Responsibility of owner-occupiers for the quality of their house

The Dutch government is stimulating homeownership, which has lead to an increasing number of owner-occupiers. Owner-occupiers now occupy 56% of the Dutch houses. In the past years, the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) has subsidised and actively cooperated in the improvement of the quality of the private housing stock. Market parties and owneroccupiers have also invested in the private housing stock. The average structural quality has improved strongly and the total amount of repair costs has decreased. Therefore, the attention of the Dutch government is no longer focused on the quality of the private housing stock. At the same time there are still parts of the private housing stock where the structural quality needs attention. The Dutch Minister of VROM emphasises the responsibility of the owner-occupier for the structural quality of his own house. Less building regulations and better enforcement should support this policy. The government has diminished financial support for homeowners. This paper describes the research design for a PhD project on how owner-occupiers can be facilitated to bear this responsibility for the quality of the house, the reasons for this research and earlier research on this subject.