The prices of owner-occupied homes rose by 8.2 percent in August compared to August last year. That is the largest price increase in over a year and a half, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the Land Registry report Monday. Prices are now at their highest level ever.
The average sales price in August was EUR 336,277. According to chief economist Peter Hein van Mulligen of Statistics Netherlands, the effects of the corona crisis are not yet visible on the housing market. “That’s the big difference from the previous financial crisis,” he says. “At the time, the housing market was central because people’s houses were under water. As a result, they spent less, because they prefer to make extra repayments on their mortgage.”
“But now the housing market continues to run, even if the economy is taking a huge blow. That will have to do with the fact that young people and flex workers in particular are losing their jobs. For people with a permanent job, the corona crisis has not yet yielded much financially. problems, “said Van Mulligen.
The Land Registry saw in August that slightly fewer houses changed hands than last year. Just over nineteen thousand housing transactions were registered. That is almost 3 percent less than a year earlier. So far, more than 148,000 homes have changed hands in 2020, 5 percent more than in the first eight months of 2019.
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