Over 30 percent of Dutch apartments bought in cash last year: report

An increasing number of Dutch homes are being bought without a mortgage, according to the Land Registry. Last year almost a third of the apartments sold in the Netherlands were bought in cash, NOS reports.

In the large Dutch cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, about 25 percent of houses were bought without a mortgage. In student cities like Delft, Groningen and Maastricht, 30 percent were bought in cash. Last year mortgage-free buyers spent 8.6 billion euros on homes, 16 percent of the total money spent on mortgages. In 2011 it was 4 billion euros.

According to the Land Registry, most of the mortgage-less home buyers are relatively old, people in the process of selling an existing home and investors. People over the age of 70 especially do not have to get financial help from a bank when buying a home. Nearly 43 percent of mortgage-free buyers own other homes and 38 percent are moving from one bought home to another.