Expat Essentials

Terry Boyd: Eindhoven is about to get a lot more crowded; here’s what it’s like living here now

(Editor’s note: This post about living in Eindhoven is part of our Tech Tuesday series. Dispatches covers tech because Europe’s economies depend on the talents of our highly skilled internationals.)

Timing is everything in this life, and that goes for becoming an expat. The Brabant region of the Netherlands, which includes Eindhoven, has become – excuse the cliché – the Silicon Valley of Europe. It’s home to two dominant semiconductor companies, ASML and NXP, and lots and lots of emerging tech companies such as Axelera AI.

Eindhoven is, in short, an ideal destination for highly skilled internationals. Is that you?

ASML is projected to add another 20,000 employees during the next few years. Technical University of Eindhoven is adding students and housing, and if Geert Wilders and Pieter Omzigt go away, many of those will be American kids.

The Dutch government plans to spend $2.7 billion to improve infrastructure in the Eindhoven region to prevent ASML from leaving like Philips did back in the 1990s.

So, we thought this was a good time to write an intro to this fascinating city. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive compendium, just a quick read drawn from our eight years here. We know many will come from the United States, especially if Donald Trump is reelected. So, this is going to have an American slant.

Eindhoven is, and always has been, a company town. The company that built Eindhoven starting in the 1930s was Philips, which went from being a lightbulb maker to one of the premier consumer and commercial electronics companies in the world.

Philips faded, then moved to Amsterdam back in the 1998, with ASML emerging as the dominant company, though NXP is Europe’s dominant chipmaker.

You have several other global companies based here, including Vanderlande (owned by Toyota), DAF and VDL. And of course, High Tech Campus Eindhoven is the largest R&D campus in Europe, and is now owned by Oaktree Asset Management and CIG, Singapore’s sovereign fund in a partnership.

If you’re an engineer or other highly skilled international, this is the place for you. So, what’s it like living here on the granular level?

Eindhoven is a small town

If you’re coming from Chicago, LA or New York, Eindhoven is tiny. You can literally walk in an hour from Stratum on the South to Strijp S on the north. Also – and this is weird – the Dutch don’t think in terms of suburbs or incorporated cities. For example, ASML is in Veldhoven. Despite the fact Veldhoven is about four miles from the center of Eindhoven, the Dutch consider it a completely different town and say – I’m not making this up – that ASML is headquartered in ”a small Dutch village.” In reality, Veldhoven is mostly an industrial district without an iota of charm.

This is important because the odds you’re going to find housing in the center of the city are slim. You’re more likely to find affordable housing in nearby cities such as Heeze, Valkenswaard or Best. If you want to commute, Roermond on the Maas River is about 45 minutes south (by car) and ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a lovely, ancient city, is 30 minutes north.

The total official Eindhoven population is about 225,000. That makes it smaller than nearby Aachen, Germany. But we figure, including the ‘burbs and the part of the region that’s connected economically to Eindhoven, the pop is more likely about 1 million.

This is an expensive town

When we moved to Eindhoven in 2016, the global housing crash was just starting to fade. Houses and apartments were still abundant and affordable. Fast forward eight years, and this is one of the toughest cities in the world to find housing.

Most of the apartments you see for rent online are already taken. Ditto for houses listed for sale. Dutch real estate firms tend to leave properties on their websites even after they’re taken. Why, I don’t know.

Most of our Dutch friends who’ve bought homes during the past two years have paid at least a 20-percent premium over the asking price – 70,000 euros above the asking price in some cases. Also, houses are often bought sight-unseen and without a home inspection, something you would never do in the U.S.

There are companies such as Corporate Houseing Solutions and Expat Housing Center – who will work with you to get a rental or purchase. But as you can imagine, they’re super busy.

In a quick search, we found a couple of apartments available now in the center of the city. One is 85 meters (850 square feet) for 2,345 euros per month. There’s an apartment in the Witte Dame that is 105 m2 for 1,975 per month. Which is a pretty good deal.

But in researching this, we saw several houses on the main Expat Facebook community that were too good to be true. If you don’t live here and know the ground truth, you’d fall for the scams, which involve you putting down a deposit on this fabulous deal, then you never see the “agent” again.

The good news, there is a lot of new housing under construction in Strijp-S, the Nieuw Bergen neighborhood, Heeze, Leende and other areas. The bad news is, much of it is taken before it’s finished. A row of new houses in Leende (above) near where we live was just completed. They were never advertised for sale; the new owners just moved in. So you have to be vigilant.

Another element of Dutch life Americans will notice is that rich live next to poor. There’s a neighborhood in Valkenswaard (Dommelen-Zuid) outside Eindhoven with some of the most expensive homes in the Netherlands … and public housing across the street.

The reality is, you have to dedicate an exhausting amount of time and budget to finding someplace to live. And do it before you arrive.

Weirdly, salaries here are lower than tech centers in the U.S. Say you’re a computer engineer in Mountain View. If you’re any good at all, you’re going to be pulling down at least $200,000 per year. Here, you’re going to make half that.

Eindhoven is a great place to make money, close to fun places to spend it

Eindhoven will never be mistaken for Amsterdam. Beautiful it ain’t since it was bombed to bits during WWII, then rebuilt in heinous 70s style. That said, Eindhoven has the longest bar street in the Netherlands and mega-community events around the calendar, including Kings Day.

It has a serious football team, PSV, and lots of club sports.

But as we’ve written so many times before, there are great destinations within driving/train distance, including Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Antwerp Düsseldorf, Brussels, Paris and London. And that’s not to mention all these lesser-known cities such as Maastricht.

This is a great place for kids

It’s hard to imagine a safter place for your children. In our village, kids are riding to school and to see friends at 6 or 8 years old, with no parents in sight.

Eindhoven has some big, beautiful parks, including Genneper Park and Stadswandelpark, and it’s surrounded by protected wilderness including the Leenderbos. The only trouble is, there’s one international school and it’s fully booked all the time. We learned recently it’s finally expanding, though, so there will be more space soon. But, local schools are good and they’ll have your kids speaking Dutch in no time. Which they’ll rarely use since everyone speaks English

Eindhoven is a tough place to find help

If you’re coming from the United States, you might be surprised to go into the Taco Bell or the McDonalds here and hear the orders called out in English. In fact, you’ll go into a lot of retails stores such as H&M and TKMaxx and find there are few salespeople, if any, who speak native or fluent Dutch. Dutch kids aren’t excited about working retail and service jobs, so many of the young bilingual and trilingual people working are from Turkey, Spain, Bulgaria, Italy and elsewhere. Ditto for coffee shops. This drives the Dutch crazy, especially the nationalists.

If you’re cool with being waited on in English, the restaurant scene is varied and affordable. We love 1910, with its ambiance, creative menu and affordable wine. There are three Michelin-starred restaurants in the area, the most famous of which is De Lindenhof in Neunen. But even in tiny Heeze, just four miles from where we live, there is a 2-star Michelin restaurant called Tribeca.

Also, there’s a restaurant cluster in Eindhoven centrum called the Downtown Gourmet Market, which opened in 2018 and features a dozen different choices, including Asian food, Turkish food, Dutch food and wood-oven pizza.

When it comes to groceries, you’ll be shocked how affordable good food is.

What Americans call “artisan” food or organic is just normal food here.

Those fancy farmers’ markets where you spend $40 on a single bag of produce? That’s what you get at comparatively rock-bottom prices in the grocery stores here. And that includes inflation pricing, where some food items have doubled or tripled (read: sunflower oil). The difference is that prices actually tend to come back down, whereas in the U.S. they remain high.

This is a great place to be rich

Yes, taxes are high, about 52-percent on personal income over 69,000 euros. But if you’ve done well for yourself, you can find plenty of places to live your best life. The best neighborhoods have every sort of house from over-the-top mansions to mid-century modern houses.

Eikenburg is a classic Eindhoven ‘hood, as are De Schriversbuurt neighborhood and Villa Park, and all are in the larger Stratum district.

If you’re loaded, you can find a place in Eersel, Valkenswaard, Nuenen and Best.

Quick hits:

Health care services are incredible compared to the U.S. Health insurance is mandatory, but a basic plan is about 175 euros per month for health and dental. That covers just about all your expenses, including doctor’s visits, most meds, emergency care and even IVF treatments for women. And, Americans, this one’s for you: the deductible is 385 euros per year. Hit your deductible and just about everything is zero dollars for you for the rest of the year. Don’t lose your sh*t if your doc says you need a knee replacement. It will cost you 385 euros.

Gasoline is the equivalent of $8 per gallon, but who cares – you’ll be driving an electric car. Oooops, utilities are also really expensive compared to the U.S.

There are a lot of expats here … 40,000-plus by some estimates. There’s even an expat community, Meerhoven.

The Dutch are very social and friendly and curious as to why you’re here. They can automatically switch from Dutch to idiomatic English, which is amazing. But Americans will notice they have absolutely zero situational awareness, which you notice when you’re driving.

Everything is clean and functional. That said, the tranportation grid in Eindhoven is lacking. No trams like in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Just buses, so you have to own a car.

Firearms are tightly regulated and there’s virtually no gun crime in Eindhoven. So you don’t have to choose a seat in the cinema based on making a fast escape from a mass shooter.

There are no power outages because utilities are buried.

The infrastructure is amazing. So amazing, you know instantly when you’ve crossed into Belgium by the potholes.

Bureaucracy is fairly minimal, even when it comes to renewing residence visas and what-not.

There are lot more services for internationals than when we came here.

See a more detailed post here about Eindhoven.

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Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.

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