Learn Dutch: De parkeerplaats naast het buurthuis is best duur. - The parking lot next to the community center is pretty expensive.

It can mean 'best' (the superlative of goed), but in this sentence, it is used as an adverb of degree right before the adjective duur. In this structure, best means 'pretty', 'quite', or 'rather'. It is a very common way to soften a statement or express a mild realization in spoken Dutch.

Why is the verb is placed so late in the sentence? I thought Dutch verbs had to be in the second position.

The verb is actually is in the second position! The entire phrase De parkeerplaats naast het buurthuis (The parking lot next to the community center) counts as the first position because it is a single block of information acting as the subject. In Dutch main clauses, the verb is always the second grammatical block, no matter how many words make up the first block.

Why does buurthuis take the article het instead of de?

Buurthuis is a compound word made of buurt (neighborhood) and huis (house, center). In Dutch, the article of a compound noun is always determined by its very last part. Since it is het huis, the combined word becomes het buurthuis.

How do we know to use parkeer instead of the full verb parkeren in the word parkeerplaats?