In 2025, expats and international students bought almost twice as many Dutch homes as five years ago, according to figures from real estate agents’ association NVM, based on data from the first half of the year. Although the number of foreign buyers is relatively small nationwide, at 1.6 %, in some areas there is stiff competition. The most popular areas for expats are, not surprisingly, various neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Eindhoven and surrounding areas. Sixteen of the 342 Dutch municipalities account for 85 percent of all international tenants renting through NVM real estate agents.
For example, in Amstelveen, 20% of buyers are highly educated migrant workers. This municipality thus has the highest percentage of foreign buyers, followed by Veldhoven, Ouder-Amstel, Eindhoven and Amsterdam with 11 to 14%. Next are more municipalities near Amsterdam: Uithoorn, Haarlemmermeer and Aalsmeer with 7 to 10%. But within these municipalities, certain neighbourhoods are extremely popular. The new development Hyde Park in Hoofddorp (municipality of Haarlemmermeer) is a magnet for expats, with a staggering 75% of homebuyers in this newly developed neighbourhood being migrants.
Deep pockets
Neighbourhoods where wealthy migrant workers buy often have an international school nearby, are easily accessible by public transport, and are close to their workplace. They also regularly seek homes with a second bedroom, intended as a home office. NVM also discovered that foreign buyers are willing and able to pay a substantial amount for a home in a popular neighbourhood. The average price of €591,000 for a house bought by an expat is €16,000 above the national average purchase price. This can partially be explained by the higher wages they earn from their highly-specialised jobs, and partially because receive a tax benefit. The so-called “expat regulation” stipulates that expats do not have to pay tax on 30 percent of their income. In 2027, the tax-free allowance will be reduced to 27 percent, and will be gradually lowered from then onwards.
Who are the buyers?
Most expat buyers can be classified as “internationals”: those who work or study in the Netherlands but speak little or no Dutch. ‘Internationals are indispensable to our economy,’ says NVM chair Lana Goutsmits-Gerssen. She points out that the housing supply in the Netherlands is relatively low, while the demand for labour is high. It is striking that most expats who buy a home intend to stay in the Netherlands for more than five years. Among renters, less than one in ten intends to do so; they usually stay for one to three years. At this moment, most immigrants and international students in the Netherlands actually want to rent, but the number of buyers is clearly on the rise. According to NVM, this is mainly due to high rents and the limited availability of rental properties.
The most popular houses among foreign buyers are two-bedroom homes that require minimal work. The second bedroom is often used as a home office or guest room. These smaller houses are exactly the type of home that starters in the Dutch housing market are also looking for. In total, NVM real estate agents sell 3,000 to 4,000 homes per year to highly skilled migrants – a small number compared to the total of around 250,000 homes sold in the whole of the country. However, in some areas the percentage is very high, and many expats have deeper pockets than the average Dutch starter. Thus, they are able to offer more than the asking price, thus driving first-time buyers and those moving up the property ladder out of the market.
In general, the Netherlands is facing a housing shortage; about 300,000 homes must be built in the next decades to bring the supply up to par. At the same time, the country wants to welcome knowledge migrants who contribute to Dutch technological and scientific development. In this light, the new NVM figures point to the urgent need to provide rental and owner-occupied housing for all inhabitants of the country.
Written by Saskia Roselaar