The House Always Wins, But Who’s Keeping Score?

Imagine you're standing in front of a brand-new home. Clean lines, solar panels, a smart thermostat that talks to your fridge. €504,000, and climbing. In the first quarter of 2025, new-build homes in the Netherlands sold like fresh bread: 28% more than the same period last year. Prices shot up by 9.3%, the sharpest spike in over two years. Existing homes weren’t left behind either, they rose 10.9%, averaging €470,000.

All of this, while Europe limps forward at a modest 5.7% pace.

The numbers are clear. But what do they say about us?

Because in GRC, we don’t read numbers. We read what they hide.

A Market Rebounding, or Rebounding Us?

The headlines would have you believe we’re back. That confidence has returned. That families are finally buying again. But let’s be clear: this isn’t a comeback; it’s a pendulum. And it swings faster than you think.

2023 was brutal. House sales collapsed. In Q1 of that year, new-build transactions were down a staggering 51.4%. By Q4, a fragile rebound was underway, 16.9%. Enter Q1 2025: a triumphant 28.4% rise. Victory? Or volatility in disguise?

As a GRC practitioner, I look at these fluctuations and don’t see health. I see a body in fever, cooling one month, sweating the next.

This is not momentum. It’s dissonance.

Quality-Adjusted, Morality-Ignored

CBS and the Land Registry are meticulous. Their index adjusts for quality, type, even square footage. But the most dangerous variable of all remains untouched: narrative inflation.

We adjust for bricks. But who adjusts for blind belief?

The moment homebuyers think prices will "only go up", we stop buying houses and start buying fantasies. Add in interest rate rumors, government stimulus speculation, and a cultural bias toward ownership and suddenly, €504,000 feels “normal”.

But for whom?

For the first-time buyer? For the small business owner just out of COVID’s chokehold? Or just for the developer who sold 6,200 new homes this quarter and toasted to the ECB?

The Return of the Middle-Class Mirage

Let’s not forget: this is the sixth consecutive quarter of growth in new-build sales. That sounds comforting. But do we remember what drove the previous six quarters?

Desperation. Liquidity. And silence from regulators.

The Netherlands isn’t building a housing market, it’s rebuilding a dream. And as always, the middle class is both the architect and the collateral.

In Q1 2025, 51,500 existing homes were sold, 16% more than last year. But ask yourself: who bought them? And more importantly: who didn’t?

Because if growth is not accompanied by access, then all we’ve built is a more expensive illusion.

Governance as the Missing Foundation

We talk about energy neutrality, zoning reform, and mortgage rates. But no one asks: what governance frameworks are keeping this growth sane?

Let me be clear, the problem isn’t the rise in prices. It’s the lack of ethical telemetry behind those prices.

• No consistent ESG scoring for housing developments.
• No systemic transparency about ownership (institutional buyers are back in the shadows).
• No mechanism to assess long-term buyer solvency beyond a bank’s spreadsheet.

When the construction sector leads GDP recovery, without a corresponding rise in structural ethics, we’re not in a housing boom. We’re in a compliance bust waiting to happen.

And Then There Was Portugal

Look at the EU map. Portugal leads with a 16.3% house price hike. The Netherlands is seventh at 10.7%. Finland is the only one in the red.

That’s the story. But the moral is elsewhere.

Europe is diverging. There is no single market response to housing anymore. And yet, we design policy, risk frameworks, and governance oversight as if we’re one coherent organism.

This isn’t just a GRC blind spot, it’s a continental vulnerability.

Don’t Just Watch the Price, Audit the Premise

A price index is not a compass. It is a thermometer. It tells you the temperature, not where you're heading.

In Q1 2025, the housing market in the Netherlands looked “healthy”. But so did the Dutch East India Company, until governance failed.

Growth without structure is hubris.

Sales without access is inequality.

Confidence without scrutiny is a ticking liability.

As entrepreneurs, we must stop mistaking expansion for evolution.

As policymakers, we must build regulation into the soil, not retrofitted after the market is hot.

And as citizens, we must remember: a home is not an asset class. It’s the starting point of dignity.

Let us govern accordingly.