20% Dutch home sales take a loss

Almost one in five homes in the Netherlands were sold with a lost last year. 

In these cases, the owner sells the house for less than what he bought it for. This comes from an exploration by NOS, done on the basis of data from the Land Registry (Kadaster).

In total, the sell prices at 17,913 homes were lower than the buyer's price. That is 40 percent more than in 2012. In North-Holland and Zeeland, this was rarer.

Homes in Flevoland were most frequently sold with loss. An estate agent of Vesta recognizes this image. "The prices now are on level with 2001. Everyone who bought a house after that, should actually make money now.

"Whoever bought a house in 2008 for 235,000 or 240,000 will have to settle for the loss. Those homes are now going for under 200,000. "

At 20 percent of all the homes that sold with a loss, the damage was more than 40,000 euros. The owner of a home in Loosdrecht sold his house last year with a loss of 85,000 euros. The home had to be sold after a separation, which is most often the reason for a sale with a loss.

At the request of the NOS, the Land Registry also looked at the losses, if the costs which the buyer makes at purchase are being counted. In many cases, those costs were financially accounted for and can therefore be calculated into the loss.

It seems then that last year, one in three (34 percent) homes were sold with loss. In Flevoland, this was more than half.