House prices in our country rose by an average of 19.7 percent in April compared to a year earlier, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the Land Registry reported on Monday. That is 0.2 percentage points more than the 19.5 percent in March. In the three months before that, prices rose less sharply each month. It therefore appears that the housing market is entering calmer waters.
Since the start of the corona crisis, the price of owner-occupied houses has been rising faster and faster. Where there was an additional 6.3 percent in January 2020, that was already more than 21 percent in January of this year. In February and March the increase weakened and in April it stabilized at 19.7 percent.
An important reason for this cooling is that wage increases do not keep pace with house prices. “The collective labor agreement wages have not risen strongly enough in recent months to keep up with the price increase of homes in combination with the rising mortgage costs”, Paul de Vries of the Land Registry previously explained.
It is difficult to predict what will happen to house prices in the coming months, but the increase is expected to weaken for a while. A decline is not directly in line with expectations.
15,972 homes were sold in April. That is 16 percent less than in the same month last year.
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