The Netherlands is facing significant spatial challenges and a structural housing shortage, in which the role of municipalities in the land market is crucial. This study evaluates the municipal pre-emption right as an instrument for land assembly, aiming for housing development. The central question is how the municipal pre-emption right functions in practice as a strategy for land assembly and how it contributes to outcomes in housing development. The study has both a legal and theoretical framework functioning as a basis for a qualitative multiple case study of three municipalities: Hulst, Westland and Harderwijk. Based on the document analysis and the semi-structured interviews with involved municipal officials, for each case the process of establishing a pre-emption right, land assembly and housing development has been reconstructed, and cross-case analysed. The results of the case study show that the pre-emption right primarily functions as a process instrument. It does not directly contribute to land assembly or accelerating housing development, but it creates space for negotiation, prevents unwanted market interventions and improves the position of control for municipalities. The outcomes in land assembly and housing development stay dependant on contextual factors like market pressure, political preferences, current land positions and organisational capacity. In all three cases, housing development took place, and in all cases, in similar or higher housing amounts than originally planned. Despite this, no direct causal relationship can be established between the use of the pre-emption right and the realised housing development production or speed. Concluding, the pre-emption right can be seen as a strategic supportive instrument within active land policy, from which the effectiveness primarily lies in facilitating the process and limiting speculation, and less in direct output in terms of land assembly or housing production. ... Read more