House prices in gold since 1969

House prices in the Netherlands have been rising again in recent years, but how much kilo of gold Does an average house actually cost? We collected the figures and made the following graph, which shows at a glance how much gold you have to pay to buy a house from 1969 to the present. By expressing house prices not in euros, but in a precious metal that has been considered valuable for thousands of years, we get a completely different view of the development of house prices in the Netherlands.

When the housing market rose to a record level in 2008, the price expressed in gold had been falling for four years. Whereas in 2004 you paid more than 23 kilos of gold for an average house, eight years later that had fallen to less than 6 kilos of gold. That's a drop in value of more than 70%. Since then, house prices have risen again thanks to extremely low interest rates, so that today you have to pay 7.5 kilograms of gold for an average home.

House prices in the Netherlands in kilos of gold

House prices versus gold

We see that the purchasing power of gold has increased significantly in recent years. In the 1980s, homes in the Netherlands were relatively cheaper, mainly because mortgage rates rose towards double digits in that period. As a result, people could simply borrow less money to buy a house and more people were forced to rent. The price of gold began to decline in 1980 and reached a bottom of less than $300 per troy ounce at the turn of the century.

In addition to the graph above, we have also calculated the price development of gold and houses in euros. The gold price before the introduction of the euro has increased the World Gold Council calculated on the basis of the main European currencies. Since 1969 , the price of the precious metal has risen by a factor of fifty, while house prices are 'only' thirteen times higher than they were 47 years ago. Does that make gold a better investment than real estate?

Gold price versus house prices since 1969