Sale of newly built homes more than halved in second quarter

The number of newly-built owner-occupied homes sold in the Netherlands in the second quarter was more than half lower than a year earlier, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported. Only 3,300 newly-built homes were sold, 56.2 percent less than in the second quarter of 2022 - the largest decline since CBS started tracking this figure in 2015.

In the first half of 2023, quarter and two together, just over 6,600 newly built homes were sold - 54.4 percent less than a year earlier and also the biggest decrease since the start of the measurement.

The number of existing owner-occupied home sales fell by 6.1 percent to 44,500 in the second quarter of this year. “The decline was smaller than in previous quarters, except for the fourth quarter of 2022,” CBS said. A total of almost 48,000 homes changed hands in Q2 this year, 13 percent less than a year earlier. It was the ninth consecutive quarter that fewer homes were sold than the year before.

The average transaction price of a newly built owner-occupied home was almost 496,000 euros in the second quarter, lower than in the second quarter of 2022, when they sold for an average of 514,000 euros. But, due to a quality correction in CBS’s index, the price of a new home adjusted for quality and type was 1.7 percent higher. The price of an existing owner-occupied home was, on average, 5.2 percent lower than a year earlier. House prices as a whole, including newly built and existing owner-occupied homes, fell 4.3 percent in the second quarter compared to a year earlier.

The Netherlands was one of only nine countries in the European Union to see home prices fall in the second quarter. Others included Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. On average, home prices in the EU fell by 1.1 percent in the second quarter of 2023. Croatia saw the biggest increase in home prices at 13.7 percent, followed by Bulgaria at 10.7 percent.