Occupier market

The pressure on the housing market is the most pronounced in the Randstad urban conurbation and other urbanised regions. Because the production of new-build homes is lagging demand, we expect the pressure in these regions to continue for the foreseeable future, and continue to spread further to municipalities around the larger cities. The lag in the production of new homes over the past few decades has helped create a quantitative housing shortage. On top of this, there is a growing qualitative housing shortage. In other words, more and more homes are severely outdated or no longer meet market demands or, very importantly, current and future sustainability requirements.

The scarcity of homes in the urban regions of the Netherlands is pushing up house prices and rents, making fewer and fewer homes affordable. This is primarily hitting starters and low and middle-income households. These groups are increasingly looking for creative solutions (sharing/smaller homes) to keep housing affordable. Affordability issues are also driving households to the suburbs or peripheral locations outside the larger cities.

On average, people are more willing to compromise on space than they are on the type of location of their homes. On top of this, cities are seeing a steady rise in the number of one or two-person households. Investors and developers are responding to this demand, but to a certain extent they are also being forced to create this type of housing stock due to ever higher ground prices. Although compact apartments may now be a solution for a portion of the current home seekers, we expect the underlying demand for larger apartments to persist for the long term. In addition, we also expect a robust demand for high-quality and affordable family homes in urban areas.

Sources: ABF Research; Calcasa.