New strategies for housing quality improvement by Dutch landlords

Social landlords own over a third of the housing stock in the Netherlands and approximately three-quarters of the overall rental sector. The housing stock has partly been refurbished. Nevertheless, not all buildings are able to satisfy current requirements of housing quality. In particular, those built in the immediate post-war period still demonstrate a number of shortcomings. Without subsidies, an ageing housing stock and a need for quality, landlords have to adopt new strategies for housing quality improvement. This paper sought to answer the question what strategies landlords may adopt to improve housing quality that fit into their strategic housing management. New strategies, derived from the strategic asset management, take into account the scale and time of interventions, e.g. modifications to individual dwellings and/or building blocks, the freedom of choosing housing qualities and initiation and realisation of improvements by (new) tenants and tenants groups.