Netherlands home sales picking up again after 2 year dip

The number of home sales in the Netherlands has been falling for eight consecutive quarters, but they are picking up again, housing appraisal company Calcasa said in its quarterly report.

In the first quarter of 2023, a total of 230,000 homes changed hands. That was still 7.5 percent less than a year earlier. But the decrease was considerably smaller than in the second quarter of 2022, when Calcassa measured the largest year-on-year decline at 21.1 percent. “Since then, the number of home sales has come out of the valley, and an upward trend is visible,” the company said.

As is generally the case in the Dutch housing market, Amsterdam is ahead of the general trend in the Netherlands. In April, the year-on-year contraction in the number of home sales in the capital was only 3.3 percent.

Calcasa also reported that the affordability of homes deteriorated rapidly in the past year, partly due to the higher mortgage interest rates. According to the company’s affordability index, homebuyers in the Netherlands spend an average of 23.2 percent of their monthly income on housing costs. A year ago, that was still 15.2 percent. The deterioration puts affordability back at the 2009 level, just after the credit crisis broke out.