> Planning to buy a home? Buying a house is one of those life-changing events. Once you have found the house of your dreams, most people tend to be too distracted by the butterflies in their stomach to be capable of negotiating without losing their head. Which is exactly where Mie-Lan Kok Estate Agency comes in, as a professional and reliable estate agent whose job it is to relieve you of the entire search and purchase process, vetting your preferences and requirements against the feasibilities of the housing market and translating your brief into a tangible and realistic plan of action and as such, offering you the benefit of its professional expertise and experience of negotiations about prices and transfer conditions. We consider it our mission to ensure that your residential wishes should come true. Foreign employees of Dutch-based companies, or “expatriates” as they are usually referred to, increasingly prefer buying a home to renting one. One of the questions to be answered in deciding whether it would make sense to buy rather than rent (or the other way around) concerns the term for which a dwelling should be found. When moving house, a homeowner will incur a variety of charges including stamp duty (at 6 percent of the purchase price for a freehold property), estate agency charges and notarial fees, to a total of roughly 10-12 percent on top of the purchase price. It will take at least around five years in the current market climate to recoup these additional charges. Moreover, as expatriates are often confronted with differences in legislation and regulations, it makes sense to engage a specialist estate agency that knows what is what. As Mie-Lan Kok Estate Agency, we have many years of experience as a sparring partner for house-hunting expatriates in the Netherlands, as our list of references will confirm. > Property profile One of the first things we do, in consultation with yourself, is draw up a property profile that covers your entire residential wish list. Based on your search criteria, we then embark on the search for a suitable home. > Proactive coaching and advice We liaise with you as soon as we have found a number of properties that match your profile. As an affiliate of VBO, we have access to a variety of networks that feature the latest housing supply, from which we can quickly and easily make an preliminary selection. You may have spotted potentially interesting properties yourself, which we will also vet against your profile to see whether they would qualify for an initial viewing. Once a selection of properties have been pinpointed that (appear to) meet your requirements, we will liaise with the current owners to arrange a series of viewings. Together we will look over the properties, discussing afterwards to what extent each of them has been found to suit your wants and needs. So much the better if one of them has, but if not, we’ll simply continue our search until we have found you the perfect property. The actual bidding is also something you can trust us to see to on your behalf, in close consultation with yourself, it goes without saying, our ultimate aim being that agreement should be reached on the best possible terms (e.g. correct acceptance, sound examination of legal, structural and environmental factors, et cetera). > Check and final viewing When agreement has been reached with the vendor, we will check the contract of sale, the draft deed of conveyance and the notarial statement of completion, after which we will schedule a final viewing, for you to ensure that your new home is handed over to you in a proper state, and attend the notarial transport of title. In short: we will take the entire purchase process off your hands. > Supplementary services In addition to coaching and advising our clients in the implementation of the many facets of the home-hunting path, we also offer the following supplementary services: