Nearly 900,000 NL residents wanted to move last year, but couldn't find a home

Last year, almost 900,000 people said they wanted to move but could not find a home - more than double that in 2015, when nearly 400,000 people faced this problem, Statistics Netherlands reported based on its three-yearly Netherlands Housing Survey.

The percentages of people who definitely want to move (11 percent) and maybe want to move (23 percent) have remained relatively stable since 2012. But the group who wanted to move but couldn’t due to the housing shortage more than doubled from nearly 3 percent in 2015 to over 6 percent in 2021.

Adults who wanted to move out of their parents’ home, in particular, had a hard time finding a home. Last year 13 percent said they wanted to move but couldn't find anything, compared to 6 percent in 2015. “During that period, the average age at which young people leave the parental home also increased,” the stats office said.

Young people trying to move out of their parental homes had the most trouble finding a place in Noord-Holland and Utrecht. Young people in Drenthe, Overijssel, and Limburg had the least trouble.

After adult children living at home, single people under 40 most often wanted to move but couldn’t find a place. In this group, the share struggling to change address increased from 4 percent in 2015 to 11 percent in 2021. Among cohabiting couples under 40 and without children, this was 8 percent, and 9 percent of single parents. These percentages were also higher than in 2015.

Singles and couples over 40 and families with children also had more trouble finding new homes, but the differences were smaller.