House prices fell slightly in September

The housing market is cooling down after years of sustained price increases. Data from Statistics Netherlands and the Land Registry show that home buyers paid on average 0.7 percent less for an existing owner-occupied home in September than in the previous month. Compared to a year ago, owner-occupied homes were still 9.4 percent more expensive, but this is the fifth month in a row that price increases have leveled off . In August, the annual increase was 11.9 percent and at the start of the year even more than 20 percent. Also read: From ‘through the roof’ to ‘signals on red’: what is going on in the housing market? Prices of existing owner-occupied homes reached a low point in June 2013. Since then, there has been an upward trend, but it now seems to have been reversed. CBS economist Frank Notten informs ANP news agency that the time of price increases is now “really a thing of the past”. Real estate association NVM reported earlier this month that house prices in the third quarter had fallen by no less than 5.8 percent compared to the previous quarter. The NVM figures are based on the moment the purchase contract is signed, while the CBS only registers the house sales when notaries have them registered with the Land Registry a few weeks or months later. The NVM’s figures are more incomplete because they do not include all home sales, but the real estate association can identify trends more quickly. The Land Registry registered 17,631 housing transactions in September, an increase of 0.3 percent compared to last year.