New report suggests heated Dutch housing market is calming down

The Dutch housing market continued to cool in the first quarter of 2026, with buyers overbidding less aggressively for a second straight quarter, sales dropping sharply and more sellers cutting asking prices, according to a new report.

Average overbidding fell to 4.7 percent above the asking price from 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, Huispedia reported Thursday. Roughly 65,000 homes were sold, an 11.9 percent decline from the previous quarter. The share of homes that sold above asking price also dropped, from 73 percent to 71.4 percent.

Only homes with top energy labels (A+ or better) bucked the trend, with overbidding on those properties rising slightly to 4.5 percent from 4.2 percent.

Sellers lowered asking prices on 12.2 percent of relisted homes in the first quarter, a figure that remains unusually high compared with the same period a year earlier, when it stood at about 10 percent. Normally, price reductions drop sharply in the first quarter after a busy year-end selling season, but the decline this year was much smaller than in previous years.

Huispedia CEO Maxim Bours said seasonal factors and rising mortgage rates are behind the slowdown. “Seasonal influences and a rising mortgage interest rate have brought some air into the housing market. But this cooling seems to be of short duration,” he said.

Bours noted that the number of viewings per listed home fell 7.9 percent from the previous quarter. He attributed the weaker demand to higher borrowing costs and uncertainty.

“How much buyers can pay is normally the best predictor of how much is overbid,” Bours said. “The interest rates have increased relatively quickly due to the unrest in the Middle East. This means that the budget of the average buyer has quickly decreased by ten thousand euros, causing buyers to be able to overbid less. At the same time, the unrest also creates uncertainty among buyers, which we see reflected in the number of viewings per home that is for sale.”

Looking ahead, Bours expects the cooling to be temporary. “We expect that the divestment effect, the sale of former rental homes, will only have a depressing effect on overbidding in the coming quarter. After that, this cooling effect will disappear,” he said.

“In addition, we are now in spring, a period in which the housing market becomes busier and overbidding generally also increases again.”

The next quarter’s direction will hinge largely on mortgage rates, according to Bours. “If the interest rate remains high or further increases, the cooling will also continue. But if it falls, you will see that overbidding can quickly increase again.”