Your expat mortgage borrowing capacity in the Netherlands is calculated the same way as for Dutch nationals, based on your gross income, debts and the property value, not your passport. Most expats can finance up to 100 percent of the purchase price, and sometimes more if you also finance energy improvements. What trips people up isn’t the rules themselves, but how income like allowances, bonuses and the 30% ruling actually gets treated by different lenders.
In practice, three things drive your maximum mortgage: your gross income, your existing debts, and the interest rate used to stress test your application. There’s no separate, lower borrowing limit for expats. The loan-to-value rules, the maximum percentages, and the interest rates on offer are identical to what a Dutch national would get.
Where it gets more complicated is documentation and how a lender interprets your specific income situation. A temporary contract, foreign allowances, or income earned partly abroad all need extra explanation, even though they don’t change the underlying borrowing rules. This is why two expats with the same salary sometimes end up with very different maximum mortgages, simply because they applied at different banks.
Minimum residence requirements also vary by lender, ranging from as little as one month to six months or longer. Your salary generally needs to be paid in euros; most lenders won’t accept income in foreign currency, which matters if you’re paid partly from abroad.
Not directly, and this surprises a lot of expats. The 30% ruling lets qualifying highly skilled migrants receive 30 percent of their salary tax free for up to five years, which boosts your net income. But most lenders calculate your maximum mortgage based on your full gross salary, as if the entire amount were taxable, so the ruling mainly improves what lands in your bank account each month rather than your theoretical maximum loan.
Some lenders do factor in the ruling when assessing affordability, but they typically stress test what happens once it ends. That’s an important detail if your ruling is due to expire partway through your mortgage term. Take an expat earning 100,000 euros gross with the 30% ruling, buying a property worth 800,000 euros. Because the bank calculates based on gross salary rather than the tax-free benefit, the realistic maximum mortgage lands closer to 700,000 euros, not the full purchase price, and a linear mortgage that repays faster during the higher net-income years is often a sensible way to prepare for the moment the ruling ends.
Eligibility for the ruling itself requires meeting a minimum salary threshold, around 48,000 euros in 2026 for most expats, specific expertise, and recruitment from abroad. From January 2027, the maximum tax-free percentage drops to 27 percent for anyone whose ruling first started in 2024 or later. If your ruling already applied before 2024, you keep the full 30 percent for the rest of its term.
One thing worth flagging clearly: the 30% ruling only applies to employees. If you’re self-employed as a sole proprietor, you can’t use it, and neither can you use the related tax-free reimbursement scheme for extraterritorial costs, since both require an employer relationship. If you run your own BV and are employed by it as a director-major shareholder, you may still qualify if you meet the standard conditions.
Base salary is the obvious one, but many expats also receive housing, relocation or international assignment allowances on top. A lot of Dutch lenders will count these toward your qualifying income, provided they’re structural and clearly documented in your employment contract or employer statement.
This can meaningfully increase your borrowing capacity compared to a standard domestic salary, but lenders differ significantly in which allowances they accept and how heavily they weigh them. That means the choice of lender directly affects your maximum mortgage, which is exactly the kind of comparison worth getting proper mortgage advice on rather than relying on a single bank’s online calculator.
Bonuses, freelance side income, and income from abroad add further complexity, since each lender applies its own criteria for whether and how much of it counts. Getting this matched correctly to the right lender is often where the real difference in borrowing capacity comes from, more so than any single number in isolation.
The Nationale Hypotheek Garantie, a government backed safety net, generally gets you a lower interest rate because it reduces the lender’s risk. In 2026 the NHG limit rises to 470,000 euros, or 498,200 euros if you’re also financing energy-saving measures. Roughly 70 percent of expat home purchases may now qualify for NHG under this raised limit.
If you ever have to sell at a loss because of circumstances like unemployment, disability, or divorce, NHG can cover the residual debt that’s left over. Many expats have never encountered anything like it in their home country, so it’s worth understanding it’s essentially free downside protection layered on top of a cheaper rate.
| Fixed-rate period | Test rate used | Illustrative maximum mortgage |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10 years | Around 5% (AFM test rate) | Approximately 679,000 euros |
| 10 years or more | Actual contracted rate (e.g. 3.8%) | Approximately 735,000 euros |
Choosing a fixed-rate period under 10 years means your lender has to use a test interest rate, currently around 5 percent, to check whether you can afford the mortgage even if rates rise. That’s regardless of the actual, lower rate you’re being offered today.
Fix your rate for 10 years or longer, and the lender uses the real contracted rate instead of the higher test rate, which usually unlocks a noticeably bigger maximum mortgage. As the table above shows, that difference can run into tens of thousands of euros on an identical income, purely because of the length of your fixed period. For expats weighing a shorter horizon in the Netherlands against the extra borrowing room a longer fix provides, this is a genuine trade-off worth thinking through carefully, ideally with someone who has seen how different advisors handle these calculations across lenders.
Beyond the mortgage itself, buying costs (kosten koper) typically run 3 to 6 percent of the purchase price and have to come from your own funds, not the mortgage. These cover things like the property valuation, notary fees, and mortgage advisory costs. A 10 percent deposit is usually required shortly after signing the preliminary purchase agreement, payable from savings or via a bank guarantee.
Not every cost is treated the same by the tax office. Valuation costs, notary fees for the mortgage deed, advisory fees and NHG costs are tax deductible in the year of purchase. Transfer tax and estate agent fees are not deductible, no matter how the rest of the deal is structured. Building this into your budget early avoids the unpleasant surprise of discovering, right before completion, that your own funds requirement is larger than expected.
Working out your real expat mortgage borrowing capacity means comparing how different lenders treat your specific income mix, not just running one online calculator.
If you want a clear answer on what you can actually borrow, reach out via our contact page.
