Number of Millionaires in the Netherlands Rises by 81,000

The Netherlands added 81,000 millionaire households in a single year. Most of the gain came from house prices, which says as much about the housing shortage as it does about prosperity.

Preliminary figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) show that the Netherlands had more than 574,000 millionaire households on January 1, 2025, about 81,000 more than a year earlier. Some 6.6 percent of Dutch households now hold net wealth of at least €1 million. The statistics office attributes most of the increase to rising house prices during 2024, when the average price of an owner-occupied home rose 8.7 percent.

For a country of roughly 18 million people, the scale of the jump is striking. In the previous count, CBS reported 452,000 millionaire households on January 1, 2024, an increase of only 17,000 on the year before. The new figures reflect both a strong housing market and revisions to earlier data. Either way, the one-year gain dwarfs the 17,000 recorded in the previous count, and much of the new wealth is locked in the walls of family homes. For policymakers and private banks, the distinction between liquid fortunes and housing wealth now matters a great deal.

Who the new millionaires are

The new class of millionaires is modest by international standards. About two-thirds of millionaire households hold between €1 million and €2 million. A quarter hold €2 million to €5 million. Only 3 percent are worth €10 million or more.

The largest component of millionaire wealth is a substantial interest, defined as a stake of at least 5 percent in a company, which accounts for just over a third of the total. The owner-occupied home makes up 29 percent, up from 25.8 percent a year earlier. For households below the €1 million line, the home is nearly 80 percent of everything they own.

Bricks-and-mortar millionaires

CEOWORLD Magazine calls this group bricks-and-mortar millionaires: households that cross the €1 million threshold mainly because the value of their home has risen, not because their income or business holdings have grown. They are wealthy on paper. Their spending power, however, is often closer to that of a well-paid professional household, because the wealth can only be unlocked by selling the property or borrowing against it.

The rising share of housing in millionaires’ portfolios supports this reading. When a home’s value climbs 8.7 percent in a year, a household owning a €900,000 house in the Randstad with little remaining mortgage can cross the line without changing anything about how it earns or saves. CBS counts the value of the owner-occupied home, along with any mortgage debt, in its wealth measure.

Where the money sits

Geography reinforces the pattern. In Bloemendaal, near Haarlem, and Laren, in the Gooi region southeast of Amsterdam, nearly two in five households are now millionaires. In the previous year’s figures, the most recent with full regional detail, Noord-Holland and Utrecht had the highest shares of millionaire households among the provinces, while Groningen, Flevoland and Limburg had the lowest, all below 4 percent. In Kerkrade, Heerlen and Brunssum, in southern Limburg, the share was 1.4 percent or less.

These are the areas where housing scarcity is most acute and prices most elevated. The map of Dutch millionaires is, to a large degree, a map of the Dutch housing shortage.

At the very top, the picture is different. The Quote 500, the annual ranking of the richest Dutch, now counts 56 billionaires, up from 52 a year earlier. Those fortunes are built on company ownership, and they move with equity markets and business performance, not with house prices.

Why it matters for policy

The figures arrive as the Netherlands overhauls how it taxes wealth. Savings and investments are taxed in box 3 of the Dutch income tax system, which courts have repeatedly found unfair because it taxed assumed returns that many savers never earned. In February 2026, the lower house of parliament approved a new system that would tax actual returns from 2028.

The owner-occupied home sits outside box 3. It is taxed lightly through a notional rental value added to income, and mortgage interest remains partly deductible. That treatment means the fastest-growing component of Dutch household wealth is also among the least taxed. It also helps explain why owners gain and renters fall behind: a household that bought before the latest price surge has accumulated wealth that a renting household of similar income cannot match.

The counterpoint

Rising home values are not imaginary wealth. Owners can borrow against them or pass them to children, and many retirees eventually sell and move to something smaller. Many of the new millionaire households are older owners who bought decades ago and paid off their mortgages, and for them the house is a large part of their pension. CBS’s own data show that pensions are the main source of income for more than a third of millionaire households.

The figures also include genuine business wealth. Substantial interests remain the biggest single asset class for millionaires, a sign that entrepreneurship and company ownership still drive the upper end of the distribution. Yet even here the trend is shifting. Among working millionaires, the share who are self-employed has fallen from 71 percent in 2014 to 55 percent in the previous count.

What happens from here

The direction of house prices will decide the next count. If prices keep rising as they did in 2024 and 2025, the number of millionaire households will keep climbing regardless of wage or productivity growth. A flattening market would stall the trend just as quickly.

Executive takeaways

• What changed: the Netherlands had more than 574,000 millionaire households at the start of 2025, about 81,000 more in a year, driven mainly by rising house prices.
• Why it matters: a growing share of Dutch millionaire wealth is illiquid housing equity, which inflates headline wealth figures while doing little for spending power or business investment.
• What leaders should do next: banks and wealth managers should segment clients by liquid wealth, not headline net worth, and policymakers should weigh the gap in tax treatment between housing and financial assets as the box 3 reform moves ahead.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, watch Dutch house price data, the final passage and design of the 2028 box 3 regime, and whether the share of housing in millionaires’ wealth continues to rise. A country can grow richer on paper by making housing scarcer. The Netherlands is close to showing what that looks like.

Key insights and takeaways

1. Statistics Netherlands counted more than 574,000 millionaire households on January 1, 2025, about 81,000 more than a year earlier, or 6.6 percent of all Dutch households.
2. Rising house prices drove most of the gain. The average price of an owner-occupied home rose 8.7 percent in 2024, lifting many households over the €1 million threshold.
3. Two-thirds of Dutch millionaire households hold between €1 million and €2 million, and only 3 percent are worth €10 million or more, a modest profile by international standards.
4. The owner-occupied home now makes up 29 percent of millionaires’ wealth, up from 25.8 percent, and nearly 80 percent of wealth for households below the threshold.
5. The fastest-growing part of Dutch household wealth is housing, which sits outside the box 3 wealth tax that the Netherlands plans to replace with a tax on actual returns from 2028.

Dutch millionaire households, key indicators

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