Housing corporations anticipate merger wave

AMSTERDAM – Private membership based housing corporations, of which there are hundreds throughout the country, have long played a major role in the Dutch housing market, particularly in low cost housing. Many smaller and middle sized corporations anticipate a merger wave to occur in the near future. In recent years, the sector faced criticism that they were sitting on too much capital, were building too much relatively expensive housing, did not do enough to renovate older units or were not maintaining their units. The housing corporations have several umbrella organizations to represent their interests.