Column | Buy a house in Trumpian times

We live in an energy -efficient apartment in Amsterdam, no upstairs neighbors, unobstructed views over the water with an occasional sailing boats, a garage place and a spacious box in the basement. Great neighbors, never any nuisance. Nevertheless, we have been dissatisfied with our home for years: the three of us are too much on each other’s lip. When I am working in the sitting room, I hear my husband calling in the office. If my daughter is in bed, we can no longer receive a visit because she wakes up. And if someone gets up early to take a shower, the whole house is immediately awake. How we survived Corona in this house for two years is still a mystery to me. All three simultaneously video -loving all day, nowhere a place to relax, not even on the balcony, because of the communal inner garden, and outside the curfew.

We have recently started looking for our dream house. In Amsterdam, in an overstrained housing market. So we already had to make quite a few concessions to the concept of Droomhuis. Although we are willing to lend a lot, that house will still not be very large. But the house that we have in mind at the moment (next week we are probably two tons of overbading) has one outside and is a lot closer to our daughter’s school.

In the meantime, the world economy seems to collapse. On my modest US share package (my pension) I lose thousands of euros every day. In the meantime, the newspapers are about little other than the ridiculous Tariffs From US President Trump and the consequences thereof. Pension funds are concerned about the abrupt decrease in their funding degrees. If this continues, ‘entering’ in the new pension system for some pension funds becomes quite complicated.

We bought our apartment in the summer of 2008. So we have experience with economic crises and the effect on the housing market. We had not yet transferred the things from our then divorced households (we had to get rid of half because it did not fit), or Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Our house was then under water for almost ten years. Would the current crisis atmosphere also skip to the Amsterdam housing market?

For the time being there is nothing that indicates that. In March 2025, the average house price in Amsterdam was more than 707,000 euros. The amount that people pay is on average 8 to 10 percent above the asking price with outliers up to 15 percent, in wanted neighborhoods such as the Pijp or Oud-West. Nationally, house prices rose just as fast last quarter, with an average of 10 percent compared to the previous year. The average house price in the Netherlands is therefore almost five tons. Those who are alone and does not earn a lot of sports can therefore forget their own house. In terms of house price increases, the Netherlands is one of the leaders worldwide, an overview this week showed FD. Anyway, in these figures the last straps of Donald Trump are of course not yet incorporated.

Are the effects of the stock market falls going to touch the housing market and is this a very bad time to buy a new house? I doubt it. The scarcity on the housing market is immense, I experience every day through stories from colleagues, clients and friends. And accelerated construction of extra homes does not get off the ground, although politicians have been talking about it for years.

And moreover: we just really want to leave our current home. And so this week we will also go over again in the hope that it will succeed. Whether we put a financial sling around our neck for the second time in our lives? We will probably know in a few months.

Aylin Bilic is headhunter and publicist.

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