Open House Day attracts far fewer home seekers, only 35,000 participate

The real estate agent association NVM's Open House Day on Saturday attracted far fewer visitors than the last edition because fewer home sellers offered to open their doors to home seekers. However, the numbers varied greatly from house to house. One house in Flevoland even had 97 visitors, according to the NVM.

In total, the event attracted 35,000 home seekers on a sunny Saturday, while more than 5,600 homes took part. According to the association, the prices of the housing offers varied from €125,000 to €3,695,000. The last NVM open house, held on September 30 last year, was attended by over 9,000 homeowners and visited by 55,000 visitors.

According to the NVM, the lower number of participating houses is due to the limited offer on the housing market. Real estate agents are finding that there are significantly fewer homes for sale. Experts have also been pointing out for some time that more homes need to be added soon.

"The market is really tight, while demand for homes is high. We will continue to evaluate this and see how we can arrange the next open day on October 5, 2024," said Chris van Zantwijk, who is responsible for the open day at the NVM.

After a phase of falling prices due to rising mortgage interest rates, house prices began to rise again last year. The high demand for housing is driving prices up, combined with large wage increases and a lot of savings left over from the coronavirus period. At the same time, there are only a few houses for sale. Experts have been saying for a long time that more homes need to be built soon, and for good reason.

"The money is there, but the houses are not always there," chief economist Peter Hein van Mulligen from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) recently summarized the situation. "If things continue at this pace, it is quite possible that prices will be at their highest level again in the next few months."

The real estate agency will announce next week how the housing market has developed in the first quarter of this year. The NVM reported in January that there were more than a quarter fewer existing homes for sale in the last three months of 2023 than at the end of 2022.