Terraced house the most common home in Netherlands

Of the nearly 8 million homes in the Netherlands, 42 percent are terraced houses. That makes this type of house, consisting of a block of at least three houses together, the most common in the country, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported on Wednesday based on figures for early 2021.

Over a third of Dutch houses are multi-family buildings, like apartments. Thirteen percent are detached, and 9 percent are semi-detached.

Which type of housing dominates differs significantly per province. Most of the 3.4 million terraced houses in the Netherlands are located in Zuid-Holland (683,000). That’s 40 percent of homes in the province. Noord-Brabant and Noord-Holland also have many terraced houses. Relatively speaking, most detached houses can be found in the sparsely populated provinces of Friesland and Drenthe.

The stats office looked at the type and year of construction of all houses in the Netherlands. The latter affects the kind of home that is located in an area. Construction changed significantly over the years. For example, before World War II, relatively many multi-family homes were built, like upstairs- and downstairs homes, and to a lesser extent, apartments. The terraced houses are mainly a legacy of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Over half of all homes from that period are terraced houses. That is also the era in which most houses that still exist today were built.