Most of the new housing built in the Netherlands since 2008 has been directed at the bottom end of the market, with two out of three new homes costing less than €200,000, the Financieele Dagblad says on Thursday.

In 2008, just one in seven new homes cost less than €200,000, the paper says.

Houses are also becoming smaller and cheaper materials are being used to cut the price of a new home, project developers told the paper.

Nevertheless, in absolute terms, fewer cheap houses are being built than before the crisis because of the virtual standstill in the construction sector as a whole, Jan Fokkema, director of project developer organisation Neprom, told the paper.

Over a million home owners currently live in a property which is worth less than the size of their mortgage.