House prices in April were an average of 7.5% up on the same period last year and 1% month on month, national statistics agency CBS said on Wednesday.

The average price of a home has now reached just under €454,000, topping the peak reached in July 2022 before interest rates started to rise and house prices fell. 

The land registry recorded 15,689 transactions in April, up by 22% on a year ago. Over the first four months of this year, 60,130 homes have changed hands, and that is almost 13% more than in the same period in 2023. 

Prices rose across all 12 provinces, with the biggest recorded in Utrecht. There, homes now cost an average of 5.7% more than in the final quarter of last year. In Amsterdam, the average rise was 5.3%, and over 13% more homes found a new owner.

CBS chief economist Peter Hein van Mulligen said hitting a new high had been a question of time. “The jobs market is working well, incomes are rising and people still have a lot of savings built up during the pandemic,” he told the Telegraaf. “There is a lot of money around.”

The CBS figures are based on completed transactions and trail those published by the NVM estate agents’ organisation by around three months.