and our transfer date was the 7th of January. Once of the houses that we viewed in the beginning of November only had a transfer date of 1 May. A lot of the time, sellers who buy a brand new build will be at the mercy of the builders and they could have a date of up to 12 months while they wait for their new house to be built but they would rather sell immediately to secure the sale and provide proof to the buildling company that their house is sold already.

We had put in a offer on a house that we really fell in love with but we were outbid by €9000 and unfortunately there is no negotiating if there are multiple bids, normally the seller goes with the highest one or the one with the least conditions (i.e. technical inspection, cost of fixes etc). Remember we bought in the height of the market so today I think there is more space for negotiation. We viewed so many houses, I cannot tell you how many.

We ended up putting an offer in on a fairly renovated tussenwonen (2nd from the end) with a small garden but a nicely completed attic. It was a energy rating of C, it had district heating so no gas and no boiler/cv kettle. 

If you buy a house with a boiler or CV kettle, you do need to do regular maintenance or even replace the system every 10 - 15 years. Gas is also quite expensive so you will notice a lot of houses have induction stove stops and electrical ovens. If you don't know what district heating is, you can google it, basically our water is heated at a plant and the hot water is pumped directly to the houses. Our hot water taps and radiators run off the distrct heating and our cold water comes from a different provider. So instead of having water, electricity and a gas bill, we have a cold water, hot water and electricity bill.

I covered some of this in the above section however I will go through the steps again. Once you've viewed a house and you want to put a bid in, you will discuss this with your maakelaar and they will pull the sales figures from the area so that you can determine what bid you want to make. Take the maakelaars advice here and they really know what they are doing. We were ready to go in at 23% over asking and our maakelaar advised us to go in at 17% max and we won the bid. You will never know what the other bids were and if you did ultimately pay too much but thats the risk you take in a bidding environment.

If you decide not to use a maakelaar, you can buy a report from https://www.kadaster.nl/ to see different information for the house you want to put a bid in on. A simple sales report from the area costs about €20 and you can buy more extensive reports as well, and you can find the WOZ value of a property.

Once you agree on an amount and the conditions along with the transfer date, your maakelaar will email the bid to the sellers estate agent. They will wait for all the bids to come in and they will present it to the seller. Once the seller chooses a bid, you will get the news on whether you won it or not.

Once you've won a bid, you then have to kick off the mortgage and inspection processes. I will cover those items below in more detail. The very next thing that will happen is that you will receive a offer to purchase contract. Your maakelaar will take you through it and even provide you with an english version, they can explain any clauses that are not familiar to you and ensure that all your conditions are covered. We had to ask the sellers estate agent to amend a few things as they had not added the conditions we had stated about the cost of the immediate repairs not being more than €5000. You should also get a copy with all the signatures from the sellers as well.

As soon as you have won the bid, you can kick off the process with your mortgage broker. You will need the following documentation:

• Offer to purchase contract

• Property brochure, kadastral document, energy rating document, inventory checklist and question list (from estate agent)

• Market value evaluation report

• Technical inspection report

• Documents from the notary

  • Funds declaration

  • Verklaring overdrachtsbelasting (Transfer Tax)

  • Inlichtingformulier (Personal information)

• Personal details

  • Full name

  • Date of birth

  • Address

  • Nationality

• Passports

• Residence permits

• BSN Confirmation letter

• IND letter of approval (for residency)

• Employment contract (indefinate term & trail period completed)

• Employers statement

• Latest payslip

• Bank statements

• Proof of where the savings came from (attorney invoice from sale of house in Cape Town)

• Relevant application form

The one bank that we applied to (Obvion) wanted proof that we were not returning to South Africa. We had to send them a breakdown of family members we had left in South Africa, a list of assets or any other proof that we were not returning. We sent our financial emigration letters as proof that we ceased to be tax paying residents in South Africa. At the end of the day, Obvion declined our application but ABN Amro gave us a mortgage and they did not require proof that we would not return to South Africa. I think this will depend on the institutions that you apply to.

Once we received the approval from ABN Amro, we had to sign the quote we received from them which we also had to send to the notary.

When we applied for the mortgage, we had asked for it to be a 20 year mortgage but our broker said they only offer 30 year mortgages and most of the time they offer fixed interest rates for 10 years but they can go for 20 years fixed interest rate. There are different types of mortgages so ask your mortgage broker to explain the difference because I'm still not 100% sure of the differences.

Once other thing to know, if you take out a mortgage and you decide to  buy another house, you can transfer your existing mortgage to a new property and that way you keep your existing interest rate and then you get a 2nd bond for the difference in price (if the new house is more expensive). This is called porting your mortgage. When we got our mortgage the interest rate was 1.4% and the interest rate is currently 4.8% so we were very lucky and we now regret not fixing the interst rate for 20 years. At least when we do buy our next house, only the small value in the difference in price will have the bigger interest rate, at least until we have to renegotiate at the end of the 10 year fixed rate period on our current mortgage.

There were a few different insurances that we had to get for the house and we decided to use the same company that did our mortgage as I was really happy with their service. We had to get the insurance before the appointment at the notary as we had to get the confirmation letter that we were covered when we went to the notary itself.

This is what we needed:

• Structural insurance

• Life Cover

• Content Insurance

We decided to move our other insurance (car, personal liability and legal aid) to the same company as we got some discounts.

For the life insurance, it works a bit differently than it does in SA, for example, the life insurance amount is aligned to the outstanding amount on the mortgage, so each year the amount that will pay out is reduced until eventually its zero. In this case, the life insurance is solely to cover the outstanding mortgage amount and nothing else.

We had to do the medical evaluation online but we did not have to do any physical health checks. We completed the online health checks on the 24th of December and we got our confirmation that we were covered on the 6th of January. Our appointment at the notary was 9am on the 7th so we got it just in time.

Our appointment was at 9am on the 7th of January, we had to meet the estate agent and sellers at the house about an hour before that. We did a walk through of the property to make sure it was in the same condition that it was in when we did the original viewing and technical inspection. We took photos of all the meter readings that we would have to submit for the utility providers. Everything was checked to make sure it was working and once that was done, we drove straight to the notary. 

The translator met us at the notary and she gave us both little headsets that we had to wear so that she could translate what the notary was telling us. The notary took us through the documents for the transfer of the deed, the property documents (kadastral) as well as the mortgage documents. We signed each document and to verbally answer some questions the notary asked us. It was a bit tricky wearing the headset and trying to listen to both the notary and the translator at the same time. It was awkward because we would be looking at the notary, she would ask a question and we would both wait for the translator to finish translating before we could answer. I think it took us about an hour to do all the signing if I recall.

The notary was very nice and everyone did speak english but they have to do all the procedings in dutch.

Once all the documents were signed, we were given the keys and congratulated. We received the digital copies of the documents a few hours later. Once we were done at the notary, we could go straight to the house to start preparing to move in.

After we were finished at the notary we had to organise the utilities, a company did contact us, I can't remember where they got our details from and I used them for setting up 1 of the utlities but they could not help with the others so essentially I just did it myself. 

Water

There is normally only one water provider for an area so I googled who the cold water supplier was and called them to register, I gave them the address and water meter reading and they asked how many people would be living in the house. They confirmed what the monthly cost would be based on an estimate and they emailed me the confirmation. I also registered on their website to double check the water meter reading and my personal details were all correct. The water was only officially registered on the 12th of January but we did have water - they don't cut if off or anything.

You can only submit meter readings once a year so the monthly bill is always an estimate.

Hot Water / District Heating

The house we bought didn't have any gas lines, but we did have district heating. We found out the provider is Vattenfell so we called them and did the same process, giving them our address, our details and the 2 water meter readings (1 for hot water and 1 for the radiators). Our contract was confirmed on the 11th of Jan.

You can only submit meter readings once a year so the monthly bill is always an esimate.

Electricity

The company that gave us the best option was Easy Nuts, they basically look at all the energy providers to get you the best rate. We ended up going with Budget Energie and they were very quick, everything was organised the same day we signed at the notary and we had our account number immediately. We have a smart meter so the readings were done automatically. 

Internet

We already had a KPN contract at our rental so we registered the move on the 31st of December with the date of the 7th and they confirmed they could only send the technician on the 14th. We had already moved everything across and had set up the modem so on the morning of the 14th, the internet automatically became active and the technician showed up after lunch but he didn't actually have to do anything because it was all working already.

We had made an appointment at the Gemeente for the following Monday the 10th to register our change in address. The notary had already sent the relevant documents in and the property had already been registered in our name, we just had to take the digital documents received from the notary with us as proof. Our new Gemeente sent the update to our old Gemeente so it was automatically changed on their side as well. We received a printout from the BPR a few days later with the update in address confirmed.

When we arrived in NL, we did not bring much furniture with from SA and we had a fully furnished rental. When we bought our house, we had to buy all new furniture and this section will provide the costs that we spent to furnish the new house. We bought brands that we are used to and we bought the middle tier in terms of budget, so not the cheapest options that were available but also not the most expensive.

Our house did come with a few appliances already (Fridge, Oven, Dishwasher) and we brought our TV with from SA.

Kitchen

• LG Microwave: €230

• Sage Coffee Machine: €750

• Bosch Freezer: €700

Lounge

• Corner Couch: €1 100

• Coffee Table: €440

• Dining Room Table: €600

• TV Stand: €160

• Single seater chaise: €470

Cleaning

• iRobot Robot Vacuum: €1 200

• Black & Decker Hand Vacuum: €100

• iRobot Robot Mop: €435

• LG Washing Machine: €770

• LG Tumble Dryer: €820

Bedrooms

• 2x Cupboards: €1 050

• Double bed: €1 610

• Bedside Tables: €60

Total: €10 500

Maakelaar (estate agent)

Homes for Expacts - Cherene - +31624500960 - https://homesforexpats.nl/

Mortgage Calculators

ABN Amro Mortgage Calculator 

ING Mortgage Calculator 

Mortage Broker

Van Marle Advies - Vincent Van Marle - https://vanmarleadvies.nl/

Insurance Broker

Van Marle Advies - Thomas Van Marle - https://vanmarleadvies.nl/

Technical Inspection

Perfectkeur - https://perfectkeur.nl/

Market / Sales Value Reports

https://www.kadaster.nl/