Dutch housing prices rising twice as fast as EU average

Home prices in the Netherlands were 18.7 percent higher in the last quarter of 2021 than a year earlier. The price increase was almost double the European Union average of 10 percent and puts the Netherlands in the top five EU countries with the fastest increasing home prices, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported.

Only the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, and Hungary saw home prices increase more than the Netherlands. Almost all EU countries' house prices rose in the last quarter of 2021. Only Cyprus homes sold for less than the year before (-5.3 percent). 

The CBS house price index looks at the transaction price for both new and existing homes. In the fourth quarter of 2021, newly-built homes were 13.5 percent more expensive than the same quarter a year earlier. Prices for existing owner-occupied homes increased by 19.6 percent. Over the whole of 2021, the average transaction price for an existing home rose by 15.2 percent and for a newly-built home by 13.9 percent.

A total of 52,798 existing homes and 9,583 newly-built homes were sold in the last quarter, a decrease of 21 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively, compared to a year earlier. In total, 19.6 percent fewer homes were sold in the fourth quarter. In all of 2021, 259,291 owner-occupied homes were sold, 3.2 percent less than in 2020.