Living in Amsterdam
In the year 2026, I decided to change to a Peripatetic lifestyle, in my favorite city: Amsterdam. This blog post documents the reasons why it no longer makes sense to rent or buy in Amsterdam when you only need a place to stay in the weekend.
It is well-known that Amsterdam, and especially its inner city center, is optimized for tourists. While looking for a place to live, I made a calculation to rationally and economically decide my next move. It needs to be Amsterdam and only during the weekends (until mid-2028, at which point I should have settled somewhere). With a monthly budget of about 1300 euros: should I buy or rent? The money can be used to pay for an annuity mortage, or to pay in rent. In either case, also the budget needs to cover the costs of heating, electricity, and city taxes.
Unfortunately nothing seems to be available within that budget: housing is a difficult problem, especially in the city center. But is it really not possible to get access to the city center? Although the square meter price is now exceeding 12k euro for small studios, and rental prices are similarly excessive… what about renting a hotel room instead? Thanks to the many hotels and tourists, prices are competetive! When I pay less than 300 euro per weekend, it is cheaper to live in this way than it is to either rent or buy. And the added flexibility of just-in-time management may even save me a buck or two.
Time to become a tourist in my own city!
This web log keeps record of the hotels in Amsterdam in which I have ‘lived’, in reverse chronology.
Cover image credit: Juke Schweizer
