The global imperative to embrace a circular economy, underscored by concerns over climate change, resource depletion, and urbanization, has spotlighted the need for sustainable practices and waste reduction, within the built environment. This master's thesis within the context of the circular economy delves into the challenges faced by the real estate sector, a substantial contributor to resource consumption and waste. The knowledge gap revolves around the financial feasibility of circular real estate development, especially for private equity real estate (PERE) investors. Despite acknowledging the environmental benefits of circular real estate, its construction methods often entail higher costs, creating a significant hurdle for real estate investors. In this context, there is limited financial justification for investing in circular real estate developments, particularly when focusing solely on financial outcomes. This study zeroes in on the logistics real estate sector in the Dutch market, exploring under what conditions there is a feasible business case for real estate investors to make a positive investment decision on circular real estate development. To address this problem, the research employs an action research methodology, combining theoretical insights with practical application. Two cycles of plan-act-observe-reflect guide the exploration, beginning with a focus group discussion with PERE investor practitioners. Subsequently, a case study of a circular logistics development opportunity is presented to an investment fund, allowing for a comparison of the business case against traditional development. The research identifies nine interconnected conditions influencing the investment decision: cost, returns, timeline, market development, sustainability, strategic portfolio management, investor appetite, regulation, and tenant considerations. Importantly, certain conditions, such as cost, returns, investor appetite, market development, and strategic portfolio management, are highlighted as particularly critical in circular real estate, potentially exerting more influence than in traditional developments. The findings conclude the delicate balance between cost and returns, aligning investor expectations with long-term potential, strategically integrating circular projects into investment portfolios, and staying attuned to market dynamics as the most important conditions for circular logistics development. This research contributes to closing the knowledge gap in the literature, providing valuable insights for real estate investors navigating the complexities of circular development. The identified conditions demonstrate transferability across diverse real estate sectors, validating their universal significance. Future research avenues include exploring different fund categories, extending the study across diverse real estate sectors, and investigating the complexities within investment funds related to sustainability. Additionally, examining ancillary benefits and refining cost increase estimates for circular construction can enhance financial feasibility insights. For practical implementation, establishing a dedicated sustainable impact fund and introducing regulations mandating material reuse are recommended. These insights aim to advance the discourse on sustainable real estate practices.

Research on circular economy in the construction industry is only recently gaining momentum. A circular economy does not produce any waste. The construction sector is the most polluting sector in the Netherlands and uses 50% of the used raw materials. Therefore, circular building methods might decrease the demand on raw materials in the Dutch construction sector. This research aims to identify what factors can stimulate the adoption of circular building methods by the general contractor. In this research a cross-case analysis is conducted with two building projects that aimed to use circular building methods. During the interviews for these case studies, some barriers for the adoption of circular building methods were identified. The six barriers which are mentioned most often are the perception of high costs, limited regulation, lack of a circular business model, unattractive esthetics, negative attitude from actors involved, and lack of integrality within the building process. To have a positive influence on the adoption of circular building methods, and resolve the identified barriers, the general contractor may take the role of an integral manager to manage the social network, supply chain, and building process and facilitate the learning process. When taking this role it is suggested that the general contractor works together with other actors to develop a new business model. This new business model should aim to take away the current barriers for circular building methods. The main difference between any other innovation in the building sector and circular building methods is that circularity needs more integrality. Other innovations are often only on a specific part of the project, it suffices with only changing or managing on a small part of a building project. However, circularity affects every small part of a project and therefore needs an integral manager.

How to deal with the abundance of abandoned mega-structures in a city and where do these structures fit in modern society? Rather than repelling or demolishing, this project deals with the structure of the abandoned factory of Belgrade by redefining its relationship to the human scale. The use of the age-old approach of roman and medieval village structures serves as the main strategy to allow for change and resilience. With the tools of excavation and fragmentation, the former Cotton Factory is transformed into a village community along with parameters to allow the 'anonymous' users to develop a variety of functions.

The construction sector significantly contributes to global waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions, leading to environmental issues such as climate change, global warming, and resource depletion. The conventional linear economy in the construction sector follows a take-make-waste approach, resulting in adverse environmental impacts. The concept of a circular economy (CE) aims to address these issues by promoting regenerative practices and closing the material use cycle through reuse and recycling. However, many companies hesitate to invest in circular approaches due to higher initial costs and limited knowledge. Consequently, research focusing on understanding the degree of circularity and its financial implications has become crucial in facilitating the global transition towards circularity in the built environment. This research delves into methods aimed at improving the comprehension of circularity in real estate development projects and understanding the associated costs. The primary objective is to devise a circular life cycle cost model (C-LCC) which seeks to bridge the gap between the evaluation of circularity and its financial implications throughout the life of a building. Unlike traditional business cases that only consider initial investment costs and potential revenue from building projects, this innovative model provides a comprehensive tool for evaluating the financial costs and benefits associated with varying degrees of circularity. An extensive literature review and interviews were conducted to establish a solid foundation for understanding the key concepts and principles of the circular economy and its application in the built environment. The developed C-LCC model is applied to a real estate development project, namely Coolbase in Rotterdam, to simulate the financial outcomes of various circular building design scenarios. This improves the understanding of the relationship between circularity and associated finances. The disparate simulations underscore the critical role of building design, material selection, and the degree of building disassembly as principal influences on the level of circularity and corresponding financial implications. The model illustrates the costs and benefits across various stages of a building's lifecycle, including the initial, operational, and end-of-life phases of a construction project, while emphasizing the potential benefits inherent in various circular design scenarios. In conclusion, this study provides valuable guidance for a more sustainable and circular future, with the model providing insight into the potential costs and benefits that depend on the degree of circularity. Moreover, the results can serve as a tool for decision-making for circular choices in real estate development.

Dutch Housing associations (HA’s) are responsible for producing, maintaining, and managing about 30% of all Dutch housing stock. HA’s draw up their investment forecasts yearly for the next 5 years to construct, improve or maintain homes and other real estate investments. Since 2013, the realization rate of new construction plans by HA’s, which is the comparison of forecasts (dPi) against realized plans (dVi) decreased due to HA’s not realizing new build homes within the time they propose to realize them in their forecast plans. HA’s currently use valuation methods which assist them to mitigate emerging risks that affect new build plans of HA’s. However, valuation methods have been found to focus on indexable risks and capture financial loss while excluding time effect of risks. This means that new build investment forecast as currently conducted yields inaccurate results and are considered too optimistic. Forecasts that are too optimistic lead to disappointments from tenant organizations and municipalities, reduced financial guarantees from lenders, long waiting times for tenants and affects financial feasibilities which rely on accurate prediction of time to completion of projects. The aim of the research is to explore how new build plans can be made more realistic by accurately predicting the delivery time of investment forecasts. The study results in the identification of risks that lead to delay of new build investment plans and their subsequent indicators. The risks include long permit procedures, long land acquisition processes or lack of land positions to build, long tendering procedures, contractor related delays, rise in construction costs and lack of capacity at municipal level in dealing with development projects. The indicators of risks which statistically significantly predicted project time are construction costs, change in input price index of material and labour costs as of date when decision was made to tender, municipal location, and type of construction i.e., on empty ground or existing site that needs demolition. The project indicators can be used by HA's to accurately predict project time via stochastic decision tree models (SDTA) that rely on multiple linear regression (MLR) and Monte Carlo simulations (MCS). Supervisory bodies can also use these to gauge realism of new build investment forecast.

On the real estate market, there will always be a demand for newly constructed real estate. Demand and supply are never quite in balance, meaning that the construction of new real estate will always exist. However, looking for opportunities to satisfy the demand with the existing building stock is often forgotten or neglected. 87% of the needed buildings in 2050 have already been built (Wilkinson & Remoy, 2017). This is why building adaptation is so important. Concepts such as circularity, renovation and adaptive reuse are very important in the real estate market. When real estate is constructed circularly, it is ‘modular and flexible by design where resource loops are closed and human well-being is promoted’ (Leising et al., 2018). Therefore, building adaptation is a circular measure, and building demolition can and should be done circularly as well. Building adaptation and circular demolition are central in this research. Adaptive reuse is part of building adaptation, and means a major change to an existing building with alterations of both the building itself and the function it accommodates, so across-use adaptation (Wilkinson, 2014). Renovation is similar to adaptive reuse, only the function stays the same, so within-use adaptation (Wilkinson, 2014). These concepts all focus on using the existing building stock to satisfy demands, rather than to construct new buildings. Functional, technical, cultural, legal and location factors have been thoroughly mapped out in previous literature to establish what makes a building suitable for transformation or renovation (Ginelli, 2016). However, circularity potential and ways on how to determine circularity potential in building adaptation projects and demolition projects have not been clearly mapped out yet. With circularity becoming increasingly popular because of future goals that need to be met, it becomes important that clear ways to map out circularity potential in such projects are developed. This research fills in this research gap by creating a tool which gives a circularity potential score to existing buildings which will either be adapted or demolished, and shows which circularity measures can be taken. Furthermore, the tool will give indications on potential CO2 emission savings by applying circular strategies. Because there is no one way to approach this, instead of a main research question, a main research aim has been set up: To develop a tool which measures and identifies what the circularity potential of building adaptation projects and building demolition projects is. This tool is originally inspired by the conversion potential meter, developed by (Geraedts et al., 2018). Further on in the research, many extra tools and frameworks inspired the final result of the tool; the Circularity Potential Meter.

The central research question in this study is: Which meaning is given to sustainability within a Dutch housing association and does making sense of the concept of sustainability lead to sustainable strategic choices? The chosen research strategy is a longitudinal case study in the Dutch housing association Welbions. Data was collected in three periods between 2009 and 2018. Welbions associates sustainability mainly with the financial position, costs and affordability, and interprets the concept as investment measures in energy savings, reducing the usage of gas and CO2-emissions which are aimed at in covenants. From the listed factors influencing strategic decision-making, the economic, technical and personal frames appeared to be used mostly. The organizational and ethical frame were used only once, and the aesthetic frame was not used at all. Noteworthy is that ecological developments were not mentioned. Frames derived from the decision criteria showed a dominating economic frame. Making sense of sustainability does not result in sustainability-based actions, or choice. This indicates that sustainable values have not gained a position in strategic decision-making, compared to traditional values such as cost-efficiency and affordability.@en

Sinds de energiecrisis van begin jaren zeventig zijn we al bezig onze woningen energiezuinig te maken. Toch lijken de doelstellingen van een energieneutrale woningvoorraad nog niet binnen handbereik. Er is een transitie nodig. Dit boek presenteert de resultaten van het onderzoek naar de condities voor ontwikkeling en grootschalige toepassing van energieneutrale renovatieconcepten, waarmee bijgedragen kan worden aan de transitie naar een energieneutrale naoorlogse sociale woningvoorraad. Voor het onderzoek zijn twee projecten van het innovatie- en transitieprogramma Energiesprong bestudeerd; Slim & Snel en De Stroomversnelling. Beide projecten hadden tot doel de ontwikkeling en grootschalige toepassing van energiezuinige renovatieconcepten voor de naoorlogse seriematig gebouwde sociale woningvoorraad te stimuleren. Daarbij zetten ze in op product- en procesinnovatie om, gecombineerd met industrialisatie, renovatieconcepten opschaalbaar en betaalbaar te maken. Het resultaat van dit onderzoek is een lijst met acht benodigde condities, die met elkaar samenhangen en niet zonder elkaar kunnen. Hierbij gaat het om de aanwezigheid van experimenteerruimte, de veranderde rol voor corporaties en bouwpartijen, ontwikkeling van integrale renovatieproducten, het werken vanuit de behoefte van de bewoner, een rendabele businesscase, het veranderen van regelgeven en het geven van transitiesturing.@en

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 policy focus towards the enablement approach. That is, private-sector-led housing production. The result is that, public housing conditions and quality continuous to deteriorate due largely to lack of maintenance. This is evident in many research and news publications, and the visible signs of deterioration such as leaking roofs, rotten ceilings, cracked walls, faded paint, and dysfunctional electrical and plumbing systems. Therefore, this thesis proposes an approach to management by local authorities that may bring about maintenance and lead to better conditions/quality of public housing. The approach proposes a defined structure with roles, responsibilities and relationships for the district assembly, the district coordinating director, the housing unit of the local authority, the works department, and tenants. It outlines a defined protocol for addressing repairs and maintenance including mechanisms to receive and respond to everyday repairs from tenants. Furthermore, it proposes that district assemblies should be fully responsible for determining and collecting rents so as to ensure reliable and secure finance for maintenance. It recommends the participation of tenants in management through mechanisms such as regular meetings or tenant representatives. Finally, it recommends mechanisms such as planning, budgeting, and submission of annual accounts to monitor and ensure that rents are spent on maintenance.@en