Housing shortage, wage hikes to push Netherlands home prices up 8% this year: ABN Amro
Home prices in the Netherlands will increase by 8 percent this year, ABN Amro expects. The housing shortage and people earning more have outweighed the global uncertainty, the bank’s housing market economists said. The bank, therefore, increased its expectations for home price development by 1 percent. It also now expects the number of housing transactions to increase by 12.5 percent this year, instead of 5 percent, mainly due to landlords selling rental properties.
“The Dutch housing market shows resilience in the face of global uncertainty. The increase in house prices continued in the second quarter of this year,” the bank said. “Home prices have risen by 6.6 percent over the first fie months compared to the average price level of 2024. In connection with this strong increase, we are adjusting our price forecast upwards.”
The driving factor behind the price increases remains the rising household income and the low number of completed newly built homes. The slight decrease in mortgage interest rates, making home purchases cheaper to finance, also played a role. “Surprisingly, global economic uncertainty surrounding conflicts and trade tariffs seems to play a smaller role than expected,” the bank said. Consumer confidence is low, but the growing home prices suggest that the relationship between the two is weakening.
The number of housing transactions reached near-record levels in the first five months, rising 15.8 percent compared to a year earlier. ABN Amro attributes this increase mainly to investors selling off rental properties. There were 90,000 transactions in the first five months of this year, the third highest number in the past decade.
ABN Amro kept its forecasts for 2026 the same, expecting a price increase of 3 percent and a transactions increase of 1 percent. The lower price growth is due to lower wage increases and the fact that mortgage interest rates aren’t expected to fall further in 2026. And the bank expects the sale of rental properties by investors to level out in early 2026.
