Buying a house in Amsterdam as an expat: how to get in before Funda

I am Jiri, an estate agent in Maastricht. Amsterdam is not my city, but the questions expats ask me about it are always the same three: how much over the asking price do people pay, what is this ground lease everyone mentions, and is there any way to find a home before forty other people see it on Funda. Here are the answers as I would give them to a friend.

What homes cost

Average sale price, Amsterdam

€630,621

2025, +2.1% on 2024

Province of Noord-Holland

€570,463

2025

The Netherlands

€479,527

2025

That average hides a lot. Most homes sold in Amsterdam are apartments, many of them in buildings from before 1940, and a family house with a garden is rare and priced accordingly. Bidding above the asking price is still normal: in the second quarter of 2026, 71 percent of existing homes in the Netherlands sold above it (NVM). The NVM also publishes quarterly figures for Amsterdam itself, and a selling agent will usually tell you what comparable homes in the street went for if you ask.

Two rules matter more than any percentage. A Dutch bank lends at most the market value that an independent valuer puts on the home, so everything you bid above that valuation comes out of your savings. And the buyer's costs, kosten koper, also come out of your savings: two percent transfer tax for a home you will live in yourself (buyers under 35 buying their first home pay none below a price limit set each year), plus the notary, the valuer and the mortgage adviser. Ask a mortgage adviser who works with expats to work out your maximum before you view anything.

Ground lease: read it before you bid

Most of the land in Amsterdam belongs to the city, which leases it to whoever owns the building on it. This is erfpacht. It is not a reason to avoid a home, but it changes what the home costs you, and every lease is different. Some owners have paid the ground rent in advance until a certain year, some pay it every year, and since 2017 owners have been able to switch to a perpetual lease on terms fixed at the moment of switching. Whether the current owner did, and on what terms, is in the deed.

Ask the selling agent for the lease deed before you make an offer, and have your notary or mortgage adviser explain it. Your lender counts the yearly ground rent as a monthly cost, so it lowers what you can borrow.

The owners' association

Almost every apartment comes with a VvE, the association of all owners in the building, which is responsible for the roof, the facade and the foundations. In an old Amsterdam building that may be three or four neighbours. Dutch law requires every VvE to set money aside for maintenance; ask for the last two years of minutes, the current reserve and the maintenance plan. A building that has saved nothing while the roof is due will send each owner a bill.

Where homes change hands before Funda

In the neighbourhoods people want most, a good share of the homes never reach Funda. They go to a neighbour who wanted a bigger flat, to someone on a local agent's list, or to the person who wrote to the owner a year earlier. I have written about six of those neighbourhoods; the Jordaan, De Pijp, Oud-West, the Rivierenbuurt, the Apollobuurt and the Watergraafsmeer.

There are two ways in. The first is to get onto the lists of the selling agents whose boards you see in those streets: email three to five of them with who you are, where you want to live, your budget and your mortgage adviser's confirmation, and call a week later. The second goes one step further back, to the owner before any agent is involved. How both work is in how to buy an off-market house in the Netherlands.

Writing to owners in Amsterdam

In Amsterdam an English letter surprises nobody, and many owners have been expats themselves. What does make them throw a letter away is anything that looks like an investor's mailing, and Amsterdam letterboxes get plenty of those. So keep it personal: who you are, why this building or this street, and that you will live there yourself. No price and no deadline. Choose a few streets and twenty or thirty front doors rather than a whole postcode; a letter that could have gone to any address reads like one.

A template in English and Dutch is in writing to a Dutch homeowner. With DoorLetter the first letter is free, printed and delivered by PostNL, and the owner can reply anonymously with the code in the letter, also months later. How that works is on how it works.

Buying to live in, not to let

Several Dutch cities, Amsterdam among them, protect cheaper homes against buy-to-let: for up to four years after buying, you may only rent the home out with a permit from the city. If you buy to live in it, this changes nothing. If your employer might post you abroad again, ask about it before you buy, not after.

The steps after a yes

When an owner replies and you agree on the outlines, the route is the ordinary Dutch one. An independent valuer values the home for your mortgage, your adviser arranges the loan, and a notary or the selling agent draws up the written purchase agreement. Only when both of you have signed it is there a sale, and as a private buyer you then have three days to withdraw without giving a reason. A verbal yes binds nobody. Then you pay a deposit, usually ten percent or a bank guarantee, and a few weeks or months later you sign the transfer at the notary's office and get the keys.