Buying a house in Haarlem as an expat: Amsterdam's trains, and the streets everyone wants

I am Jiri, an estate agent in Maastricht. Haarlem is the city people move to when they have given up on Amsterdam but not on Amsterdam's trains, and that is what makes it both pleasant and difficult: everyone who lost a bidding round in Amsterdam-West is now looking at the same streets as you. Here is what I would tell a friend who has just moved to the Netherlands and has fallen for it.

What homes cost

Average sale price, Haarlem

€576,569

2025, +5.1% on 2024

Province of Noord-Holland

€570,463

2025

The Netherlands

€479,527

2025

That average covers a city with two very different markets: the compact, mostly pre-war neighbourhoods around the centre and south of it, where expats and Amsterdam families compete, and the post-war parts to the north and east, where a family house still costs less than the same house across the dunes. Bidding above the asking price is normal in the first group. In the second quarter of 2026, 71 percent of existing homes in the Netherlands sold above the asking price (NVM), and the province of North Holland is not where that figure is lowest. What that means in euros and how to decide what you bid is in overbidding in the Netherlands.

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 it comes from savings. And the buyer's costs, two percent transfer tax for a home you will live in plus the notary, valuer and adviser, come from savings too. Ask a mortgage adviser who works with expats for your maximum before you view.

The train, and what it does to the market

Haarlem's station is about a quarter of an hour from Amsterdam Centraal, and Schiphol is close by bus and by train. That is why so many people who work in Amsterdam live here, and why the streets within cycling distance of the station are the ones everyone wants. If your work is at the Zuidas or at Schiphol, look at the south and east of the city; if it is in the centre of Amsterdam, the north and the station area are just as convenient. A home a little further from the station is often the better deal, because the market prices the walk.

Old houses: foundations and the owners' association

Much of Haarlem's charm is built before 1940, and that comes with two questions. The first is the foundation. Like Amsterdam, Haarlem stands on soft ground, and many older houses rest on wooden piles; where the groundwater has dropped, the piles can rot, and repair runs into tens of thousands of euros. For any house built before about 1970, ask whether the foundation has been investigated or repaired, and make your bid subject to a survey if nobody knows.

The second is the owners' association. Many of the townhouses in the Kleverpark and the Koninginnebuurt are split into a ground-floor flat with a garden and one or two flats above it, each with a VvE of two or three owners. Dutch law requires every association to save for maintenance; ask for the minutes, the reserve and the maintenance plan, because in a building of a hundred years old the roof and the facade are shared costs.

Where homes change hands before Funda

In the neighbourhoods people want most, a good share of homes never reach Funda. They go to a neighbour, to someone on a local agent's list, or to the person who wrote to the owner a year earlier. I have written about three of those neighbourhoods; the Kleverpark, north of the station, with its 1920s streets and the park in the middle; Bosch en Vaart, south of the centre, with the large houses that Amsterdam families cross the city for; and the Koninginnebuurt between the two, with the Frederikspark and the Haarlemmerhout at the end of the street.

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 a few of them with who you are, where you want to live, your budget and your 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 Haarlem

Haarlem is used to newcomers, and an English letter is read; a short Dutch version on the back is noticed, because Haarlem families often stay for decades and the older owners are the ones with the houses you want. What gets a letter binned is anything that looks like an investor's mailing. So keep it personal: who you are, why this street, that you came to the Netherlands for work and are staying, 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 you can send as it is, in English and in Dutch, is in the letter 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.

The steps after a yes

When an owner replies and you agree on the outlines, the route is the ordinary Dutch one, described step by step in buying a house in the Netherlands as an expat: an independent valuer values the home for your mortgage, your adviser arranges the loan, and a notary 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. A verbal yes binds nobody.