National open house at listed homes pulls in 135,000

NIEUWEGEIN – A national open house at about 45,000 homes listed for sale attracted 135,000 viewers on a recent Saturday. The national open house was the brainchild of the realtors group NVM, which has 135,000 of the currently 170,000 homes on the market. NVM reported that one in five homes attracted no viewers. The realtors’ group is cautiously optimistic about the market slowly returning to normal after the downturn of the past eighteen months. The realtors are concerned about the rise of a new debate about mortgage interest deductibility, an idea pushed by the progressive parties but opposed by the Christian Democrats and the conservative liberal VVD. The deductibility may well be one of the oldest tax exemptions of its kind in the world, since it dates all the way back to 1893. On the other side of the ledger, there is the rental value of one’s home which is considered a taxable benefit.