In three years, the amount you have to bring to buy a house of 60 m2 to be able to buy almost doubled. In Amsterdam you pay the top prize, but also in a city like Utrecht you have to have almost 150,000 euros in your own money. This is apparent from the Eigen Geldkaart of comparison site Independer. A survey showed that eight out of ten first-time buyers doubt that they will ever be able to buy a home again.
If you, as a single starter, decide to buy a smaller home, for example of 40 m2, you still need 180,000 euros in your own money. By way of comparison: a couple with an average income has for a house of 60 m2 need just under 44,000 euros in own money. For a house of 100 m2 more than 220,000 euros will then be needed.
“It has been clear for some time that it is becoming increasingly bleak for first-time buyers on the owner-occupied housing market,” says Marga Lankreijer, mortgage expert at Independer. “These figures confirm the feeling that many starters have, namely that they can no longer intervene without a large piggy bank or a donation.”
Position starters
According to Lankreijer, the position of starters is very precarious. “We see every day that starters get the lid on the nose when we calculate how much money they can borrow and what they need in terms of their own money. They want so badly to live on their own, but they have no way out. Student debt doesn’t really help, but often that’s not even the problem. We also did this research three years ago and we were shocked then, but the amount of money a single person has to bring to buy a house has almost doubled since then.”
In January 2022, the prices of existing owner-occupied homes were almost 91 percent higher than in 2013, when house prices reached a low point after the credit crisis. First-time buyers buy about half of the vacant owner-occupied homes. Figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics show that the group of 25 to 35-year-olds has increased by 11 percent in about the same period, according to the statistics center one of the reasons that pressure on the housing market has increased so much.
According to a survey commissioned by Independer, 78 percent of young people (up to the age of 35 without a house) doubt whether they will ever be able to buy a house due to rising house prices. Three years ago, that share was 53 percent. “Starters now have the feeling that they have no control over their own housing future,” says Sander van der Aa of housing platform Jumba, involved in the research.
“You want to continue to offer them a chance at an apartment and that they may then be able to grow into a bigger house. But for fewer and fewer starters, buying a first home is still an option. A painful situation if you include the survey. Because almost nine out of ten young people without a home do have the desire to buy one someday.”
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