House prices up 18 percent in October

The prices of existing owner-occupied homes increased about as much in October as in September. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the Land Registry saw prices rise by over 18 percent compared to a year earlier. For the fourth consecutive month, fewer homes changed hands.

House prices bottomed out in mid-2013 and have been on an upward trend ever since. From the beginning of this year, house prices continually rose faster than a month earlier. This came to an end in October and the price increase compared to last year was even slightly lower than in September.

Over 16,000 existing owner-occupied homes were sold in the past month. That is a decrease of about 27 percent compared to October 2020. The last time a drop in the number of transactions approached this percentage was at the end of 2018.

Earlier this month, TU Delft and De Hypotheekshop, among others, reported that never before had so few homes been put up for sale as in the past quarter. According to the researchers, this is also due to the low supply of newly built homes. As a result, people have few options to move up and do not put their houses up for sale.