Real estate development between stagnation and modernization

After a historical peak in 2001 the Dutch non-residential real estate market is characterized by growing vacancy, discontinuity of building construction and uncertainty about development opportunities. The recession in 2008/2009 -and again in 2011/2012- strengthens the loss of demand, which underlies the general stagnation of the real estate markets. Moreover this leads to a slowdown of the modernization of the building stock. The aim of this research is to model the adjustment of the building stock, in relation with the growth of the stock in use and with the observed and future replacement of the building stock. The future need for replacement depends on the capability of the available building stock to meet contemporary and future requirements (after refurbishment). The social-economic context of the future real estate development is characterized by diminishing population growth, moderate economic growth and the urge to meet higher technological, social, functional and environmental standards. The analysis will be completed for offices, for industrial & commercial buildings and for shopping stores. The remaining corporate and public property types are analysed in brief and integrated in the macro overview. Topical problems in The Netherlands are a continuously high vacancy and underutilization of offices and business complexes. Re-use and transformation activities are limited. The market sectors (industry, commercial services and agriculture) tend to a high replacement activity, with scaling-up, relocation and spatial concentration. Consequently this leads to high disinvestment and disposal of buildings. In the public sector the state of the building stock varies from high quantitative and qualitative shortages of the building stock for health care etcetera to zero growth of the stock in use for education, government and the non-profit sector, in combination with moderate replacement activity. In the macro view a lower future growth of activities dominates, resulting into a lower growth of production and accommodation capacity and a structural lower level of investment for expansion of the building stock. To a high extent this loss of real estate development will be compensated by a higher need for replacement and refurbishment etcetera in order to upgrade the non-residential property.