Last year developers created 13,000 new homes by transforming existing office blocks and other property, national statistics office CBS said on Wednesday.

Such housing accounted for almost 14% of the supply of new homes last year and the total has been growing since 2014 when the drive to find new uses for old offices really took off.

Eindhoven, Amsterdam and The Hague lead the list of cities where re-purposing is leading. Most of the transformations involve pre World War II offices and the homes are small – targeting single people and young couples.

However, the construction sector economic institute EIB says there is now a drop in the number of offices being turned into housing because the supply of suitable and vacant properties is drying up.