Ownership
Erfpacht: owning the home but not the ground
Updated August 2026
Most Dutch homes are sold on eigen grond — you buy the building and the land it stands on. Under erfpacht you buy the building and lease the ground beneath it from someone else, usually the municipality. The home is fully yours to live in, sell and mortgage. The ground is not.
It is concentrated rather than rare: in Amsterdam it is the norm across large parts of the city, and it turns up in pockets elsewhere. A listing on erfpacht is not a worse home. It is a home with one more contract attached to it, and the contract is the thing to read.
The canon, and the words on the listing
The periodic fee for using the ground is the canon. Whether you pay it, and for how long, is what the phrases on a listing are telling you:
- Afgekocht tot [year] — the canon has been paid in advance up to that date. Until then you owe nothing; after it, the terms are renegotiated and the cost can change substantially. The nearer that year, the more it matters.
- Eeuwigdurend afgekocht — bought off in perpetuity. No canon, ever, under the current arrangement. This is the most comfortable version to buy, and the closest erfpacht comes to behaving like eigen grond.
- Canon € … per jaar — you are paying, now, and it belongs in your monthly cost sum alongside the mortgage.
On Homawia this sits on the listing page under Ownership, with the agent’s own wording kept intact rather than paraphrased, and you can see at a glance whether a home is on owned or leased ground.
Why lenders care
A mortgage is secured on the property, so the lease conditions become the lender’s business. Some conditions — a short remaining term, an unfavourable revision clause, an older contract that has not been modernised — can make a home harder to finance or affect what a lender will offer. That is not a reason to avoid erfpacht; it is a reason to put the conditions in front of your adviser early rather than after an offer is accepted.
Questions worth asking before you bid
- Is the canon bought off, and until when — a date, not “a long time”.
- Which set of lease conditions applies? Municipalities have revised theirs over the decades, and older contracts behave differently from current ones.
- What happens at the end of the term, and how is the new canon calculated?
- Has the seller applied to switch to a perpetual arrangement where the municipality offers one, and if so, at what stage is it?
The seller’s agent should have the lease deed. Ask for it, and have the notary read it before you are committed — this is precisely what they are for.