The baby boomer trillions. What does that mean for the housing market? The shortage on the housing market… It's a big problem. When we talk about the housing market, it's almost always about the same problem: there are too few homes. We need to build, first-time buyers can't get a foot in the door and large family homes are scarce. Build, build, build is what we mostly hear. But over the coming years a development is on its way that could change the housing market considerably, and relatively little is being said about it. The Netherlands is ageing rapidly, and it is precisely the generations now growing older who own a remarkable amount of wealth and a great many homes.
Contents
- Older Dutch people have never had so much wealth
- And there is much more to come
- Older Dutch people own an enormous number of family homes
- Why are hardly any of those homes coming free yet?
- Will the ageing population suddenly put hundreds of thousands of homes up for sale?
- Because the children don't just inherit the house, but above all purchasing power
- As a result, the gap between buyers may actually widen
- Will this make homes cheaper?
- And what does this mean for Utrecht?
- So the housing market of the next twenty years won't just be about building
You probably know the funny videos about finfluencers by Jona van Loenen. But alongside those funny sketches, he has also written a book. In his new book De Babyboomerbiljoenen (The Baby Boomer Trillions), economist Jona van Loenen even calls it the largest transfer of wealth in our history. According to him, Dutch baby boomers together own around €1,000 billion. He also refers to a calculation by UvA economist Paul de Beer that around €240 billion will be left in inheritances in the next ten years alone.
That mainly sounds like a lot of money moving from one bank account to another, but for the housing market something special is going on. A large part of older Dutch people's wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of older people still live in family homes where a family with three children may once have lived. Over the next twenty to thirty years, those homes will eventually come back onto the market. So the question is: will the ageing population finally bring more supply and lower house prices, or will all that inherited money make homes even more expensive?
The answer is probably: both. And that is exactly what makes this development so interesting.
Older Dutch people have never had so much wealth
To understand what's coming, you first have to look at who holds the wealth right now. According to a recent analysis in ESB, the Netherlands has around 1.34 million households aged 75 and over. Together they have a net wealth of around €491 billion. A large part of that wealth has come from the enormous rise in house values over the past decades.
CBS figures show the same picture. In 2024, homeowners aged between 65 and 75 had an average wealth of €678,100, and homeowners aged between 75 and 85 as much as €680,700. For homeowners aged 85 and over, the average was €661,300. Pension wealth isn't even included in these amounts. Imagine that…
So that wealth is not just the result of years of saving. A large part of it is in homes that were once bought for amounts that today, in Utrecht, sometimes won't even get you a studio in a housing association. Thanks to paying off the mortgage and decades of rising house prices, an enormous amount of home equity has built up.
And that wealth is now starting to pass to the next generation. In 2023, 168,700 Dutch people died and, according to CBS, a total of €33.6 billion was left behind. The real estate in those estates alone represented almost €19.8 billion. So we're not talking about something that will start somewhere in 2045. The wave of inheritances is already under way.
And there is much more to come
The real acceleration is still to come, though. The number of older people will rise sharply over the coming decades. CBS expected the Netherlands to record around 176,000 deaths a year in 2030 and almost 200,000 around 2040. Around 2050, the forecast rises further to around 209,000 a year.
On top of that, the people who will die in the coming decades are, on average, much wealthier than previous generations. That explains why Van Loenen and other economists speak of a historic transfer of wealth. His estimate of around €240 billion in inheritances over the next ten years should be seen as a forecast and not a fixed amount, but the direction is clear. For comparison: in 2023, €33.6 billion was already left in inheritances.
And that is where something interesting happens for the housing market. With an inheritance, a house can appear on the supply side and money can land on the demand side at the same time.
Older Dutch people own an enormous number of family homes
This is perhaps even more interesting than the money. Of the roughly 4.93 million occupied family homes in the Netherlands, almost 1.96 million were occupied at the end of 2024 by a household whose reference person was between 55 and 75. Another 715,770 family homes were occupied by households aged 75 and over. Altogether, that's around 2.68 million family homes occupied by a household aged 55 or over. I wrote a blog earlier about how we live in homes that are too big.
That certainly does not mean that 2.68 million homes will soon come up for sale. Someone aged 58 could stay in their home for another thirty years, and an 80-year-old doesn't have to move at all. But it does show where an enormous share of the Dutch housing stock is.
People aged 75 and over alone live in more than 715,000 family homes. For comparison: in the whole of 2024, only 28,660 new family homes were built in the Netherlands.
I find that difference pretty fascinating. We rightly talk a lot about new builds, but a large part of the future movement on the housing market may well be in homes that have been standing for a long time. A big shift is going to take place and we shouldn't underestimate it.
Why are hardly any of those homes coming free yet?
That is exactly the problem with the current ageing of the population. Older people are living independently for longer and longer. That is often exactly what they want, and policy has been geared towards it for years. According to the national government, 92% of people aged 75 and over live independently, and even among the over-90s around two thirds still live independently.
Many older people also live perfectly well. The mortgage is largely or entirely paid off, the monthly costs are low, the neighbourhood is familiar, and moving to a smaller apartment is by no means always cheaper. If you live in a paid-off family home and then have to pay €600,000 or €700,000 for a nice new-build apartment, plus a hefty VvE (owners' association) contribution, “nicely downsizing” suddenly becomes a lot less attractive financially.
On top of that, there are simply too few suitable alternatives. That is why the government wants to deliver 290,000 homes for older people up to and including 2030. In July 2026, a further €420 million was made available, mainly to speed up the construction of care-ready and clustered homes for older people. The idea behind this is not only that older people can live better, but also that their move sets off a chain that frees up other homes.
That is essential for the housing market. If you build one suitable apartment for an older person who leaves behind a large family home, you don't just add that apartment. You also make an existing family home available, after which its buyer may in turn leave behind an apartment or smaller house. Good housing for older people can therefore create much more movement than the number of newly built homes alone would suggest.
I said before that it would be better to build good homes for older people. You see it very clearly in our village. My parents live in a detached house with a large garden. They're not there much. But if they want to move to an apartment, they're shut in with little outdoor space. On top of that, the service charges are higher than the mortgage. So they happily stay where they are.
I personally think it's especially important that those apartments get good balconies/roof terraces and room for parking.
Will the ageing population suddenly put hundreds of thousands of homes up for sale?
Yes and no. Eventually those homes will of course come free, but not all at the same time. Ageing isn't a switch that gets flipped in 2030. It's a wave that stretches over decades. Moreover, a home doesn't automatically move to the sales market as soon as one occupant dies. A partner may still live there, children may take the house over, or it may be rented out. Although renting out is no longer all that attractive in most cases these days..
Even so, the natural outflow will keep getting bigger. The number of people aged 75 and over is growing strongly, and within that group it is especially the number of very old people that is increasing. CBS expects the number of people aged 75 and over to grow from around 1.7 million in 2024 to 2.9 million in 2050.
This could eventually become visible particularly in neighbourhoods with lots of owner-occupied homes from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Relatively many people live there who bought their home decades ago, have largely paid off their mortgage and now live alone or as a couple in a house that was once bought for a family.
For young families, that sounds like good news. After all, more existing homes will become available. But at the same time, something is happening on the other side of the market. Something that will create more inequality and is expected to lead to considerable price rises.
Because the children don't just inherit the house, but above all purchasing power
Say a parent dies and leaves a €600,000 house to two children. The house is sold and so becomes available for a new family. That increases the housing supply by one home. But at the same time, after debts, costs and tax, the two heirs each receive a considerable amount of wealth.
What do they do with it?
Some will save or invest it, but some will also use the money for a home. Paying off the existing mortgage, moving to a bigger home, finally making that move that wasn't financially feasible, or helping a child buy a first home. Or they buy a home abroad. Then they can call in Gé to help with a house in Spain right away.
That's the paradox. On the one hand, the wave of inheritances can free up hundreds of thousands of homes, while on the other hand it can push hundreds of billions in extra equity into the housing market.
And in a housing market where supply can't respond quickly, extra purchasing power can eventually translate into higher prices. That's exactly why Jona van Loenen warns of an ‘inheritocracy’: two people can have the same income and the same job, but the one whose parents have a paid-off €800,000 house ends up in a completely different position on the housing market from the one whose parents always rented. And that's pretty bitter if you're the one whose parents always rented. Then you're not 1-0 down. You're 10-0 down.
As a result, the gap between buyers may actually widen
That is perhaps the most underestimated consequence. When we talk about affordability, we almost always talk about income and mortgage interest rates. What do you earn and how much can you borrow? But family wealth is becoming more and more important.
You already see that now with gifts and help from parents. The jubelton (the tax-free gift of around €100,000 towards a home) was a good example of this. The wave of inheritances could make that effect much bigger. After all, not everyone inherits the same amount, and a large share of the wealth sits with households that own their home. ESB therefore concludes that heirs of renters receive only a fraction of what heirs of homeowners inherit.
What's also interesting is that many people probably won't receive their large inheritance when they're 25 and looking for a home for the first time. Because people are living longer and longer, their children are often 50 or 60 themselves by then. The money may therefore end up with people who already own a home and use it to move up the ladder, pay off their mortgage or then gift part of it to their own children. I personally think a lot of money is going to flow abroad. Many people will buy a holiday home. So the influence can spread over several generations.
Will this make homes cheaper?
I wouldn't count on it. That may be what first-time buyers are hoping for. But honestly, homeowners don't want homes to become more affordable at all. More homes becoming available through deaths and people moving on is definitely good for supply. Supply and demand is an important factor in market value. But affordability is an even more important component. The supply of existing family homes in particular could increase over the coming decades. But at the same time, the number of households is still growing, the Netherlands will continue to have a housing shortage, and a lot of extra private wealth will become available.
Moreover, inheritances are not new money for the Netherlands as a whole. The wealth already existed. What changes is who can use it. The house of a deceased parent is sold and the wealth is divided among children who may put it to much more active use on the housing market. This can make wealth more mobile and increase the bidding power of some buyers. It could well turn into a bit of a bubble.
So my expectation would not be that the ageing population causes a huge drop in prices. I think it's much more likely that the make-up of supply and demand will change. More existing family homes will gradually become available, while at the same time a larger group of buyers with inherited or gifted wealth will enter the market. I do think the square metres will be better distributed as a result. In popular cities and neighbourhoods, where land is scarce and demand stays structurally high, that extra purchasing power can easily absorb part of the extra supply again.
And what does this mean for Utrecht?
For Utrecht, I find this development extra interesting. A large part of the city's appeal lies in neighbourhoods where hardly any new houses with their own plot can be added. Think of neighbourhoods with 1930s homes, family homes with a garden or larger ground-floor and upstairs apartments. You can't just put a few thousand extra family homes there.
It's precisely there that the demographic changeover could bring more supply over the next twenty years. Homes that sometimes haven't been sold for forty or fifty years will come back onto the market. That could also be a different kind of supply from what we see a lot of now: homes where little has changed for a long time, but that are in good locations and have a lot of potential. Real fixer-uppers. Although I often wonder how many fixer-uppers are still left, when you see how much has already been renovated.
At the same time, I don't expect such a house to suddenly become cheap as a result. The buyer bidding on it may soon be competing not only with someone on the same salary and with the same mortgage capacity, but also with someone who can bring €100,000 or €200,000 of family wealth. Even more than now. As a result, the market may be determined less and less by income alone. It will be even more about the choices your parents and ancestors made. And I do find that a bit sad.
So the housing market of the next twenty years won't just be about building
Of course we need to keep building. The Netherlands needs more homes, and above all more homes that suit the households we actually have. But the ageing population shows that it is at least as important to make better use of the existing housing stock.
If we build attractive apartments, single-storey homes and other forms of housing where older people genuinely want to live. Where they don't pay through the nose in service charges, that could set off an enormous chain of moves. The Netherlands already has more than 715,000 family homes with a household aged 75 and over. Getting a relatively small percentage of them moving could already free up tens of thousands of family homes.
At the same time, we need to realise that the largest transfer of wealth in our history isn't going to make the housing market fairer. On the contrary, it may become more important who your parents are, whether they own a home and how much equity is in it. The housing shortage and the distribution of wealth will become more and more intertwined as a result. Our country is going to become more unequal. Work doesn't pay.
Perhaps that is the most important development to keep an eye on in the coming years. Because we're not only getting an ageing housing market in which many homes will eventually change hands. At the same time, we're getting a housing market in which hundreds of billions of euros in accumulated wealth shift to the next generations.
That means more supply and more purchasing power. More movement up the ladder, but possibly also bigger differences between buyers. And above all, it means that the housing market of 2035 will probably look very different from what you'd expect if you only look at the current housing shortage and the new-build plans. Those new-build plans aren't exactly making great progress either, by the way…
The baby boomers won't just leave behind their wealth. They'll also leave behind a large part of our housing stock. And what the next generations do with those two could well become one of the most important forces behind house prices over the next twenty years. I'm curious to see how this develops… We're keeping a close eye on all developments so that we can always advise you as well as possible.
