Twenty-one per cent of homes in the Hague city centre are owner-occupied.
Seventy-eight per cent are rented, split 34% social and 44% private.
If you are arriving in The Hague with no savings, no Dutch employment history and eight weeks to find something, the arithmetic pushes you here before it pushes you anywhere else.
What the centre actually is
The statistical wijk called Centrum covers Kortenbos, Voorhout, Uilebomen and Zuidwal, and had 21,955 residents in 2026 across 13,910 households.
Average household size is 1.6.
Ninety per cent of the housing is flats and only 44% of it predates 1945, because a great deal of the medieval centre was cleared, bombed or redeveloped and what replaced it was built upwards.
Immediately south sits the Stationsbuurt, between Hollands Spoor and the centre, with another 12,945 residents.
It is a different proposition again: 86% rented, an average WOZ value of 289,000 euro in 2025, the cheapest in this guide, and an average income of 29,600 euro per resident.
The Oude Centrum, the oldest part, grew out of the activities of the counts of Holland and later the Dutch state.
Its low-lying half housed working people and a large Jewish population in conditions the city itself describes as wretched well into the twentieth century.
Ten courtyards survive there, including the Hofje van Nieuwkoop, the Wouwhofje, the Damhofje and the Heilige-Geesthofje, and the Boekhorststraat exists at all only because residents fought off a post-war plan to drive a four-lane road through it.
The Chinatown end
The Wagenstraat and the streets around it, the Gedempte Burgwal, the Gedempte Gracht and the St. Jacobstraat, are The Hague’s Chinatown.
It occupies what had been the Jewish quarter, which stood largely empty and decaying after the Second World War, and Chinese residents and businesses moved in from the 1970s during the municipal renovation of the area.
Two Chinese gates span the Wagenstraat.
Construction began on Tuesday 25 March 2008, ran into delays, and they were finally completed at the end of 2009.
Stichting Chinatown runs Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival; the New Year event drew around 20,000 visitors a year between 2008 and 2010.
For anyone cooking food that Albert Heijn has never heard of, this is the practical reason to live nearby.
The Asian supermarkets in The Hague are concentrated in these few hundred metres, and the wider picture is in international food shops in The Hague.
Who lives there
The centre’s origin split in 2025 was 35% Dutch, 21% from elsewhere in Europe and 44% from outside Europe, with 54% born in the Netherlands.
The Stationsbuurt is more pronounced again at 23, 22 and 55.
These are the two most internationally mixed districts in this guide, and they are mixed in a different way from the Statenkwartier: not diplomatic, but migrant, student and working.
Average income in the centre was 39,200 euro per resident in 2024, which is above the city figure and sits oddly next to the tenure numbers until you notice the household size.
A district of single people on decent salaries reads as prosperous per head and modest per household.
The money
The centre’s average WOZ value in 2025 was 375,000 euro, just under the city’s 383,000.
The Stationsbuurt’s was 289,000.
Both are cheap by the standards of the coastal districts and neither is cheap for what you get, because what you get is small.
The market here is dominated by private landlords letting studios and one-bedroom flats, often furnished, often at a premium, and often on contracts that need reading carefully.
This is where most of the city’s rental problems live.
Start with rental scams in The Hague, then tenant rights, deposits and contracts, and register at your address properly the week you move in, which is covered in registering your address.
Estate agents in The Hague hold a smaller share of this market than the private ads do, which is exactly why it needs care.
Getting about
You walk.
That is the whole point of the district and the reason people accept the noise.
Den Haag Centraal and Den Haag Hollands Spoor are both inside the ring, the tram tunnel under the Grote Marktstraat opened in 2004 with an underground station at Grote Markt, and every tram line in the city passes through within a few hundred metres of the Spui.
The details are in The Hague trams and buses and trains from The Hague.
Do not bring a car.
Parking in the centre is the most expensive and most restricted in the city, as set out in parking permits in The Hague.
Bicycle theft, on the other hand, is the defining local crime: in the Stationsbuurt alone the single most common recorded offence in 2025 was theft of a bicycle or moped, at 460 cases.
Buying a bike in The Hague explains what to spend and what lock to use.
Scheveningen is fifteen to twenty minutes on tram 1 or 9.
Scheveningen and Duindorp covers what is at the other end.
Saturday, and the rest of the week
The Grote Marktstraat, Spuistraat, Venestraat and Hoogstraat carry the chain shopping, and the Noordeinde carries the expensive independent version of the same.
The Grote Markt itself has been an entertainment quarter since the 1970s: the Boterwaag and De Zwarte Ruiter are cafes in historic buildings on the square, and in summer the whole space becomes one enormous terrace.
Saturday night here is genuinely loud.
The Grote Markt, the Grote Halstraat and the streets around them run late, and the sound reaches the flats above them.
That is either the reason you moved in or the reason you will move out within a year, and there is not much middle ground.
If you want the walkability without the volume, the Zeeheldenkwartier is ten minutes west and much quieter after midnight.
Weekdays are the opposite problem.
The centre empties of workers at six and the retail streets can feel bleak by eight on a wet Tuesday.
The Boekhorststraat is the interesting counter-trend: the city notes it has increasingly filled with small craft and workshop businesses, and it is now one of the better streets in the centre.
The honest drawbacks
The crime figure is the one that needs handling carefully.
The Centrum wijk recorded 5,497 offences in 2025, which works out at 251 per thousand residents against a city average of 69.
That number is not telling you that residents are four times as likely to be victims.
It is telling you that a district with the main shopping streets, the nightlife quarter, two railway stations and several hundred thousand daily visitors records crime committed against people who do not live there.
Shoplifting, pickpocketing and bike theft dominate.
What it does mean, honestly, is noise, litter and a degree of street nuisance that residential districts do not have.
The city’s own page on the Oude Centrum names litter and graffiti as live problems and flags maintenance difficulties with the Kern Gezond street renovation programme.
Space is the other cost.
Ninety per cent flats, 1.6 people per household and a shortage of gardens make this a district for one or two people, not for a family.
Families who love the centre generally end up in the Regentessekwartier and Valkenboskwartier or Bezuidenhout, which are both a short ride out and considerably larger per euro.
For a first year in the Netherlands, with no car, no furniture and no idea yet where you want to be, the centre is the correct default.
Which district suits which life is the page to read when the year is up.
Sources
- AlleCijfers, wijk Centrum (gemeente Den Haag): 21,955 inhabitants in 2026; 13,910 households and average household size 1.6 in 2025; origin 35% Netherlands, 21% Europe, 44% outside Europe in 2025 with 54% born in the Netherlands; average WOZ value 375,000 euro in 2025; 21% owner-occupied, 34% corporation rental, 44% private rental; 90% flats and 44% built before 1945; average income 39,200 euro per resident and 45,400 euro per earner in 2024; population density 11,071 per km2; 5,497 registered crimes in 2025, 251 per 1,000 inhabitants; buurten Kortenbos, Voorhout, Uilebomen and Zuidwal
- AlleCijfers, wijk Stationsbuurt: 12,945 inhabitants in 2026; 8,515 households and average household size 1.5; origin 23% Netherlands, 22% Europe, 55% outside Europe in 2025; average WOZ value 289,000 euro in 2025; 14% owner-occupied and 86% rented; 91% flats and 36% built before 1945; average income 29,600 euro per resident and 34,900 euro per earner in 2024; population density 14,423 per km2; 2,040 registered crimes in 2025, of which bicycle and moped theft was the largest single category at 460 cases
- AlleCijfers, gemeente Den Haag: average WOZ 383,000 euro in 2025, average income 35,200 euro per resident in 2024, 69 registered crimes per 1,000 inhabitants in 2025
- Gemeente Den Haag, Oude Centrum district page: the district boundaries running “van het Buitenom via de Zuidwal naar het Spui, Grote Marktstraat en Prinsegracht”; ten unique hofjes; and “De toegang naar Oude Centrum, de Boekhorststraat, heeft steeds meer kleine ambachtelijke winkels”
- Dutch Wikipedia, Oude Centrum: the district grown out of the activities of the counts of Holland and later the Dutch government; the peat half housing working people and Jewish residents in largely wretched conditions well into the twentieth century; the hofjes Hofje van Nieuwkoop, Wouwhofje, Damhofje and Heilige-Geesthofje; the Boekhorststraat saved from a planned four-lane road by public protest; current concerns including litter, graffiti and maintenance problems with the Kern Gezond street renovation programme
- Dutch Wikipedia, Chinatown (Den Haag): centred on the Wagenstraat with Chinese signage also on the Gedempte Burgwal, Gedempte Gracht and St. Jacobstraat; formerly the Jewish quarter, which after the Second World War “stond de wijk grotendeels leeg en verpauperde”, with Chinese residents drawn in from the 1970s during municipal renovation; two gates whose construction began on Tuesday 25 March 2008 and which were realised at the end of 2009; Stichting Chinatown organising Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, the New Year event drawing around 20,000 visitors a year between 2008 and 2010
- Dutch Wikipedia, Grote Markt (Den Haag): the square became an entertainment area from the 1970s; a cafe in the Boterwaag and other historic buildings on the square given hospitality use including cafe De Zwarte Ruiter; the square becoming a busy terrace in summer; the tram tunnel with an underground station at Grote Markt opened in 2004
[…] in the centre or the Zeeheldenkwartier for a year and decide […]