Students on A'dam housing market

Students on the Amsterdam housing market

Not all students at Amsterdam educational institutions will live in Amsterdam.

A large proportion continue to live with their parents; this share has been increasing for many years, just as an increasing proportion of young people in the Netherlands continue to live with their parents; on average up to about 24 years of age.

In addition, many students will not live in the municipality of Amsterdam, but in neighboring municipalities (especially in Diemen, Amstelveen)

In principle, foreign students will always live on their own.

Due to the increase in the number of students and the doubling of the number of foreign students, the pressure on the housing market has grown a lot. In other words: the housing shortage among students has increased enormously.

At the start of each academic year, emergency measures are taken again, such as the 60 temporary wooden houses for international students in the Amsterdamse Bos in September 2021 (ZERO 20 September 2021).

This despite the construction of a large number of independent and non-independent student rooms in recent years. From 2010 to 2019, approximately 14,000 student units (of which almost 5,000 temporary) were built in Amsterdam (From: NUL20 September 2021). Since 2015, commercial developers/market parties have also built a large number of student units.

Foreign students and students who come far from Amsterdam have priority on student rooms, but usually the greatest need is only solved at the end of the calendar year.

Special housing complexes for foreign students are responding to the housing needs of "expat students", such as the Spinoza Campus of Duwo in Zuidoost and recently by De Key on the Poeldijkstraat.

Students from outside the EU can often pay a lot for both their studies and housing, which makes them an interesting market for developers and landlords: IC Campus – Student Hotel – Student Experience - Hotel Jansen – Xior – De Key - etc.

Figures on students living at home and away from home are difficult to obtain.

The share of Dutch students living at home has been increasing for years, partly as a result of the housing crisis – which is having an extra hard time in Amsterdam – and the loan system. This was temporarily interrupted in the corona year 2020, when a large number of students living at home moved to university cities after all, because the rooms of foreign students there were vacant (ZERO 20 September 2021).

In the autumn of 2020, the UvA, VU and HvA made 1500 less housing units available to foreign students because they did not offer an 'exchange program' to foreign students due to corona. These exchange or exchange programs usually last only 1 semester. The UvA, VU and HvA have a guarantee or reservation with the providers of student housing, in particular Duwo and De Key, for foreign students. When this temporarily expired, Dutch students could live in these spaces.

(ZERO August 20, 2020)

In the Keuzegids 2017 we read that 65% of UvA students and 55% of VU students live in rooms ( Keuzegids.org).

The following overview of students living away from home comes from a Parool survey:

89% of Rietveld students,

75% of the AHK students

65.3 of UvA students

56.2% of VU students

We are not aware of any figures from the AUAS.

More than half of all non-resident students who study in Amsterdam would not live in Amsterdam (i.e. in Amstelveen, Diemen, Almere and elsewhere)

(From Het Parool 2 December 2015)

Of the students in higher professional education, 61 % did not live in rooms in 2010 (From: HvanA November 2020).

With a rough estimate, I assume that no more than 25% of AUAS students live alone. Of the 50,000 AUAS students, 12,500 would then live on their own.

With 75% of the approximately 3000 AHK students = 2250

With 89% of the almost 900 Rietveld students = 800

This means that the pressure from HBO students on the housing market would amount to approximately 15,000 students.

The declining trend of living away from home at the UvA and VU will be compensated by the growth in the number of foreign students, who will always be living away from home.

With 65% UvA students not living away from home (26,650) and 55% VU living away from home (17,435), the total number of WO students not living away from home is around 45,000 students.

In total, of the HBO and WO students together, around 60,000 students will live on their own, a large part of which will not end up within the municipality but in the region.

Jaap Draaisma, June 29, 2022