Wednesday, September 8

Living costs

299° 22' NET

This is something which makes me always grind my teeth. The cost of living.

Some background:
In The Netherlands it is impossible to get a place to stay. With this I mean rental places, you can always buy - if you can afford it.
Rental houses and flats are in two sectors, private and those distributed by kind of housing organisations. These organisations have huge waiting lists (unless your dad works for this organisation), it's not uncommon for you to wait for a place longer than 2 years. That's 2 y-e-a-r-s. And that's the lower limit, some have been waiting from 6 to 8 years.
It's kind of a long time to see if you can get something with all the necessary comforts.

So, this means a lot of people go buy or rent from private persons. That's what I did too. Even that is not so straight forward, because these private places also go very fast. Usually you have to know someone who knows someone who.... and so on. Anyway, once you have something, you probably stick with it, that may be the only chance you have in six months.

Sticking with it means that if the place is a mess, you learn like mess. I was kind of lucky, since the whole place got renovated. The renovation was for structures so I only got the space, which means I had to put the floor in and paint the walls. Also all kitchen appliences had to be bought.

At the moment I am paying 600 euros, that's about 730 US dollars per month for 65 sq.meters / ~77 sq. yards. That's only the rent. On top of that there is of course gas and electricity and water.

If I had a place from that organisation I'd be probably paying around 400 e for a similar set up.

Someone said once "shit happens". Well, it does.


Vector at Wednesday, September 08, 2004

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