Overbidding in the Netherlands in 2026: the public figures, per province, and how to avoid it

I am Jiri, an estate agent in Maastricht. At almost every viewing I get the same question, and from expats most of all, because nobody warned them: how much over the asking price do I have to go? I never answer with a percentage, and below I explain why. But the figures that are public I have put in one place, with the source and the quarter next to each one, so you know where they come from and how old they are.

The figures now

The NVM, the largest association of Dutch estate agents, publishes every quarter how many existing homes its members sold above the asking price. In the second quarter of 2026 that was 71 percent. In the first quarter it was 67 percent, and in the last quarter of 2025 it was 72 percent. Two out of three homes sold still go for more than the asking price.

How much more differs per source. The NVM came to an average of 3.7 percent above the asking price in the first quarter of 2026, and about 4.7 percent at the end of 2025. Huispedia, a housing database that calculates it its own way, came to 4.8 percent for the second quarter of 2026, with 70.5 percent of sales above the asking price. The sources are close but not identical; whoever quotes you a figure, ask which source and which quarter.

The first two rows are there for a reason. At the start of 2022 four out of five homes sold above the asking price; a year later, after mortgage rates rose quickly, it was fewer than one in three. Overbidding is not a law of nature. It is what happens when there are more buyers than homes, and that ratio can turn within a year. Since 2024 it has turned back the seller's way.

What did change in the second quarter of 2026: more homes came onto the market than in any quarter since the NVM started measuring in 1995, 56,700 in three months, and the NVM spoke of more room to negotiate. Huispedia saw 13.5 percent of the homes put up for sale come back later with a lower asking price, the highest share since the end of 2023. The market has not turned, but it is no longer equally hot everywhere.

Per province and per city

Between provinces the differences are wide. According to Huispedia, buyers overbid most in the second quarter of 2026 in the province of Utrecht (7.7 percent on average) and in Groningen (7.6 percent), and least in Zeeland (2.1 percent). Within a province it spreads further still: in the city of Utrecht the average came to 13.6 percent, the highest of the big cities.

A percentage only means something once you turn it into euros, and that depends on what a home costs in your province. Below is the average sale price per province from the CBS, the national statistics office, with what one and five percent of it is. Five percent on an average home in Utrecht is a different sum than in Limburg.

For your own municipality the average sale price per year since 1995 is on house prices per municipality. No official source publishes overbidding per municipality or neighbourhood. The NVM does publish quarterly market reports per region and for the big cities, and many agents put their region's report online; ask the selling agent for it.

Why one house fetches ten percent and another nothing

An average of four or five percent is made up of homes that went far above the asking price and homes that went below it. Three things largely decide where a home ends up.

The type. At the end of 2025, according to the NVM, more than 80 percent of terraced houses sold above the asking price, against fewer than half of detached houses. The family house in a row is the home most buyers aim at at the same time.

The price bracket. In the second quarter of 2026 the fiercest competition, according to the NVM, was between 350,000 and 500,000 euros: there more than three quarters of sales went above the asking price. Above that, the group of buyers who can afford it gets smaller.

The asking price itself. An asking price is a choice of the seller and the agent, not a valuation. A home put on the market low draws more viewers and more bids; Huispedia saw such homes go on average 5.6 percent above the asking price in the second quarter, against 3.6 percent for a realistically priced home. A high percentage then does not mean the home sold dear, but that it was offered cheap. The other way round, homes whose asking price had already been lowered went above it far less often.

How much do you bid?

My answer as an agent: do not look at the percentage, look at what comparable homes in the same street or neighbourhood sold for in the past year. A terraced house of the same size, from the same period, in similar condition, is a better anchor than any national average. The sale prices of individual homes are in the Kadaster, the public land registry (koopsominformatie, a few euros per address), and a valuer or a buying agent can line them up for you.

Then fix what you can and want to pay at most before you bid, not after. Bidding often comes with a deadline and a few other buyers in the waiting room, and that is exactly the moment people stretch their own limit. What you really think the house is worth, you know best on the day you think about it calmly.

And remember that price is not the only thing you can win on. A seller who has to wait for a new home is sometimes helped more by a flexible completion date than by five thousand euros. Ask the selling agent what matters to the seller; he is allowed to tell you.

Overbidding and your mortgage

In the Netherlands you can as a rule borrow at most 100 percent of the market value of a home. That market value is set by the valuer, not by the price you agreed. If you bid more than the valuation, you pay the difference yourself, on top of the buyer's costs (transfer tax, notary, valuation, advice), which you also pay from your own money.

An example with round numbers: you bid 470,000 euros on a house that is valued at 450,000 euros. You can then borrow at most 450,000 euros. The 20,000 euros above it and the buyer's costs have to come from your savings. So know before you bid how much of your own money you have, and let your mortgage adviser do the sum with you. For an expat there is one more thing to check: whether your lender's maximum depends on your contract or your residence permit, so the valuation is not the only ceiling.

If you bid without a financing condition, you are bound to the purchase, also when the bank lends less than you thought. If the purchase then fails, the standard purchase agreement carries a penalty of ten percent of the price. Drop that condition only when your financing is certain, and never because the agent says it will not work otherwise.

Avoiding it: buy before the bidding starts

Every figure above is about homes that were on Funda, with an asking price, a viewing schedule and a bidding round. A bidding war exists because ten buyers see the same home at the same time. Whoever buys the home before those ten buyers see it does not have that war.

That can be done in two ways. Through the silent sale of agents, where a home is first offered within the agent's own network; how to get in is in how to buy an off-market house in the Netherlands. And by writing to the owner of the house you want yourself, before he even thinks of an agent. An owner who replies to such a letter still wants a fair price, and you grant him that: you have the home valued and talk about its value, not about what ten others might bid. What such a letter looks like is in the letter to a Dutch homeowner, in English and in Dutch, and the whole route from first coffee to signature in buying a house in the Netherlands as an expat.

I update the figures in this guide every quarter, as soon as the NVM and Huispedia publish their new quarter. The average sale prices per province in the table the page refreshes itself, every day, straight from the CBS.