Housing prices in the Netherlands will increase even more this year than they did in 2017, according to Rabobank. Economists at the bank expects housing prices to increase by 8 percent on average in 2018, compared to 7.6 percent last year. Next year housing prices will increase by around 7 percent, NU.nl reports.

These price increases will result in the average home in the Netherlands costing around 300 thousand euros in two years time. In 2017 the average house cost 263 thousand euros, Statistics Netherlands said on Thursday.

According to Rabobank, the rising housing prices means that it is increasingly hard for first-time buyers to buy a home, and it puts households deeper into debt.

A total of almost 242 thousand homes were sold throughout the Netherlands in 2017, compared to 215 thousand in 2016. Especially areas outside the Randstad saw substantial increases. The number of home sales increased by almost 19 percent in Gelderland, nearly 23 percent in Drenthe and over 24 percent in Flevoland.