De vergrijzing resulteert in een roep om nieuwbouw van voor ouderen geschikte woningen. Maar zijn aanpassingen van bestaande woningen niet een meer voor de hand liggende oplossing, gezien de honkvastheid van ouderen? En als aanpassing de voorkeur krijgt wat betekent dit dan, wetende dat ouderen steeds vaker huiseigenaar zijn?

This study investigates how life course characteristics and housing market circumstances affect the formation and realisation of preferences to move into homeownership. Using a data set from the Netherlands in which data from three cross-sectional housing surveys are enriched with longitudinal register data for the period 1998–2008, we follow aspiring homeowners regarding their actual residential behaviour. We find that only 31 % of the aspiring homeowners became homeowners within 2 years, approximately 13 % moved to rental homes, and the vast majority did not move at all. Insufficient socioeconomic resources and a high house price-to-rent ratio hamper the realisation of preferences to move into homeownership. However, these hampering factors are at least as important as the extent to which individuals prefer to move into homeownership. This last finding suggests that housing tenure preferences cannot be viewed as ‘pure’ preferences.

One of the most pressing questions in the rural gentrification literature is whether rural residents face difficulties in finding a home within their locality due to the influx of more wealthy newcomers. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which intended local movers and intended non-local movers have realised their rural residential preferences in their preferred municipality. We perform multilevel multinomial logistic regression analysis on data from two housing surveys for the Netherlands that are enriched with register data from the longitudinal Social Statistical Database (SSD). Our results show that, despite of their lower income, intended local movers are more likely to find homes within their preferred rural location than are intended non-local movers. Intended non-local movers move more often to a location other than that initially preferred, with urbanites facing a higher likelihood to move to an urban area. The findings suggest that ties to the residential environment are more important in successfully finding housing in one's preferred rural location than are financial resources.

This study examines how anticipated triggers for moving and individual, household and regional characteristics hamper or stimulate actual moving behaviour of people who intend to move. It uses a longitudinal dataset from the Netherlands, in which survey data from the Housing Demand Survey 2002 are combined with register data from the Social Statistical Database. The study finds that people with a strong intention to move are almost four times as likely to move as people with a less strong intention to move. Homeowners are more likely to realise a strong intention to move than renters who want to move within the rental sector of the housing market. The probability of actually moving is particularly great for those wishing to move from owner-occupied to rented housing and those with more resources, whereas it is small for people whose search location is in the Randstad.

Life events are frequently mentioned as a reason why people do not behave according to their mobility intentions. However, there is little empirical evidence concerning the role of life events in the discrepancy between stated mobility intentions and actual mobility behaviour. The authors clarify the role of life events in this discrepancy using a longitudinal dataset from the Netherlands, in which the Housing Demand Survey 2002 is enriched with register data from the Social Statistical Database. Union dissolution, union formation, and childbirth trigger moves among people who had initial intended to stay in the current home. These events also act as an extra stimulus to move for those who already intended to move for reasons other than household or job change. In contrast, the event of losing a job prevents people from realising their intention to move. The results also suggest that the majority of the moves after union dissolution are made by people who did not have an initial intention to move.