Every Dutch city has its wealthy corner, the district where homes cost the most. You might expect those corners to look alike. They do not. The priciest district in Amsterdam, Zuid, is 96 percent flats and two-thirds rented. The priciest in Tilburg, De Blaak, is almost all owner-occupied houses, with barely one home in twenty rented. Both are the richest address in their city, and they have almost nothing in common.
Set the seventeen richest districts side by side and wealth turns out to come in very different shapes: dense and international, or spacious and local; young and rented, or settled and owned. Here is what money looks like across the country.
The richest district in every city
Each row is the district with the highest average home value in that city, with a few figures on what kind of place it is. Values are average property values, from official open data.
| City | Richest district | Home value | Flats | Rented | Born abroad | Household | Over 65 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hague | Vogelwijk | €939k | 27% | 10% | 17% | 2.6 | 22% |
| Amstelveen | Westwijk Zuid | €701k | 25% | 28% | 32% | 2.7 | 9% |
| Haarlem | Haarlemmerhout | €695k | 52% | 33% | 21% | 2.1 | 21% |
| Utrecht | Vleuten-De Meern | €608k | 17% | 29% | 15% | 2.7 | 13% |
| Arnhem | Burgemeesterswijk | €607k | 44% | 24% | 11% | 2.1 | 21% |
| Amsterdam | Zuid | €602k | 96% | 67% | 37% | 1.7 | 16% |
| Breda | Bavel | €595k | 12% | 24% | 7% | 2.5 | 23% |
| Almere | Oosterwold | €587k | 4% | 22% | 14% | 2.4 | 11% |
| Den Bosch | Rosmalen-Zuid | €546k | 17% | 23% | 7% | 2.3 | 27% |
| Tilburg | De Blaak | €546k | 3% | 6% | 5% | 2.4 | 31% |
| Eindhoven | Meerhoven | €533k | 24% | 26% | 38% | 2.6 | 11% |
| Groningen | Haren-West | €504k | 32% | 30% | 10% | 2.2 | 29% |
| Nijmegen | Nijmegen-Noord | €504k | 19% | 37% | 10% | 2.6 | 9% |
| Maastricht | Buitenwijk Zuidwest | €493k | 34% | 35% | 20% | 1.9 | 30% |
| Rotterdam | Hillegersberg-Schiebroek | €470k | 59% | 45% | 19% | 2.1 | 19% |
| Leiden | Binnenstad-Zuid | €451k | 71% | 73% | 26% | 1.3 | 9% |
| Delft | Binnenstad | €433k | 74% | 60% | 33% | 1.5 | 14% |
The values alone span more than twice over, from about 433,000 euro in Delft to 939,000 euro in The Hague. But the more telling numbers are the ones beside them.
Apartments or villas
The sharpest split is what the rich actually live in. In Amsterdam Zuid, 96 percent of homes are flats and 67 percent are rented, wealth stacked in apartments. In Breda, Almere and Tilburg, the priciest districts are almost entirely houses, mostly owner-occupied, with flats in the single digits.
The student cities sit at the apartment end for a different reason. In Delft and Leiden, the most expensive district is the historic centre, where three quarters of homes are flats and most are rented. Scarcity, not size, makes them costly.
Where the rich are international, and where they are not
How international the wealth is varies just as much. The richest districts of Eindhoven and Amsterdam are also among the most international, at 38 and 37 percent born abroad, drawn by the tech campuses of the Eindhoven region and the corporate jobs of the Zuidas. Amstelveen and Delft follow at around a third.
In Brabant it is the opposite. The priciest districts of Tilburg, Breda and Den Bosch are 5 to 7 percent born abroad, wealthy but almost entirely Dutch. Money and internationalisation clearly do not always travel together.
Young money and old money
Age tells a third story. The expensive centres of Delft and Leiden are young and largely childless, with average households of 1.3 to 1.5 people and only a handful of children. The costly suburbs of Amstelveen, Utrecht and The Hague are the reverse, with households near 2.7, family wealth rather than professional wealth.
And some of the richest districts are simply old. In Tilburg's De Blaak and a leafy edge of Maastricht, close to a third of residents are over 65, established money that has aged in place.
One label, many places
So the richest neighbourhood is not one kind of place repeated seventeen times. It is a rented international apartment district in one city, a family villa suburb in the next, a student-era centre in a third, and a quiet retirement enclave in a fourth.
The lesson is the one our data keeps returning: the label on a district, rich, cheap, central, tells you far less than the mix underneath it. You can see that mix for any neighbourhood in the neighbourhood explorer, or browse the city overviews. One note: this ranks by average home value, so a single pricey district can still hold a range of homes and households.