At the end of the third quarter, private investors owned 78,400 homes in the four major cities. That is 12,500 fewer than two years ago, the Land Registry reported on Wednesday in its quarterly report on the private rental sector.
Amsterdam stood out the most. The number of private rental properties there fell to 6.2 percent. In 2023 that was still 7.4 percent. That is approximately 5,000 fewer homes in two years.
Investors sold more than 15,800 homes throughout the Netherlands in the third quarter. That is 37% more than a year earlier. More than half of the homes sold went to owner-occupiers, the rest went to other investors. Nowadays they often buy rental properties in order to convert them into owner-occupied homes in the long term.
Statistics Netherlands distinguishes between corporate investors (such as pension funds and insurers) and private investors. Private individuals sold 17,000 more homes to owner-occupiers in the past four quarters than they bought from them. For corporate investors this difference was 9,000 homes.
Investors are also adding homes through new construction, but for the time being not enough to absorb the wave of sales of rental properties. The number of homes owned by investors is declining, the Land Registry has noted. At the end of September they owned 9.1 percent of all homes. That was 9.3 percent in 2024 and 9.4 percent in 2023. They now own approximately 758,300 homes.
Negative returns
There are also fewer and fewer private individuals with a second home, because considerably more of them are sold than bought. Private individuals face greater risks and lower or even negative returns due to the ban on temporary rental contracts and the introduction of maximum rents in the middle segment. That is why many sell as soon as the tenant leaves or the temporary contract expires.
In the third quarter, private individuals sold a net of 2,000 second homes that were probably used as rental properties. The stock of second homes fell to 177,200. A year earlier there were still 180,700. Joint research by Land Registry and CBS shows that approximately 70% of these homes were rented.
The shrinking rental supply is offset by a wider offering for home buyers, especially in the cheaper segment. In the third quarter they paid an average of 384,000 euros for a home that they bought from an investor. This while a ‘normal’ owner-occupied home cost an average of 511,000 euros.
The number of homes fell, especially among private investors. Compared to 2023, they now have approximately 34,500 fewer homes. That’s about a tenth of their holdings from two years ago. At the same time, among commercial investors, who also added new construction, ownership increased by 26,300.
The number of private individuals investing also became smaller. In 2023 there were 67,800. At the end of the third quarter of this year there were 61,300.
At the end of the 3rd quarter of 2025, the share of homes owned by private investors was smallest in Duiven (0.4 percent) and largest in Vaals (11.9 percent).