More than one million homes in the Netherlands are worth less than the mortgage taken out to pay for them, the national statistics office CBS said on Thursday.

However, the true total is likely to be far higher. The figures date from 2011 and house prices have continued to fall since then.

At the beginning of 2011, 4.2 million households owned their own home. Youngsters are most likely to have negative equity – 75% of people whose home is not worth as much as they paid for it are aged 25 to 30.

By contrast, only 2% of the over-65s have a mortgage which outstrips their property value.

House prices have fallen steadily since the economic crisis, and are now some 20% lower than they were in 2008.