More Than Half of Dutch Households Live in Homes That Are Too Big

More than half of Dutch households live in homes that are larger than they need by international standards, according to new research by urban geographer Cody Hochstenbach. The findings suggest that redistributing existing living space could help address the Netherlands' persistent housing shortage without relying solely on new construction.

Writing in economics journal ESB, Hochstenbach calculates that 55 percent of Dutch households have more space than necessary. The average Dutch household lives in 131 square metres, compared with 100 square metres in Italy and France. Under his calculations, even a couple living in 100 square metres would be considered to have excess space.

The research offers a striking thought experiment: if the 4.1 million households with "excessive" or "strongly excessive" living space each gave up an average of 11 square metres, the entire statistical housing shortage of 396,000 homes could be absorbed within the existing housing stock.

"Housing space is unevenly distributed," Hochstenbach writes. "On average we live spaciously, but many housing seekers still cannot find a suitable home."

The excess space is not evenly distributed across tenure types. Seventy percent of homeowners fall into the "excessive" or "strongly excessive" categories for living space, compared with 31 percent of social housing tenants. Meanwhile, about 13 percent of private rental sector tenants have insufficient living space.

Hochstenbach's analysis shows that oversized housing is most prevalent among high earners and property owners. This reflects decades of housing policy that has favoured homeownership through mechanisms such as mortgage interest tax relief, which the new coalition government has decided not to phase out.

The Woonbond tenants' association responded to the research by calling for systemic change. "It is unfair that mainly wealthy people live too spaciously, while people with lower incomes live too cramped or cannot find housing at all," said director Zeno Winkels. "Phase out the favouring of owner-occupied housing."

Hochstenbach suggests several measures to address the imbalance. Some are relatively painless: building smaller new homes on average, considering household size when allocating social housing, and making it easier and more financially attractive to share homes.

Currently, people who share a home face significant cuts to their social security benefits or state pension because they are considered a "couple." Professor Marja Elsinga of Delft University told the Financieele Dagblad that this discourages co-housing. "We should be encouraging people to live together. Now, for example, students get housing benefit but two adults sharing a property don't."

Making "hospita" arrangements easier, where people with spare rooms rent them out, could also help. A separate ESB paper by professors Piet Eichholtz, Nils Kok and others argues for stimulating home-sharing as a solution.

The new coalition government plans to make better use of existing housing by making it easier to divide large houses into smaller units. Experts have also urged officials to do more to encourage older people to move from large family homes into smaller, age-appropriate properties.

In 2021, more than 770,000 households aged 65 and over lived in social housing, often in large family homes. However, programmes to encourage downsizing have achieved limited success. Amsterdam's "Van Groot naar Beter" (From Big to Better) and "Van Hoog naar Laag" (From High to Low) schemes together achieve only about 200 moves per year.

One obstacle is financial: an older couple paying €600 per month for a family home with a garden has little incentive to move to a two-bedroom apartment costing €1,100.

The research also touches on "scheefwonen" (literally "skewed living"), where households with incomes above the threshold for social housing remain in subsidised accommodation. Currently, about 240,000 people in the Netherlands fall into this category.

The new government wants to apply income and asset tests more rigorously to encourage these tenants to move on. However, critics argue that many cannot move because there is nowhere affordable to go. "There are simply not enough homes in the Netherlands, so moving on is very difficult," the Woonbond has said.

Hochstenbach acknowledges that forcing people to give up living space would be politically difficult. However, he argues that the research highlights the need to look beyond "building, building, building" as the sole solution. New construction has consistently fallen short of the government's target of 100,000 homes per year, with just 69,000 completions in both 2024 and 2025.

Building new homes is also carbon-intensive. Hochstenbach's research, co-authored with colleagues, has shown that making better use of existing space would align with climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.