Buyer's Market or Seller's Market? What the Data Says About the Dutch Housing Market in 2026
Every major source tracking the Dutch housing market, NVM, the three biggest banks, and an independent academic monitor, is reading 2026 the same way: more homes for sale, more sales, slower price growth, a shrinking shortage. Here's what the data actually shows, and what it means if you're buying or selling in the Netherlands right now.
More homes went up for sale in the Netherlands in the second quarter of 2026 than in any quarter since 1995. For buyers, that surge raises an obvious question: does more choice actually translate into more leverage? A buyer's market is what happens when supply outpaces demand enough that sellers start competing for buyers instead of the other way around: negotiating windows stretch out, and offers start landing at or under the asking price rather than over it. Whether the Netherlands has genuinely reached that point deserves a proper answer.
The number that actually measures a market
NVM, the country's largest association of real estate agents, tracks exactly this with a figure called the krapte-indicator, or tightness indicator: the number of homes for sale divided by the number sold in a given period. It's the closest thing the Dutch market has to an actual instrument for the buyer's-or-seller's-market question, because NVM has attached real thresholds to it. Below 5 signals a seller's market. 5 to 10 is balanced. Above 10 is a buyer's market.
In the second quarter of 2026, that number was 2.5. It was 2.6 in Q1, and 1.9 at the end of 2025, so it's been moving in the same direction for three quarters running. Hold onto that number, we'll come back to it once the rest of the picture is on the table.
What's actually loosening
A few numbers behind that shift, all from NVM's Q2 2026 release:
- New listings hit 56,700, the highest since 1995, up 9% year over year.
- Sales reached 45,200, up 29.4% from Q1 and 6.6% year over year.
- Stock for sale passed 37,000, up 20% year over year.
- The average time to sell dropped to 28 days, from 32 in Q1.
- Just over 71% of homes sold above the asking price.
More choice, more transactions, and homes still moving in under a month with most of them going over asking.
Prices are still rising, just more slowly
The average sale price reached €506,000 in Q2, up 2.1% year over year. CBS's monthly reading for May showed prices up 4.4% year over year nationally, decelerating for six straight quarters, with May transactions down 2.5% year over year, the first negative monthly reading in this cycle.
The three major Dutch banks are forecasting more of the same for the rest of the year: slower growth, not a reversal. ABN AMRO expects 3% price growth this year and 4% next. Rabobank expects 2.8%, with no further rise through the rest of 2026, and titled its latest report "the end of the price rally." ING is the most conservative at roughly 1.5%. All three point to the same underlying story: 2025 was an unusually strong year, driven partly by landlords selling off rental properties to owner-occupiers, and that wave has now peaked. They also agree that growth in Amsterdam and the wider Randstad is now lagging the rest of the country, not leading it.
The shortage hasn't gone away
Here's the part that explains why a looser market doesn't necessarily feel like relief if you're actually house-hunting. The Ministry of Housing's most recent figure, published 1 July 2026, puts the national shortage at 384,000 homes, or 4.6% of the housing stock. That's down from 4.8% in 2025 and 4.9% in 2024, the second straight year of decline. It's real progress. It's also nowhere near solved: the Ministry's own release says a return to a "balanced" market of roughly 2% shortage isn't expected until around 2034.
Part of the reason is construction simply isn't keeping pace. The structural target is 100,000 new homes a year. 2025 saw around 69,000 to 78,000 completions, depending on which measure you use, the third straight annual decline. The Ministry now expects the 100,000 target to be hit for the first time in 2027, not this year.
CPB, the government's own economic policy analysis bureau, adds useful context here: the share of homes affordable on mortgage capacity alone fell from 61% in 2015 to 21% in 2024, and to just 18% in the four largest cities. A market can loosen by NVM's measure and get less affordable at the same time. Both are true right now.
Amsterdam's paradox
Amsterdam is the clearest example of why a single national number can't tell the whole story. The average sale price there was €588,000 in Q2, down 2.9% year over year, the softest of the G4 cities. At the same time, 78% of homes sold above asking, with an average overbid of 7.1%, both higher than the national figures. Supply is up 27% year over year and homes are still moving in about a month.
Softer average prices and more aggressive overbidding aren't a contradiction, they're a composition effect: what's selling has shifted, not necessarily what buyers are willing to pay for a given home. Utrecht's regional data shows a similar pattern: a krapte-indicator of 1.9, tighter than the national reading, alongside 79.5% of homes selling above asking.
So, is it a buyer's market?
Put the pieces together and the answer is no, not yet, but it's the clearest loosening in years. NVM's own tightness indicator is still less than half of the 5.0 threshold the organisation uses to call a market "balanced," and it's been sitting in that range for three quarters straight. TU Delft's independent Monitor Koopwoningmarkt, built with Kadaster, NVM and CBS data, reads the market at 1.8 to 2.3 for two straight years using its own framework, defining 5 to 7 as "normally functioning." Two separate methodologies land in the same place.
None of NVM, the three major banks, or TU Delft use the phrase "buyer's market" anywhere in their current reporting. The strongest language on record is NVM's own chair describing the market as moving "step by step toward better balance," and ING's economist calling it "wat meer in balans," somewhat more balanced. Amsterdam's agents' association has been the most direct: not a buyer's market, and the scarcity is structural. Every source is moving in the same direction. None of them are ready to call it a flip.
What this means if you're buying or selling right now
If you're buying, the practical read is this: more choice than a year ago, slightly more room to negotiate on time and terms, but not a market where you can expect to buy below asking as a rule. Overbidding is still the norm in Amsterdam and Utrecht specifically. Build your search timeline and budget around that reality, not around headlines suggesting the market has turned.
If you're selling, the data says your home will still likely move in under a month and probably sell above asking, but price growth has slowed enough that pricing it accurately from the start matters more than it did in 2025. Overpricing in a market that's no longer accelerating costs you time you didn't need to lose.
If you want to talk through what any of this means for your specific search or sale in Amsterdam, Utrecht, or Eindhoven, we're happy to walk through it with you.
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