Housing costs not always lower for homeowners than tenants; Young owners often pay more

It is a misconception that homeowners generally have lower housing costs than tenants, ABN Amro discovered in a study of 320,000 anonymized customer records. While homeowners do spend less of their income on housing costs, this is mostly true for older homeowners vs tenants. Young homebuyers often end up spending more than they did when renting in the private sector, the Telegraaf reports.

Housing costs are calculated as a percentage of income spent on housing. According to the ABN Amro researchers, housing costs in the Netherlands have decreased in recent years. Dutch home prices have doubled in the past decade, but wages and inflation have also risen sharply.

In 2019, tenants spent an average of 33.0 percent of their disposable income on housing. At the end of 2025, that had fallen to 31.5 percent, according to the bank. Homeowners’ housing costs are lower, falling from 24.8 to 22.3 percent in the same period.

But according to the ABN Amro researchers, the differences in housing costs between tenants and homeowners are mainly visible for older homeowners. For younger homebuyers, the difference in housing costs between owners and tenants is much smaller, or even disadvantageous to the young buyer.

The housing costs for buyers between the ages of 20 and 30 have “increased significantly,” especially in the last three years. “Young homeowners and private market renters have comparable housing cost ratios,” the researchers said. A young buyer spends only 5 percent less on housing than a private sector tenant. Older homeowners spend 15 percent less.

“We often hear that tenants in the private market might be better off buying a house. But we see that among the youngest groups, homeowners have slightly higher housing costs compared to the same group in the private sector,” the researchers said. The transition from the private sector rental market to the owner-occupied market is “not as easy as often thought.”