Rabobank foresees a dip in the housing market for the next two years. The corona crisis will cause unemployment to rise and the demand for houses to decline, the bank writes in its Dutch Housing Market Quarterly.
According to the calculations, house prices in 2021 will be on average 0.8 percent lower than this year. In 2022, a further decrease of 2.6 percent will be added. House prices will rise again in the course of that year, Rabobank thinks.
Support packages
The dip will come later than Rabobank first expected. In the previous quarterly report, the start of the dip was already foreseen in the last quarter of 2020. That it takes longer is probably due to the government’s corona support packages. These keep employment, at least among potential home buyers (over 25 years old), still reasonably stable.
As a result, the housing market is still running at full speed. Until July, homes were on average 7.1 percent more expensive than a year earlier. The number of sales was 6.7 percent higher.
But in the end many people will lose their jobs or at least be afraid of it, the bank thinks. Investors will also become more cautious. As a result, home sales will fall from 220,000 this year to 190,000 next year.
Starters strike
Rabobank points out that a relatively large number of starters (25 to 35 years old) are buying a house this year. This may be because people who move up are more reluctant when the economy is less successful, for example because they also have a house to sell. Investors are also becoming cautious, allowing starters to seize their chance.
The increasing share of young buyers may therefore be a sign of an imminent dip, Rabobank concludes. Also around 2008, at the beginning of the years of crisis in the housing market as a result of the credit crisis, it was clear that a striking number of starters bought a house.
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