Last year, 73 percent of owner-occupied homes were sold above the asking price and just under 20 percent sold for a lower price, according to research by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the Land Registry on Thursday. In 2020, just under half of the houses were sold above the asking price.
It is striking that houses were outbid throughout the country and not just in the big cities, as was the case in the past. In 2021, only a few municipalities sold on average below the price, especially in expensive municipalities such as Blaricum, Laren and Wassenaar.
There was also an increasing outbid. In seventeen municipalities houses were bought for 10 percent more than their asking price, while this has not happened in any municipality in recent years.
The more homes that are sold above the asking price, the tighter the housing market is. This is also apparent from the transaction figures. In 2014, a house was still on the market for an average of one and a half years, and last year that was on average less than two months. According to the CBS, that is an absolute minimum.
Statistics Netherlands and the Land Registry conducted the survey into the tension in the owner-occupied housing market on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior.