Huizenmarkt – ontwikkelingen en verwachtingen

• House prices in the Netherlands rose even faster this summer than in the spring. Owner-occupied homes were on average 16.3 percent more expensive in July than a year earlier
• House prices are expected to be 14.4 percent higher this year than in 2020, due to low interest rates, favorable economic prospects and price-driving incentives 
• House price growth is highest in Flevoland and lowest in Amsterdam
• Next year, house prices are expected to rise by 11.5%
• In the months January to July, more than 7 percent more houses changed hands than in the same period last year
• Since Dutch people under the age of 35 no longer have to pay transfer tax for houses up to 400,000 euros, they account for a slightly larger part of home purchases, but the increase is modest 

For the whole of 2021 we expect a total of around 231,000 transactions, slightly less than last year. We expect sales to fall to 211,000 homes for 2022.

The pace at which house prices are rising has taken off this year. In the first five months of the year alone, the price of an average owner-occupied home has risen faster than in the whole of 2020. And in the months that followed, the increase increased further to 16.3 percent year-on-year in July (see Figure 1 ). Relatively speaking, this is the strongest increase since 2000; in euros, it is again probably the sharpest price increase ever on the Dutch housing market. It means that an average house is estimated to be around 55,000 euros more expensive in just one year

Flevoland once again takes the cake: between the second quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year, prices shot up by 16.7 percent (figure 3). The province, where many Amsterdammers , among others , buy a house, has seen the costs of owner-occupied homes rise faster than the rest of the Netherlands for several years now. In five years, the price increased by almost 69 percent, compared to just under 53 percent for the Netherlands on average (see figure 4). Limburg was last in the second quarter, but that province was also unable to prevent double-digit growth.  

This year in some regions price increase of up to 20 percent

We expect a significant rise in house prices in all regions in the coming years, but regionally there are significant outliers (Figure 6). Flevoland is already leading the way and is expected to continue to do so for the rest of this year and next year. We assume an increase of 20 percent this year, with an additional 15 percent next year. According to our forecast, prices will also grow strongly this year in many regions in the northeast of the Netherlands, for example in the COROP region of East Groningen (+18 percent). In previous years, price growth here was below the national average, but the area is now catching up. We see the smallest increase this year in Greater Amsterdam, but the increase is still 12 percent there.

The highest growth in prices in regions where the price level is still somewhat lower is closely related to the high price level in the most desirable regions. House prices there have already risen more sharply. The accessibility of owner-occupied homes is therefore under pressure in those regions, so that households are looking for alternatives. We expect this trend to continue. Next year too, Amsterdam is therefore expected to be the last and Flevoland to once again lead the way when it comes to price growth. We expect house prices to rise further in all regions next year.

Source: RaboResearch

Starters bought more homes in the past year

The abolition of the transfer tax for home buyers under the age of 35 and its temporary nature for houses more than 400,000 euros caused significant peaks and troughs in the number of transactions last year. Young home buyers postponed the purchase of their own home in the autumn of 2020 until after the turn of the year. Just after the measure was introduced, little could be said about its effect on the opportunities for starters. It is true that we saw their share rise sharply after the turn of the year, but before the turn of the year there was a huge decline in the share of under-35s.  

Source: RaboResearch, based on microdata Kadaster

We are now getting more and more clarity about how the measure has worked out on balance. In the twelve months from August 2020 to July 2021, the share of young home buyers was 47.8 percent, compared to 45.4 percent in the same twelve months one year earlier. In the past three months, the proportion of under-35s has fluctuated around 49 percent (see figure 7). The share of young homebuyers in the total number of homes purchased is therefore still slightly higher than before the announcement of the measure. Because the transfer tax for young people has (partially) been abolished, while it has been increased to 8 percent for investors, it seems that starters are slightly more likely to make the winning bid. The question is whether people under 35 can maintain this profit in the coming years. Although the position of young house buyers vis-à-vis investors seems to have improved, young adults also compete with each other for scarce homes. As a result, the extra space they have to bid on homes translates into a stronger rise in house prices.

New construction on the rise, but growth remains modest

Source: CBS

Without extra houses, the position of first-time buyers remains difficult, and new construction is still lagging behind the numbers needed to make up for the housing shortage. More and more often the number of 100,000  houses around that should be built per year. In the last twelve months for which data is available (up to and including June 2021), a total of more than 74,000 permits were issued (Figure 8). The number of building permits issued has shown an increasing trend since mid-2019, but is still not much higher than the numbers from 2017 and 2018. In addition, the number of homes completed follows the permits with a delay, so that it will probably also take several years. before a revival of permits leads to more homes. The ambitions in the field of housing construction are great in the Netherlands, but it is proving difficult to put them into practice. In recent years, bottlenecks have arisen several times that caused delays (due to the nitrogen crisis, PFAS crisis and the corona pandemic).

Although the growth in housing production is still modest, the percentage of construction and building materials companies facing production barriers due to shortages of labour, inputs, materials and space is rising rapidly (Figures 9 and 10). In the building materials industry, the shortages are again comparable to the peak in 2018/2019. In order to be able to build 100,000 homes per year, the production per employee in the construction sector will therefore have to increase considerably. This requires greater use of labor-saving techniques. For example, through greater use of so-called prefab, where houses are partly built in advance in a factory. Streamlining the requirements that municipalities place on homes can help to increase the deployability of these production techniques.

Source: CBS

Source: CBS

The limited availability of locations where building is allowed, and the accumulation of conditions for building, in areas such as aesthetics, spatial quality, parking and sustainability, are another cause of the lack of housing supply. By making it more financially attractive for municipalities and their citizens to allow new construction , the resistance will decrease. This makes it easier to find locations where houses can be built.   

Many home sales in 2021, decline in 2022

Due to the transfer tax policy, many transactions of existing owner-occupied homes have been extended beyond the turn of the year this year. Although we expect the number of transactions to decline somewhat in due course due to the drying up of supply, this policy will still result in a relatively large number of transactions this year. It is expected that 231,000 owner-occupied homes will change hands this year (see figure 11). That is slightly less (-1.8 percent yoy) than in 2020, when 236,000 owner-occupied homes were sold. In 2022, we expect 211,000 transactions (-8.9 percent yoy).

Demand for housing remains high, as evidenced by accelerating house prices, so declining home sales should not be seen as a sign of a cooling housing market. The decrease is entirely attributable to the drying up of supply (see figure 12). The number of homes for sale is already historically low, but fell further last year. Market-wide, there were only 22,500 homes for sale in the second quarter of 2021, according to real estate association NVM .  

Source: CBS, Land Registry, RaboResearch

Source: NVM