Obviously this journey can only be carried out if the costs back home are reduced to the minimum. Therefore it was mandatory that our apartment in Amsterdam would be rented out so that these costs were covered. But how are you approaching this? What would be the best solution?

First we searched the internet and soon we found out that renting out an apartment in Amsterdam is actually not a problem at all. Of course we knew that there is a huge shortage of houses. The Brexit would only make this problem worse as many companies leave the UK moving to mainland Europe. Together with their employees they cross The Channel in search for a roof. Expats would be the solution.

October 2019 we contacted the first estate agent and submitted our ideas…”please come back April 2020″ was their respond…astonished as we were we left it as it was for a while.

Time ticked away and before we knew it, it was February 2020 and we both got a bit nervous about the situation. We just cannot go on holiday without renting our square meters.
We contacted another estate agent just for getting a more detailed overview about what our chances were. This company told us exactly the same…” just do not worry…furnished houses are in such high demand that it will be rented in a blink of an eye…”
Hopefully the Corona crises will not be a spanner in the works…

30th April 2020 we actually had an appointment with an estate agent. Once we got settled in our apartment we could basically fire all our questions we had. Professionally they were answered and we received a complete overview on how it will work out in the end for us. Our biggest concern was…again…Corona. The renting situation in Amsterdam is just not the same as it was before the crisis. Demand is low and due to some changes in renting rules forced by the government current renters have about 3 months added to their renting contract. All that means it is harder to find new tenants and renting prices are dropping…not the scenario we were hoping for.
Anyway, new photos and videos were made to put on their real estate website. All we can do is wait to see what will happen.

Corona

Our apartment went online for a week or so…and although we got some response we did not invite anybody for a visit. The world got a new visitor which spread out very fast…corona. Apparently the world was put on fire and we wanted to wait for a couple of weeks more to see what’s going on. 

A couple of weeks became a year and one year became two…but then…

The year 2022

Two years have passed and we don’t want to wait any longer to make our dream come true…In March 2022 we’ve contacted our real estate agent again and basically we got the exact same answer as back in 2020. They literally told us not to worry too much. If we’d put the apartment online the 1st of April we should have plenty of time to find a new tenant. And that is exactly how it went…
In April we went to Dresden for three weeks and during this stay we soon received a phone call from the estate agent saying that there were a number of interested parties. Not long after that, all the necessary documents were signed, which means that as of May 21, we no longer have a permanent place of residence.