Housing associations own more than one third of dwellings

At the end of 2001 housing associations owned 2.35 million dwellings, just over one third of all dwellings in the Netherlands. This share of the total housing stock has hardly changed since 2000, but is slightly lower than in 1996.

Number of dwellings owned by housing associations

Demolition, construction, purchases and sales

In 2001 housing associations demolished eight thousand dwellings and built twelve thousand new ones. This is half of the number newly constructed dwellings in 1996. They further bought nineteen thousand dwellings en sold sixteen thousand, of which six thousand to sitting tenants.

Very slight fall in number of dwellings

The number of dwellings owned by housing associations peaked in 1996, and fell very slightly after that: in the space of five years it fell by one percent. New construction fell fastest. Since 1998 sales of dwellings to tenants have decreased, while more dwellings were demolished.

Change in properties owned by housing associations

Many low-rent dwellings in large municipalities

If the dwelling stock of housing associations is classified by rent categories, 36 percent of the properties consist of low-rent dwellings, 58 percent are affordable dwellings and 6 percent are in the high-rent sector.

Low-rent dwellings are relatively often located in larger municipalities. Rotterdam and Amsterdam have most: 57 and 56 percent of their housing association dwellings respectively. In Vlaardingen and Delft, too, more than 50 percent of the housing association stock is in the low-rent sector.

There are also substantial differences between provinces. In North and South Holland around 40 percent of dwellings are in the low rent sector, while Zeeland, with 25 percent has the lowest percentage of low-rent housing.

Changes

The largest changes in the housing stock were in Flevoland: compared with the dwelling stock at the beginning of 2001, by 31 December of that year 1.2 percent had been newly constructed, 0.9 percent sold to sitting tenants and 1.4 percent sold to others. Relatively most houses were demolished in Groningen, just over 1.4 percent of the stock.
At the end of 2001 7,900 dwellings had been untenanted for between three and twelve months, and another 5,400 for longer than twelve months. This means that roughly six out of every thousand rented dwellings were unoccupied.

Max van Herpen