Netherlands home prices up record 20%

Prices in the Netherlands' overheated housing market are still skyrocketing. In the second quarter of this year, home buyers paid 410 thousand euros for a home on average - a record increase of nearly 20 percent compared to the same quarter last year, the Dutch association of realtors announced on Thursday.

"The figures we present today once again exceed previous results,"NVM chairman Onno Hoes said. "The supply is still drying up and buyers are doing everything they can to get hold of a home. The housing market is completely crazy and as long as the political agenda does not match reality, the market will remain as tight as it is now."

Apartments were cheapest to buy at 344 thousand euros on average, an increase of 20 percent. Detached homes are most expensive at 618 thousand euros on average, an increase of 23.4 percent.

NVM realtors sold over 34 thousand homes in the second quarter, a decrease of 12 percent compared to quarter two of 2020. NVM attributes this to the low supply of homes on the market. In the middle of the second quarter of 2021, less than 15,500 homes were for sale - the lowest number since NVM started keeping track in 1995 and 53 percent less than a year earlier.

On average, buyers had less than two homes to choose from last quarter. And they had to act quickly - homes were only on the market for an average of 24 days before being sold. That is also a new record. 78 percent of homes sold in the second quarter, were sold at above asking price. On average, buyers paid 8.2 percent more than the home was listed for.

The coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying lockdowns put extra emphasis on the value of living pleasure, and that can be seen in the regional differences in home price increases, the NVM said. More and more buyers opted for rural areas, resulting in home prices in northern Netherlands increasing most.

Oost-Friesland, the top of Overijssel and Groningen all saw price increases of up to 30 percent. Home price increases in The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht were lower at around 20 percent. And Amsterdam saw an even lower increase at 14 percent.