The first step is to determine your budget and research your Dutch mortgage options. What is the maximum mortgage you can borrow? How much are you willing to spend on a home? It is important that your home remains affordable so that you can still enjoy life.

For a rough indication, you can use our mortgage calculator. For an exact mortgage calculation, you can make a free appointment with one of our mortgage advisors at Home Financials.

After this appointment you will have a clear overview of your maximum Dutch mortgage and your monthly costs. This way you will know in which price range you should look for a house and avoid buying a house you cannot afford.

To search for a suitable home you can use the largest funda platform. You can browse on websites like Funda to find out which houses are for sale. I also recommend using the social media mediums and following the broker pages. And final to register for the new housing offer of the relevant broker. Since you already determined your budget for buying a house, you know which houses you can and cannot afford.

Have you found the perfect house? Then it’s time to call the real estate agent for planning a home viewing! If you work with a buying agent, you are more likely to have your eventual offer accepted. Of course, this is not a requirement and you can also arrange it yourself.

Make before you visit this house a list with questions which you want to ask. This means that when you’re buying a property in the Netherlands, you’ll have to gather information about the house you want to buy.

Don't forget to add the financial clause "subject to financing." In the Netherlands there are no pre-approvals or principle mortgages, so you need to be sure you can get a mortgage for what you are bidding.

Congratulations!

Your offer has been accepted. Now it’s time to sign a presale agreement (koopakte). It must be drawn up by a lawyer and signed by both buyer and seller. As a buyer, you can protect yourself by signing a purchase agreement with a financial clause. This protects you if a mortgage lender decides to decline a mortgage application, enabling you to pull out of the sale without penalty.

Since you don't buy a home every day, the buyer also has a 3-day cooling-off period to cancel the deal without reason. When the cooling-off period is over, the purchase agreement is binding to both parties. Typically after arranging your mortgage, a deposit of 10% of the purchase price is required – if you don’t have this saved, your mortgage adviser can arrange a bank guarantee.