a.s.r. real assets has published a new white paper entitled “Refining affordability in the Dutch residential rental market”. The study analyses the increasing importance of differentiated affordability concepts in the Dutch housing market and develops a practice-oriented approach to defining affordable housing. The focus is in particular on institutional investors who want to invest in residential real estate on a long-term basis and at the same time take into account societal requirements for affordable housing.
As affordability has become a key issue for both investors and politicians, the definition of affordable housing rents is also becoming increasingly important. The starting point of the analysis is the finding that the Netherlands continues to face a structural housing shortage of more than 400,000 housing units. At the same time, rising purchase and rental prices are making access to housing more difficult for broad sections of the population.
Robbert van Dijk, Fund Director of ASR Dutch Core Residential Fund, explains: “Our approach provides our fund and its investors with a robust and practical basis for making responsible, long-term investment decisions while benefiting from the undersupply in the affordable housing segment.”
The white paper comes to the conclusion that flat-rate rent limits are not sufficient to reflect the actual affordability of housing. Instead, a.s.r. real assets proposes a multi-layered approach that takes into account regional income differences, energy costs, municipal taxes and service costs in addition to disposable household income.
The model focuses on a housing cost ratio of 35 percent of disposable household income as a starting point for assessing affordability. This approach is supplemented by local income data at the level of functional housing market regions and by the consideration of structural ancillary costs. The analysis shows that the actually sustainable net cold rent differs significantly from blanket market definitions in many cases.
Another focus of the study is on the role of sustainable buildings. Energy-efficient and fossil-free residential properties enable households to spend a larger proportion of their housing costs on rent without increasing the overall burden. Sustainability and affordability are therefore not seen as opposites, but as closely linked factors.
Marsha Sinninghe, Senior Fund Manager at a.s.r. real assets and author of the study, comments: “Affordability cannot be defined by a single metric. It is influenced by local market conditions, building characteristics and the living situations of households. Our goal was therefore to develop an approach that better reflects the reality of the housing market and is applicable to the implementation of the fund strategy. Around 80 percent of the current fund portfolio falls into the affordable segment as we have now defined it.”
The approach has already been incorporated into the impact investment strategy of the ASR Dutch Core Residential Fund. Since 1 January 2026, the fund has been using the developed approach to systematically assess the affordability of new residential investments. In this way, a.s.r. real assets is strengthening its ambition to combine financial return and social impact in the Dutch housing market.
The ASR Dutch Core Residential Fund was launched in 2015 and currently manages a portfolio of Dutch residential properties with a volume of EUR 2.4 billion (as of December 2025) and around 6,100 residential units. The fund is also investable for German institutional investors. The fund is marketed in Germany by PrimeraAdvisors.
