New strategies for housing quality improvement by Dutch landlords

Dutch ideas for stressing the responsibility of homeowners for housing quality

Systems of performance based requirements for housing in Europe

Life cycle of dwellings: A conceptual model based on Dutch practice

Building regulations from an European perspective

During the last ten years OTB has studied building regulations in various European countries. Developments in the building regulatory systems are being placed within the context of general trends in the regulatory sciences, particularly with reference to Europeanization studies. Within the regulatory sciences, there is broad consensus about the...

The growing importance of an accurate system of building control

Systems of building control have a long history. Technical regulations and control seems to be the subject of an ongoing debate between, on the one hand, those in favour of deregulation and reducing the administrative burden and, on the other hand, new quality demands that require government intervention. Currently in the Netherlands, both sides...

House Price, House Quality and Economic Growth

The literature on housing markets suggest that periods of economic growth are characterised by a demand for better housing quality and increasing prices. The basic principles of the theory are that the short-run price fluctuations occur due to market imperfection, while over the long term, causality with such fundamentals as income will recover....

Measuring housing system performance: Is a composite indicator a useful instrument?

Housing outcomes are predominantly compared in terms of individual indicators, in-cluding such items as quality or affordability measures, where the outcomes of the individual measures are often not linked in a preceding research step. However, the creation of a composite indicator of housing outcomes, in which these individual measures are...

Housing Pathology

Housing pathology can be defined as a holistic approach to understand the nature and life cycle of residential buildings and their environment, in order to identify, investigate, and diagnose deficiencies, specify preventive measures and remedial interventions, and evaluate their effects. Though buildings can physically exist long after being...

Owner-occupiers and the quality of their dwellings

Home-owners are in principal responsible for maintaining the physical quality of their dwellings. It is in their own interest to do this in an adequate manner, but all kinds of constraints can and do occur in practice. Lack of financial means and insufficient (technical or practical) knowledge are only two of the possible barriers. The quality...

Housing pathology: A new domain or a new name?

The term pathology has its origin in the medical science and is generally defined as the systematic study of diseases with the aim of understanding their causes, symptoms and treatment. The term has been applied since in many different disciplines; in the context of the built environment being in particular building pathology, social and urban...

Housing pathology: A new domain or a new name?

The term pathology has its origin in the medical science and is generally defined as the systematic study of diseases with the aim of understanding their causes, symp-toms and treatment. The term has been applied since in many different disciplines; in the context of the built environment being in particular building pathology, social and urban...

Dutch municipalities and the quality of the owner-occupied housing stock

Owners are responsible to maintain their own dwellings in an adequate manner. In practice however all kinds of constraints occur. Lack of financial means and insufficient (technical or practical) knowledge are the most important barriers. Because the quality of owner-occupied housing exceeds the individual interest; there are also general...

Are building regulatory systems in European countries climate proof?

Demands on the energy performance of new and existing buildings hold a prominent place in the regulations of all European countries. The influence of EU policy goals and contents of EU Directives reverberate strongly in the energy regulations. Goals set by the European Union are that all newly built constructions must have a zero energy level by...

The housing careers of black middle-class residents in a South African metropolitan area

Under apartheid, black African households could not own land or homes in most major urban centres in South Africa. This limited residential mobility and locked many households into state rental accommodation in townships. Homeownership for all South Africans was restored in the mid-1980 s and the Group Areas Act was repealed in 1991.<br/...

Better public housing management in Ghana: An approach to improve maintenance and housing quality

In Ghana, public housing which is provided mainly for government employees plays an important role in socio-economic development. For instance, civil servants are more likely to accept transfers to areas where their services are most needed. Unfortunately, attention to public housing in Ghana has diminished over the years largely due to shift in...

Housing Pathology: Towards a Holistic Pathological Approach of Residential Buildings

Housing pathology is the holistic approach to identify, investigate and diagnose housing deficiencies, specify preventive measures and remedial interventions and evaluate their effects. In analogy with health as the core condition for the quality of human life, the health of housing accommodations stands for housing quality, being the ability of...