After its launch, the circular economy gained popularity all over the world as the new sustainability paradigm. Despite its popularity there is little to no material to be found on the implementation of the circular economy in the construction industry. Through a mixed method methodology using literature reviews, case studies, thought exercises, and interviews to both build and subsequently validate theory, five circular business models for service providing in the construction industry were developed. Next a roadmap for advance circular services was set up. These models show internal and external supply-side stakeholders how to implement the circular economy, and that this implementation is thinkable on a business-case level, but less evident on
an industry level. This as previously unaddressed financial and regulatory aspects challenge the implementation of the circular economy in the construction industry. Considering these challenges, implementing the circular economy in the construction industry might be considered even more disruptive as in other sectors of our industrial economy.

The concept that suppliers retain ownership of building products and the materials encapsulated within these products and that their customers ‘only’ pay for services is a paradigm in Circular Economy. However in many legal systems, elements incorporated in a building such as the facade or the roof, or equipment in a plant, are seen as fixtures and therefore considered to be a part of real estate. Therefore ensuring multi-cyclic behaviour within the so-called technical loop of CE is not evident. At the moment the challenges of property law concerning CE, real estate and operational lease are hardly discussed within the literature. This paper explores the concept of service providing related to operational lease for real estate, with a focus on Dutch property law, illustrated by legal case studies. The paper ends with some conclusions that offer first guidelines for alternative implementations of the operational lease concept, taking into account the CE ambitions to reduce the extraction of the amount of raw materials.