Not surprisingly, the capital of the Netherlands is also its largest city. At around 882,600, Amsterdam has over 200,000 inhabitants more than the second-largest city in the country, Rotterdam. The Hague and Utrecht, the third and fourth-largest cities in the Netherlands, together have approximately as many inhabitants as Amsterdam alone.

Amsterdam and the pressure on the housing market

A rapidly growing city, Amsterdam’s population increased from roughly 755.6 thousand to around 873.3 thousand in the last decade. This has created pressure on the real estate market, where average rent and housing prices have skyrocketed. In the first quarter of 2010, the average rent of residential property amounted to roughly 16.32 euros per square meter. In the first quarter of 2021, this had increased to over 21,76 euros per square meter.

 2030 Outlook 

In the nearby future, Amsterdam is set to remain the Netherlands’ largest city. According to a recent forecast, by 2030 Amsterdam will have broken the barrier of one million inhabitants. Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht are forecast to grow too, albeit at a much lower pace. In 2030, Rotterdam is expected to reach just under 700,000 inhabitants.

According to this population forecast, in 2030 Amsterdam will remain the largest city in the Netherlands. It is forecast that the capital will have over one million inhabitants in 2030. Rotterdam, currently the second-largest city in the country, will keep its spot. By 2030, the population of Rotterdam is expected to reach just under 700,000 people.

This statistic shows the average number of months a house is for sale in the largest cities in the Netherlands in the second quarter of 2017. In the second quarter of 2017, it would take approximately 10 months to sell a house in Amsterdam. In the four largest municipalities, the demand of housing outweighs the supply. In December 2016, the average number of houses for sale in the municipality of Amsterdam was approximately 1,800 with this number reaching an average of 4,300 in December 2014.

Paris was Western Europe's largest city in 1650, with an estimated 400 thousand inhabitants, which is almost double it's population 150 years previously. In second place is London, with 350 thousand inhabitants, however it has grown by a substantially higher rate than Paris during this time, now seven times larger than it was in the year 1500. Naples remains in the top three largest cities, growing from 125 to 300 thousand inhabitants during this time. In the previous list, the Italian cities of Milan and Venice were the only other cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, however in this list they have been joined by the trading centers of Lisbon and Amsterdam, the capital cities of the emerging Portuguese and Dutch maritime empires.

Famous for its port and football club Feyenoord, Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam. In the last decade, Rotterdam’s population increased year on year, and in 2023, the city reached over 663,900 inhabitants. By comparison: that year Amsterdam’s population amounted to just under 883,000.

 Leading European container port   

The port of Rotterdam is one of the largest ports in the world. In 2020, roughly 8.436 million containers were processed here, making it Europe’s largest container port, before Antwerp and Hamburg. In 2018, the port of Rotterdam processed 289 million tons of bulk cargo.

Feyenoord, pride of Rotterdam  

Feyenoord Rotterdam is one of the most successful football clubs in Dutch history, with 15 national titles, 13 Dutch cups, three European cups and one World Cup won. As of September 2019, Feyenoord had the third highest market value of all Dutch football clubs, after Ajax and PSV. That month, Feyenoord’s market value reached 122.55 million euros.

The statistic illustrates the inbound tourism to the four main cities in the Netherlands from 2010 to 2014. The number of international visitors increased for all four cities between 2010 and 2014. Most tourists were found in and around Amsterdam with roughly 5.2 million tourists in 2014, an increase of roughly one million tourists when comparing it to the year 2010. When looking at the other cities, there were significantly less tourists than in Amsterdam. Rotterdam was the second city with the most tourists, approximately 442,000 in 2014. The Hague attracted roughly a little less than 420,000 tourists, whereas Utrecht attracted roughly 174,000. In general, looking at the forecast of inbound tourism for the Netherlands, it is estimated that in 2018 approximately 16.7 million tourists will visit the Netherlands. To compare, in 2017 there were roughly 16.3 million tourists, which means an increase of roughly half a million tourists in 2018.

Rent prices per square meter in the largest Dutch cities have been on an upward trend after a slight decline in 2020. Amsterdam remained the most expensive city to live in, averaging a monthly rent of 27.6 euros per square meter for residential real estate in the private rental sector. Monthly rents in Utrecht were around six euros cheaper per square meter. Both cities were above the average rent price of residential property in the Netherlands overall, whereas Rotterdam and The Hague were slightly below that. Buying versus renting, what do the Dutch prefer? The Netherlands is one of Europe’s leading countries when it comes to homeownership, having funded this with a mortgage. In 2023, around 60 percent of people living in the Netherlands were homeowners with a mortgage. This is because Dutch homeowners were able to for many years to deduct interest paid from pre-tax income (a system known in the Netherlands as hypotheekrenteaftrek). This resulted in the Netherlands having one of the largest mortgage debts across the European continent. Total mortgage debt of Dutch households reached a value of approximately 803 billion euros in 2023. Is the Dutch housing market overheating? There are several indicators for the Netherlands that allow to investigate whether the housing market is overheating or not. House price indices corrected for inflation in the Netherlands suggest, for example, that prices have declined since 2022. The Netherlands’ house-price-to-rent-ratio, on the other hand, has exceeded the pre-crisis level in 2019. These figures, however, are believed to be significantly higher for cities like Amsterdam, as it was suggested for a long time that the prices of owner-occupied houses were increasing faster than rents in the private rental sector.

Between 2007 and 2020, the number of coffeeshops in Rotterdam declined. In 2007, the second-largest city in the Netherlands counted just over 60 coffeeshops. Two years later, this had fallen to 44. In 2020, there were 39 coffeeshops in the city.

In 2022 the GDP per capita in the Netherlands was 54,700 euros. During this year, the province with the highest GDP per capita was North Holland, which includes the capital city of Amsterdam, at 70,400 thousand euros. The province with the second-highest GDP per capita was Utrecht, which includes the city of Utrecht, at 64,900 euros. The province with the lowest GDP per capita was Drenthe at 37,100 euros.

In 2024, Russia had the largest population among European countries at 144.8 million people. The next largest countries in terms of their population size were Turkey at 87.5 million, Germany at 84.5 million, the United Kingdom at 69.1 million, and France at 66.5 million. Europe is also home to some of the world’s smallest countries, such as the microstates of Liechtenstein and San Marino, with populations of 39,870 and 33,581 respectively. Europe’s largest economies Germany was Europe’s largest economy in 2023, with a Gross Domestic Product of around 4.2 trillion Euros, while the UK and France are the second and third largest economies, at 3.2 trillion and 2.8 trillion euros respectively. Prior to the mid-2000s, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, Italy, had an economy that was of a similar sized to France and the UK, before diverging growth patterns saw the UK and France become far larger economies than Italy. Moscow and Istanbul the megacities of Europe Two cities on the eastern borders of Europe were Europe’s largest in 2023. The Turkish city of Istanbul, with a population of 15.8 million, and the Russian capital, Moscow, with a population of 12.7 million. Istanbul is arguably the world’s most famous transcontinental city with territory in both Europe and Asia and has been an important center for commerce and culture for over two thousand years. Paris was the third largest European city with a population of 11 million, with London being the fourth largest at 9.6 million.

The region of Noord-Holland, whose largest city is Amsterdam, recorded the highest number of international hotel guests in the Netherlands in 2023, with approximately 9.3 million guests. Zuid-Holland was the second most popular Dutch region for inbound hotel guests that year, with nearly 2.2 million visitors.

In 2023, the number of international hotel guests in the selected Dutch cities increased significantly compared to the previous year. Overall, Amsterdam recorded by far the highest figure, with just under seven million inbound hotel guests in 2023. Rotterdam ranked second in the list, with 776 thousand inbound hotel guests. Accommodation services in Amsterdam: hotels vs. Airbnb Based on data on the accommodation establishments in Amsterdam broken down by type, there were just over 500 hotels in the popular Dutch destination in 2023. By comparison, the number of Airbnb listings in Amsterdam totaled nearly 9,000 as of March 2024, with entire homes and apartments accounting for most listings. How many inbound tourists visit the Netherlands? In 2023, the Netherlands ranked behind Austria and ahead of Poland in the list of the most visited European countries by inbound visitors, with over 20 million inbound tourist arrivals. Meanwhile, international tourism receipts in the Netherlands amounted to approximately 20 billion U.S. dollars that year, exceeding the figures recorded before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.