National housing shortage to worsen in the coming years: Researchers

The housing shortage in the Netherlands will likely increase for at least three years, experts at consultancy firm Capital Value expect. The number of households is growing, while too few building permits have been granted in recent years. Building new houses often takes several years.

According to the experts, the pressure on the housing market is already unprecedentedly high, with a shortage of almost 279,000 homes. That amounts to 3.5 percent of the housing stocks. The problem will only get worse in the future, they expect. According to them, the Netherlands will short 316,000 homes in 2024. And this while the government and parties in the market are focusing strongly on reducing the deficit.

According to Captial Value, the problems are particularly acute for people starting on the housing market and the elderly, who cannot find suitable homes. There are currently around 224,000 young households who live in too small homes or in the wrong place. That is almost a quarter of the total in the age group up to 30 years.

It is known that many people can barely find a suitable home because there are so few homes for sale. Partly because of this, house prices have risen to record highs. According to the researchers, the most significant shortages are in the big cities. This includes the region around Amsterdam. Deficits are also relatively high in Delft, Westland, and Flevoland.

Capital Value provides transaction, valuation, and advisory services to investors, corporations, and banks, among others. The organization that conducted the research together with ABF Research thinks it should be possible to build more homes. For example, housing associations could build 250,000 social homes annually if the landlord levy is completely abolished, the researchers suggest. "All parties agree that more needs to be built, but the ambitions are still not being achieved. We can break this impasse with even better cooperation," said director Marijn Snijders.

ING experts also see opportunities with housing associations. The bank calculated that the new construction of around 14,000 new mid-range rental homes per year is financially feasible for housing associations. "We see that they are taking up the challenge, but they cannot do this alone. Working together and with the municipality and other developers makes accelerated construction of mid-rental homes possible," said ING sector banker Jan Willem Spijkman.