Wassenaar—Holland’s Old-Money Enclave—Gets New Buzz

Wassenaar, an old-money enclave in the Netherlands, has a new bounce in its step, as international and local buyers revive demand for its thatched-roof mansions and wooded estates. Wassenaar is “the Greenwich, Conn., of Holland,” says Courtney Smith van Rij, a 51-year-old Texas native who settled in the town 16 years ago, when she and her husband, Dutch politician Marnix van Rij, relocated to Holland from China. Now, with six grown children, the couple are putting the family home on the market. The half-acre estate, with a thatched-roof 10-bedroom, three-bathroom mansion, is listed for $3.1 million. The 1920s home is in the center of Wassenaar, a neighborhood with easy access to local shopping and to the highway connecting Amsterdam and The Hague. Wassenaar competes for the title of the Netherlands’ most expensive area with Bloemendaal, near Amsterdam, and the Gooi, a cluster of wealthy towns and villages in the center of Holland. But it corners the market in one key statistic: five of the country’s 10 most expensive streets are here, according to a study by the consumer-marketing division of Experian Netherlands. Top Wassenaar properties start at $5.6 million, and most sellers in that category opt for an unadvertised, or pocket listing. The greatest concentration of Wassenaar villas are in the De Kieviet neighborhood, southwest of the center and close to the Royal Hague Golf and Country Club, one of continental Europe’s top-ranked courses, says Robin P. F. de Haas, managing director of local real estate agent Paul F. de Haas & Co. Mr. de Haas currently has an unadvertised De Kieviet property listed for $4.72 million. The four-bedroom, four-bathroom mansion is 6,500 square feet and has an outdoor pool on its 3-acre lot. Closer to the center of Wassenaar, Ton Paardekooper, a 48-year-old Dutch lighting designer, bought a 5-acre forested estate in 2008 for about $3.89 million and then spent $2.78 million on renovations. He is now selling for $8.29 million. The property, previously the residence of the Bangladeshi ambassador, includes an 850-square-foot guesthouse and a quaint, thatched-roof teahouse. During the renovation of the main house, five small rooms on the second floor were converted into a three-room, terraced master suite. For Dutch buyers, who make up about two-thirds of the high-end market, Wassenaar’s cachet is derived from its royal pedigree and its appeal to the embassy set. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima live in Villa Eikenhorst, a 1980s Wassenaar mansion. With embassies concentrated next door in The Hague, ambassadorial residences abound. What could be called managerial royalty also live there, including executives from Shell and IKEA, which has a managerial hub in Leiden, a Dutch university town bordering Wassenaar. Lately, U.K. commuters have gone house-hunting in the area, says Leslie de Ruiter, managing director of R365, a Dutch real-estate agency affiliated with Christie’s International Real Estate. The town of 25,000 is taking advantage of its location near two primary airports: Schiphol, the major European air hub south of Amsterdam, and Rotterdam The Hague, which allows homeowners two-hour, door-to-door access to London’s financial district. Wassenaar long has benefited from its location on the North Sea coast above The Hague, seat of the Dutch government and home to multinationals such as Royal Dutch Shell, and its proximity to Rotterdam. In the early 20th century, Rotterdam’s booming harbor spawned many millionaires who splurged on Wassenaar showpiece homes. Newer homes on larger lots are in the Rijksdorp area, northwest of the town center. While Wassenaar prices are still down about 30% from the pre-crisis boom years, the number of transactions is soaring. Mr. de Haas, whose firm studies price trends, says there have been about 50 sales of luxury Wassenaar properties over the past two years, compared with 20 from 2008 to 2013. Nationally, Dutch real-estate prices peaked in 2010, bottomed out in 2013 and are now up to 90% of their pre-crisis highs, according to the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, the Netherlands’ national compiler of statistics. The luxury market started to fall in 2008, and prices have yet to recover outside the center of Amsterdam, where homes rose about 20% in 2015. In the south part of Wassenaar, Martien de Groene and his wife, Yvonne van der Linden, are selling their 4-acre estate. Built in 1911 for a Rotterdam commodities broker, the estate includes a 16,000-square-foot mansion and a double stable converted to two, five-bedroom guesthouses. It has an asking price of $16.7 million. The couple and their young family relocated from Rotterdam in the late 1990s after a major renovation of the main house, which had been used as a children’s home. They salvaged original detailing, like parquet floors and marble fireplaces, while creating a seven-bedroom, five-bathroom interior. They also converted the kitchen area into an indoor pool, and installed a home cinema, a bar area and a third-floor disco for their teenage children and friends. “We wanted to turn this so-called castle into a cozy house,” says Mr. de Groene, 57, founder and owner of De Groene Groep, a Rotterdam-based commercial real-estate company. Mr. de Groene, downsizing now that his children are grown, figures the estate would meet the needs of an ambassador. This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal.