Sharpest monthly drop in Dutch housing prices since 2013

Average home sales prices in the Netherlands fell for the fourth month in the row, with November representing the sharpest recorded decrease since May 2013. Owner occupied homes sold in November cost nearly 1 percent less on average than in October, according to data released on Thursday by Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

After years of sharp, dramatic increases in housing prices, a peak was reached in July. The average sales price began to fall because of a combination of factors, mainly the rising mortgage interest rates. That makes it harder for buyers to put together the financing needed to purchase more expensive properties.

Overall, the Dutch Central Bank predicted that home prices will fall by about 3 percent in 2023 and 3 percent in 2024. That exceeds predictions from ABN Amro and ING, which both predicted a 2.5 percent fall in 2023.

Despite the decrease in November, homes still sold for prices that were 4.9 percent higher than 12 months earlier. That reflected the lowest year-on-year increase in over six years, the CBS said. The year-on-year increase recently peaked at over 21 percent at the start of 2022.

After the economic crisis, home sales prices hit a low point in June 2013. Since then, prices have jumped by nearly 95 percent.

Additionally, the number of residential real estate transactions have been falling. The Dutch real estate registry, Kadaster, was informed of 15,146 housing transactions in November. That was about 6 percent fewer than a year earlier.

“In the first 11 months of 2022, 171,767 homes were sold, down more than 1.6 percent than in the same period of 2021,” the CBS said.