It must be noted that this applies only to new homes, which are sold, temporarily. Amsterdam builds around 5k homes a year (or about 1% of total stock). Of tho

It must be noted that this applies only to new homes, which are sold, temporarily. Amsterdam builds around 5k homes a year (or about 1% of total stock). Of those 5k, about 40% are sold, 40% are rented to as social housing, the rest rented at market rates. So we're talking about a law that applies to about 2k homes per year, or <0.5% of the homes in the city, and likely only for the first two years. (there's no legal instruments or interest to restrict an person's use of his property long-term). No huge impact, mostly symbolic. Plus, one can wonder whether it's effective. There's a lot of criticism on investors buying homes at market value and renting them out at market value, when really it has absolutely no bearing on the available housing stock to all citizens. There's a lot of rhetoric aimed against investors, which is kind of weird. Amsterdam is a transient place for many, so a strong non-social and non-purchase rental market has its place. Investors buy homes and rent them out to meet this demand. It pushes up prices, yes, but only because they're meeting this real demand from real people. And this higher price point is generating construction business that wouldn't exist (due to lack of economic feasibility) at the price levels of five years ago. This is what is creating new homes which actually solves the underlying problem: a housing shortage, which you can't solve by restricting use of property, capping prices or taxing investors, but by increasing the housing stock. I appreciate a it's not as black and white as 'just let the market figure it out', but the current policy maker for housing is a member of the socialist party. I've enjoyed their impact on local politics generally, but I think some of their housing proposals aren't effective. Especially not in a housing context which is already extremely distorted by national housing & welfare policy and where market forces very are limited and produce weird outcomes. I'm not against this particular idea, but I also don't see it as a big win either. It's small at best, and ineffective at worst. We'll see.