Typically you use them for the weekend. My mom for example lives in a busy city and has a small garden, she uses the holiday home as a weekend getaway and a place to keep the sailing boat.
The Netherlands are small and this area is very central, about 20 minutes drive from Amsterdam or Utrecht. So most owners use it in the same way.
why not?
There is an app to check water quality. In general it's fine to swim in, but at high temperatures sometimes algae form. That's common in lots of these kinds of lakes in the Netherlands.
Given this is the Netherlands and this appears to be a wealthy area, I'm quite sure they don't. Guessing they either have septic tanks or holding tanks that need to be pumped regularly.
But no electricity (need generator) and you cannot drive your car to your lakehouse.
Plus, I bet the mosquitos are horrible, it is a former swamp.
Prices are typical for this side of the country.
These are holiday homes for wealthy elites in Amsterdam. You either go there straight from Amsterdam by helicopter or you have a chauffeur drive/boat you there. These people don’t drive themselves.
But probably not for long with non-primary real estate being taxed at 2.2% a year.
This one [1]? It's a huge villa (not on an island) plus 2 islands for that price, so not really comparable.
I found a more representative example of an island with a house that is currently for sale [2]. It is listed for €1.5 million.
[1] https://www.quotenet.nl/vastgoed/qasteel/a62799798/joop-drec... [2] https://www.funda.nl/detail/koop/loosdrecht/huis-drecht-16/4...
GDPR/ePD also requires "reject all" to be a single button, and asking the user to click a billion separate "reject" toggles is against the law, but many sites don't care.
Peat is a soft, spongy material made from dead plants that did not fully rot. It forms very slowly in wet, swampy places called bogs
It is used as fuel as well as fertilizer
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peat-...
"Although peatlands make up just 3 percent of land on Earth, they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined."
Nice it was historically just dug up and the leftovers turned into expensive holiday homes.
There are just a few uses for peat that don't have an alternative. I mention this to fellow gardeners because if you go 100% peat-free, you'll end up with an expensive disaster and, out of frustration, may go back to peat entirely.
I think it's not productive to ignore the small corner cases where peat is almost a requirement.
Like most lakes in the NL these tend to be shallow (~1.5-2m depth is common, even the biggest lake -Ijsselmeer- is only about 5..6m in deepest areas).
“the South of Market peoples”
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There is a running joke (hundred+ years now) that the famous "Ruby Falls" on Lookout Mountain is in fact better named "Poopy Falls" – since the primary water source are the few hundred septic drainlines higher-up the mountain's-top.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Falls>
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If you have any open cuts/sores, do NOT swim in any outdoor water.
https://www.quotenet.nl/vastgoed/qasteel/a62814634/luxueus-p...
This was in 2024 so likely valued around 9 million by now.
The home you listed at Funda comes in at €42000 per square meter which is unheard of for The Netherlands. Not even Amsterdam Center comes close. These homes are one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the country.
Hmm yes, 'everybody' in the NL is aware of that.
> In the latter case, they sometimes left those strips of land to transport the fuel.
Not really. The turf blocks would be stacked in piles & left to dry for a while. But then often transported by boat (through the newly created channels). The leftover strips of land could be used to have men, or a horse, pull such boats on a rope.
Thankfully, the use cases are small - I have 20lbs of peat, and it's seen me through about four years and is still half full.
Inaccessible lake homes being allowed to be used as a primary residence will not fix it.