The idea to start an international investigation into asset management in the social rented sector was triggered by developments that we observed in our own country—the Netherlands. During the nineties, the Dutch government reduced its regulation as well as its ?nancial support of social landlords. F- thermore, the market share of social rented housing was under threat due to theboomingeconomyandagrowingpreferenceforowner-occupation. These developments lead to a widespread interest among Dutch social landlords in the adaptation of more professional, business-like approaches towards the management of their housing stock. Since similar developments had taken place in other countries as well, we felt it would be interesting to see if these developmentshadasimilarimpactonthesociallandlords,andifthereare- portunitiesforinternationalexchangeofexperiences. However,aliterature- view quickly revealed us that little had been published about this topic—most comparative housing research being focused on national housing policies and systems, often placed in the wider context of the analysis of welfare regimes. So we had two options. The ?rst was to conduct an investigation into the asset management in various countries ourselves. This would have meant a lot of nice travels, but also a lot of time, money and the risk of not being able to paint a reliable picture because of our unawareness of speci?c characteristics of the social housing system, policy and landlords in other countries.
