Buying a house in Groningen as an expat: low prices, fierce bidding, and the question about the ground

I am Jiri, an estate agent in Maastricht, at the other end of the country. Groningen and Maastricht have more in common than the map suggests: both are university cities far from the Randstad, both are cheaper than Utrecht and both have a small old centre that everyone wants and few leave. Here is what I would tell a friend who has just taken a job at the university or the hospital and wants to stop renting.

What homes cost

Average sale price, Groningen

€396,626

2025, +6.2% on 2024

Province of Groningen

€371,220

2025

The Netherlands

€479,527

2025

Cheaper than the west, but do not let the average fool you about the market. In the second quarter of 2026 buyers in the province of Groningen overbid on average 7.6 percent above the asking price, the second-highest of all provinces after Utrecht (Huispedia), and 71 percent of existing homes in the Netherlands sold above the asking price (NVM). A low price and fierce competition go together here: the city grows, the university brings new people every year, and the family houses near the centre are few. What those percentages mean in euros is in overbidding in the Netherlands.

A Dutch bank lends at most the market value that an independent valuer puts on the home, so what you bid above it, and the buyer's costs, come from savings. Ask a mortgage adviser who works with international clients for your maximum first; the university and the UMCG bring enough of them to the city that several advisers specialise in exactly your situation.

A mortgage on a research contract

Many newcomers in Groningen arrive on a fixed-term contract: a PhD position, a postdoc, a grant. Dutch lenders differ in how they treat that. Most accept a fixed-term contract with a written statement from your employer that it intends to extend it; some are stricter; and for non-EU citizens the residence permit matters too. It is not a reason to wait for a permanent contract. It is a reason to ask an adviser which lender takes your situation before you view.

The ground: ask about earthquakes

Groningen is the province where decades of gas extraction have caused earthquakes, and that is the one local question to ask about every house, including in the city. The damage is concentrated north and east of the city, and the city itself has had far less of it, but a buyer asks all the same: has the house had earthquake damage, has it been inspected or strengthened, and is there a report. A seller must tell you what he knows. For a house in the villages around the city, ask before anything else; a surveyor who works in the province knows the area and the schemes.

Where homes change hands before Funda

In the streets people want most, a good share of the homes never reach Funda. They go to a colleague, to a neighbour, or to the person who wrote to the owner a year earlier. I have written about three of those neighbourhoods; the Schildersbuurt, west of the centre, with streets named after painters and the houses from around 1900 that academics have lived in for a century; the Oranjebuurt north of it, quieter and a little younger; and Helpman in the south, where families with children look first and the Sterrebos is at the end of the street.

There are two ways in. The first is to get onto the lists of the selling agents whose boards you see in those streets: email a few of them with who you are, where you want to live, your budget and your adviser's confirmation, and call a week later. The second goes one step further back, to the owner before any agent is involved. How both work is in how to buy an off-market house in the Netherlands.

Writing to owners in Groningen

In the Schildersbuurt and around the university an English letter is read without surprise; in Helpman and the villages I would send the Dutch version, with the English on the back. People in the north are direct and distrust anything that sounds like a sales pitch, so keep it plain: who you are, why this house, that you came here for work and are staying, and that you will live there yourself. No price and no deadline, and nothing about how beautiful their property is.

A letter you can send as it is, in English and in Dutch, is in the letter to a Dutch homeowner. With DoorLetter the first letter is free, printed and delivered by PostNL, and the owner can reply anonymously with the code in the letter, also months later.

The steps after a yes

When an owner replies and you agree on the outlines, the route is the ordinary Dutch one, described in buying a house in the Netherlands as an expat: an independent valuer values the home for your mortgage, your adviser arranges the loan, and a notary draws up the written purchase agreement. Only when both of you have signed it is there a sale, and as a private buyer you then have three days to withdraw. A verbal yes binds nobody.