You can feel that change is in the air, said NVM chairman Onno Hoes on Thursday at the presentation of the new quarterly figures. “But it is impossible to predict where the housing market will go.” The figures are not yet clear. They are diffuse. Yes, there are many more homes for sale – a sign that the market is cooling. But overbidding is still the norm, prices are rising and the average sale still lasts just 24 days.
How to interpret the latest NVM figures? Five numbers highlighted.
448,000 euros
This is how much an ‘existing’ house cost on average in the past quarter. That is 3.5 percent more than in the first quarter, when the price fell slightly for the first time since 2019 (-2.1 percent). On an annual basis, it is even an increase of 10.6 percent. That is considerable, but a lot less than in recent quarters. At that time, houses were still around 20 percent more expensive compared to a year earlier. Prices are therefore still rising, but less rapidly. And the regional differences are large. In Alkmaar, for example, house prices fell by 1.5 percent compared to the beginning of this year. There are also significant differences between types of housing.
Also read: What effect will rising mortgage rates have on the housing market? Starters are double the bob
47,100 homes
Last quarter, almost 50,000 homes were put up for sale by NVM estate agents: 23 percent more than a year ago and even 46 percent more than in the previous quarter. But neither the average selling time nor the number of transactions have increased. How is that possible?
According to the real estate association, the war in Ukraine, rising interest rates and the looming recession are causing people to push the sale of their house forward. This concerns, for example, people who have bought a new-build home that they can only move into after a while, but are already selling their current home. Or people who want to sell first before buying a new house. In other words, people are afraid that prices will fall and will soon put their house up for sale.
People are afraid that prices will fall, and soon put their home for sale
According to the NVM, the fact that the average selling time is still 24 days is due to differences between types of housing: while more corner houses and semi-detached houses have been sold, among other things, the sale of detached houses and apartments is lagging behind. In other words: starter homes and homes in the higher segment. It could also be that more houses have been put up for sale, especially in recent weeks, as a result of which a longer selling time has not yet been included in the quarterly figures.
It is therefore logical that the shortage in the housing market has eased somewhat: on average, a buyer now has a choice of 2.1 homes. The NVM does make a distinction: despite the significant increase in supply, it is “a very normal second quarter”. Between 2016 and 2020, at least 47,000 homes were always put up for sale in that quarter.
7.5 percent
That’s how much is currently being outbid on average on a home. 80 percent of the homes are sold above the asking price; a percentage that has been about the same for a year. But the degree of overbidding is decreasing: at the end of last year it was 9.1 percent of the asking price, last quarter 8.3 and now even less. People sometimes still outbid “out of habit”, a mortgage expert told this week NRC†
4,963 new-build homes
Very few new-build homes and building plots were sold in the past quarter: almost half less than a year ago. This is remarkable, given the government’s enormous building ambitions and the popularity of new-build homes (with favorable energy labels). The NVM named various causes, including lagging construction production but also uncertainty about the economy. This would make people more careful with large expenditures, especially for a house that they can only move into in a few years.
35,000 euros
Since energy prices have soared, sustainability has become more important to buyers. Fun fact: the word ‘solar panels’ appears more and more often in promotional texts on Funda. The greener the energy label, the more a home increases in value. Previously, a sustainable home was worth about 25,000 euros more than a non-sustainable comparable variant. Since the rise in energy prices, this has increased to 35,000 euros. “Investing in sustainability therefore also yields something extra,” said NVM chairman Onno Hoes.
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