The housing shortage is slightly higher this year than last. Research agency ABF Research says there is now a shortage of around 401,000 homes, compared with 390,000 in 2023. The agency calculates the housing shortage for the central government every year. Based in part on ABF’s figures, the government decides each year how many homes should be added. The deficit last fell in 2021, during the corona crisis. It has continued to rise ever since, now for three years in a row.

The figure includes the number of homes needed to accommodate all families. Of people aged 25 or over who currently live with another household or live in a building with a non-residential function. Such a place with a non-residential function is, for example, a chalet in a holiday park. The increase in the housing shortage therefore means that in one year more households without their own homes have been added than houses have been built.

These 401,000 homes are equivalent to 4.9 percent of the current number of homes in the Netherlands. So if there were suddenly 401,000 more homes, there would be a home available immediately for every house-seeker. In principle, the government is not aiming for this, but for a housing shortage of 2 percent. The idea is that at this level you still have a certain amount of time to look and wait, but the housing market is no longer under pressure.

Because a housing shortage of 0 percent could also have bad consequences, says ABF researcher Leon Grünemeier. “For example, regional surpluses of housing could arise. Then people, for example, choose to wait for a better home elsewhere, and then you could end up with vacant houses and deterioration. Homeowners could see the value of their homes fall.”

To reduce the deficit to 2 percent, far fewer homes are needed now, 232,000. That’s still far more than were added last year; there were more than 88,000 at that time.

“The housing shortage is still as high as ever,” said Minister Kaiser, the new Minister for Public Housing, in response. “This has put a lot of people’s lives on hold. We really have to start building for all those people who are waiting for a home. That’s why the main agreement says that the government wants to build 100,000 new homes every year. I will discuss this with all the participants in the near future how we will work on this together.”

The previous government aimed to reduce the housing shortage to 2 percent by 2031. To achieve this, according to the ABF, more new homes would be needed than the target of 100,000 per year, i.e. an average of 116,000 per year between 2024 and 2030. This assumes a certain growth in the number of people and households. Of course, this could also turn out differently.

The previous government struck so-called housing deals with the provinces on how many homes to add to each area. There are already So-called “hard plans” to build 390,000 homes between 2024 and 2030. These are homes that can almost certainly be built, for example because they are included in an irrevocable zoning plan.

In addition, there are also “easy” plans for hundreds of thousands of homes. It is still unclear whether these homes can actually be built. The previous and current governments want two-thirds of new homes to be “affordable”. This refers to homes with a housing cost that can be afforded by low and middle income earners.

This goal seems feasible at present. According to the ABF, 65 percent of the homes to be built whose price category is already known are affordable. This concerns 33 percent of cheap rental homes, 16 percent of medium-priced rental homes, 3 percent of cheap owner-occupied homes and 14 percent of medium-priced owner-occupied homes.