Sustainable housing transformation; quality and improvement strategies of the ageing private housing stock in the Netherlands

Compared with the rented mass housing stock, the ageing privately owned stock is often neglected. This political and social lack of attention is partly due to the absence of obvious large scale social problems, partly to the owners attitude of government shunning self support and supposed harmless state of physical quality. In reality the physical quality of the pre-war private stock, particularly the older owner-occupied stock, is far from satisfying and partly seriously substandard. A broad consortium of home owners, commercial landlords, apartment boards, building contractors and related national organisations took the initiative to put the improvement of the private owned stock on the political agenda. Pleading for fiscal compensation of renovation investments, their main arguments are a supposed fruitful economic multiplier effect and a relevant effect on the quality of the private owned stock. We were charged with the assessment of the latter. Based on the recent outcomes of the Dutch Housing Demand and Quality Survey our paper describes the quality state of the private owned housing stock and the relevancy of related improvement strategies.