An average owner-occupied home was sold 20.4 percent more in December than a year earlier. The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the Land Registry list the sales prices of existing private owner-occupied homes. This shows that prices are rising faster and faster, while fewer houses are being sold.
The 20.4 percent in December is the largest price increase measured by Statistics Netherlands since the start of this statistic in 1995. Over the whole of 2021, existing owner-occupied homes were on average 15.2 percent more expensive than in 2020. detached houses rose by 16 percent faster than that of corner houses, terraced houses and detached houses. The price increase for apartments was lower than for other types of houses, at 13.3 percent. House prices are now 85 percent higher than the low of the last decades in June 2013. This means that the average house has become almost twice as expensive in less than ten years.
The higher prices do not lead to more sales. On the contrary, the number of transactions is falling. Last year, 226,087 thousand existing homes were sold, 4 percent less than in 2020. In December, the number of transactions was 22 percent lower than in the same month last year. An exception to this national trend is the capital. Amsterdammers, on the other hand, offered more houses for sale, the number of transactions rose by 8.1 percent in 2021.
House prices have been rising faster than other prices in the Netherlands for years. Even now, consumer prices have risen more quickly for several months now, partly due to higher energy costs. Consumer prices rose by 2.7 percent in 2021.