The housing costs of households are diverse. During the stages of the lifecycle the living costs of households vary substantially. Especially the costs for home-owners fluctuate considerably during their lifecycle. The house of a lot of older households is completely paid for, their loan to value ratio is zero and their remaining housing costs are low. On the other hand, younger households have high costs for mortgages, a high loan to value – even more than 1 – beside their remaining costs.The paper deals with this variation of housing costs among owner occupiers in several life stages and explores the consequences for the housing market. It focuses on the situation of younger households. As a consequence of the long lasting Dutch crisis the selling price of dwellings has gone down and a lot of these households potentially have a residual debt, because the value of their house is lower than their mortgage.This paper explores the extent of the problem, the consequences for the housing market and the possible solutions.