House prices in the Netherlands now appear to have stabilised, with prices rising a marginal 0.5% in July compared with June, national statistics office CBS said on Tuesday.

The year-on-year drop has now been 5.5% for the past three months, indicating that the decline in prices which started last August has now come to an end. 

The CBS figures are based on completed transactions and lag slightly behind statistics provided by estate agents organisation NVM.

House prices had risen steadily since June 2013 at the heart of the financial crisis, but the trend changed last August, following the surge in interest rates. 

The number of completed deals in July was down 9% year on year. Over the first seven months of 2023, nearly 100,000 homes have changed hands, and that is down 7% on the same period in 2022. 

The NVM said in July that house prices had inched up in the second quarter of this year, but were still 2.4% less than they were last year.

The association said the number of homes on sale rose by almost a third, with around 32,000 properties listed with NVM members at the end of June – an increase of 28% on a year before.

The NVM’s next quarterly report will be published in October.