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This paper describes the development of a house price index that has been introduced in May 2005 in The Netherlands. This monthly index, called Woningwaarde Index Kadaster (House Price Index Kadaster), is designed to detect changes in the price of the overall stock of owner-occupied homes. Fifty-five indices are calculated: one overall index, four regional indices, 12 provincial indices and 38 indices based on combinations of region/province and dwelling type. We used Case and Shiller's geometric Weighted Repeat Sales Model to calculate monthly house price indices. We used recorded data on the sales of over 500,000 owner-occupied homes in The Netherlands, all representing repeat sales between January 1993 and December 2006. The accuracy of the index was determined using the 95% confidence interval. We observed that accuracy might become a problem in smaller sub samples. Revision volatility was explored by comparing the index values computed from all available data until December 2005 with the index values computed from the data available until December 2006. Our analysis showed that revision volatility does not seem to be a major problem to the index. We also explored heteroskedasticity in the Repeat Sales method but did not find conclusive evidence for the proposed heteroskedasticity. Given our target (a geometric mean index value) and the characteristics of the dataset (very large but without property characteristics) the Repeat Sales Method seems to be adequate for calculating a house price index for The Netherlands.

Housing allowances aim to make rental housing affordable for the recipients. Whether affordability for tenants is achieved in an economically efficient way is the question that is discussed in this essay. Three aspects of efficiency are focused on: disincentives to work, over-consumption of housing and horizontal inefficiency. These topics are tackled through a discussion that focuses mainly on the principles, but also on some of the outcomes, of the means-tested housing allowance systems in six Western countries: Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden. Conclusions concern the apparent unimportance of the poverty trap or the unemployment trap specifically for rental housing, the concept of notional rent used to tackle over-consumption, and the frequent existence of some form of horizontal inefficiency. Copyright (c) 2006 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

The housing system of the Netherlands has acquired an international reputation because of its special nature and the way it has evolved. In this contribution, we explain how the Dutch social rented sector came to have this speci c character. We establish that the position of the social rented sector is strongly in uenced by developments in society at large. In particular, its speci c position may be explained with reference to the emergence and transformation of the Dutch welfare state. In the Netherlands, the development of the social rented sector coincided with the vigorous build-up of the welfare state. That sector continued to grow in the Netherlands for a longer period than in most other west European countries. Ultimately, the share of the Dutch social rented sector reached its highest point-41 per cent of the stock-at the beginning of the 1990s. The current position of the social rented sector in the Netherlands is determined not only by the structure of the Dutch welfare state and the country's distinct housing policy. It is also the result of the shifting balance of supply and demand in the national housing market. Compared with other countries, the particular historical development of the Dutch social rented sector makes the adjustment of the housing system to a more market-orientated policy-in which more attention is devoted to the freedom of choice of the housing consumer-an unprecedented activity to say the least. This process will require the present housing associations to show a large measure of creativity and exibility.