I currently live in South Africa and well, I want a plan for a place to move to in the next 5 years max. The problem is i can’t decide where to go and as much as I love Australia, it feels too far from the time zones where all my people are.
So I have decided that Europe/UK would be perfect but can’t find a perfect fit. I have a UK passport
I am looking for:
- mild weather. Not too bothered to be honest but not looking for a snow 8 months of the year or rain 8 months of the year. Ideally i just want a place that gets some sunlight, some rain, some cold and some hot days
- low level or low acknowledgment of corruption. I want my taxes to do something -low crime rate
- good work life balance with a decent opportunity for living. Currently working at a Big 4 consultancy so hoping I can have a nice enough lifestyle but not be working 24/7
I really like places like Netherlands, Scotland, Germany but have found various flaws. I also really like the Mediterranean
I don’t really like the UK but prefer something like Scotland. They just apparently get less sun than I’d like
Well, in The Netherlands it actually is.
We are (after Malta) the country with the highest population density in the EU.
That means there is not very much space left for building houses, more use of infrastructure etc.
And our population growth is coming almost only from immigration. In 2023 we had -900 natural growth (births vs deaths) and +110.000 from immigrants.
We just can’t handle these numbers anymore in such a small country with already a lot of housing issues.
The population growth rate in NL has actually decreased in the last 70 years, not increased. And even in the last 20 years. It’s a supply problem not a demand problem.
There’s plenty of space to build both out and up. But for politicians that’s less popular and easy than just blaming immigrants.
Yep this. Housing crisis fully caused by 12 years VVD but the smallest group of immigrants who actually flee from war are blamed. Oh also sending everyone one with a different skin colour back ‘home’ even if they were born in NL is apparently a good idea. Depressing af
Have you ever travelled outside of the randstad? Its not the space we’re missing. It’s the fact that we stopped building cheap houses ages ago and are just now starting to attempt to catch up. Stef Blok ruined our housing market by allowing investors to buy up huge stocks of social housing. Add to that the fact that we now have a high interest rate which makes it the worst possible time to be building houses. The fact the we ‘lack space’ is another big myth. Did u know that if every municipality builds 1 street worth of houses our whole problem would be fixed?
I know the housing market is fucked up, especially the ‘huisjesmelkers’ had golden times the last decades. To give you some more insights in the migration dilemma, see this post. Hope that clears up some questions.