Young adults moving out from parents' homes choose Amsterdam more than any other city

In 2024, more than 174,000 people aged 18 to 30 left their parents’ homes, with The Hague drawing in a disproportionately large share of non-students, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Most young adults leaving their parents, as well as those who moved specifically for study, chose Amsterdam.

At every level of education, women were more likely to live with others than men. But as a group, university students were found to be the most likely to share a home, while MBO students were most likely to live alone.

The CBS’s analysis covered young adults who were registered as children living at home in the Personal Records Database on Jan. 1, 2024, and who were no longer registered that way on Dec. 31, 2024, while not being admitted into an educational institution.

Of the young adults who left home, 31.5 percent were students on December 31 of that year. They most often, with a frequency of 49.9 percent, ended up in a private rental home.

They were a little less likely to move into social housing or owner-occupied homes. People who are not enrolled in an educational institution were more likely to move into an owner-occupied home, followed by private and rental housing.

Senior secondary vocational MBO students were more likely to move into an owner-occupied home (27.7 percent) than students in higher professional education, such as HBO (21.1 percent) or university students (16.3 percent). Some people in this group moved in with a partner, relative, or anyone else whose name is on the lease.

Furthermore, in 2024, more than 58,000 (33 percent) young adults who left the parental home settled in the ten largest municipalities, with Amsterdam drawing in the most movers: 12,760 people. Of those, 5,475 were students. The capital was followed by Utrecht and Groningen.