January 13, 2026

Nearly 12,000 social housing tenants are also owners of one or more homes, with some owning more than ten properties. Although this is a small group (about half a percent of all social housing tenants), it raises questions about the appropriate use of scarce social rental homes. For a small part, homeownership results from circumstances, but for five out of six tenants there appears to be a conflict with the objectives of housing corporations. This emerges from new research by the Central Planning Bureau (CPB).

Housing corporations have a legal task to house people who cannot independently meet their housing needs. Among tenants who own a home, there appears to be a special form of ‘misaligned rent’. The research uses microdata to map how often social housing tenants own one or more homes and which circumstances may play a role. The data are anonymized; the CPB therefore has no insight into who these tenants are.

 

Circumstances without freedom of choice

Of the 12,000 structural ‘tenant-owners’, about one in six appears to have ownership due to circumstances over which the tenant has little influence. Think of an inherited share in a parents home or a home still occupied by an ex-partner. The tenant presumably cannot freely dispose of the property, so there is no clear conflict with the objectives of housing corporations.

Conflict with the housing corporations objective

For the remaining 10,000 households, there appears to be more freedom of choice in the use of the home. The most common use is rental of real estate, both for tenants with one home and those with multiple homes. Housing a relative or own use as a second home also occurs. Here, homeownership seems to conflict with the social objective of housing corporations: the tenant basically has another residence but does not use this one for that purpose.  

Higher income and attractive social housing

Tenants in this last group often fall outside the target group of housing corporations based on income: more than half earn above the income limit for social rent. They also more often live in good locations and attractive homes than other social housing tenants. 

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