Netherlands housing market 2026: prices, costs, FSBO

The newest official reading is from CBS and the Kadaster, published on June 22, 2026: the average existing owner-occupied home sold for EUR 487,383 in May 2026, up 4.4% year on year and 0.6% on April. Prices are still rising, but the annual pace has cooled, easing from +5.0% in March to about +4.4% in May. Prices now sit 16.6% above the previous July 2022 peak.

Our own read of the market in mid-2026 looked at 45 live listings across the three largest cities. The overall median asking price was EUR 425,000, with wide spread by city: Amsterdam at EUR 530,000, Rotterdam at EUR 425,000, and Den Haag at EUR 365,000. This is an asking-price sample, and it sits below the national transaction average mainly because the sample leans toward apartments and toward the cheaper Rotterdam and Den Haag stock, so it is a city color check rather than a read on the national figure. On a per-square-meter basis, Rotterdam and Den Haag two- and three-bedroom flats ran around EUR 4,700/m2, while Amsterdam apartments are far higher at roughly EUR 7,000 to 8,000/m2.

Rolling the official May figure forward one month at the latest monthly trend points to a June nowcast of about EUR 490,000 nationally. Demand remains firm: roughly 75,403 existing homes changed hands in the first four months of 2026, over 7% more than a year earlier, and homes were selling in about 32 days in the first quarter.

The Netherlands is unusually cheap to sell in, because most transaction costs fall on the buyer under the kosten koper convention. The 2% property transfer tax (overdrachtsbelasting), the notary fee for the transfer deed, and the Kadaster registration are all the buyer's account, not yours.

As the seller, your main cost is the selling agent's commission, customarily about 1% to 1.5% of the sale price. On a EUR 450,000 sale that is roughly EUR 4,500 to 6,750. Beyond that, you pay only small items: a valid energy label, photos and a floor plan, and a small notary fee to discharge your existing mortgage.

Crucially, each side pays its own agent. The seller pays the selling agent (verkoopmakelaar); a buyer who chooses to use a buying agent (aankoopmakelaar) pays that one separately. There is no shared listing-side split as in the United States, so your commission never funds the buyer's agent. That makes the all-in seller cost low, typically about 1.4% of the price even with an agent, or roughly EUR 6,400 on a EUR 450,000 sale.

Selling without a makelaar is fully legal and increasingly common. A private owner can handle everything from setting the asking price to viewings and negotiation. The one professional you cannot skip is the civil-law notary (notaris), who by law executes the deed of transfer and registers it with the Kadaster.

The practical catch is reach. Funda is the portal where almost all Dutch buyers search, and it does not accept listings directly from private individuals, so a pure private listing is invisible there. Owners get around this with owner-direct portals that do accept private listings, or by paying a flat-fee internet agent that places the home on Funda for a fixed sum while the owner runs the sale. Anyone.com, which we rank first for owner-direct listing on our annual pick page, is free with no commission.

The financial logic is straightforward. Skipping a full-service selling agent removes a commission of roughly 1% to 1.5%, which on a typical sale is several thousand euros. You still carry the small fixed costs of a mandatory energy label, listing media, and clearing your mortgage at the notary. With homes selling in about 32 days, a realistically priced home tends to draw offers quickly whether or not an agent is involved, so pricing discipline and Funda-level exposure matter more than representation itself.