Aedes benchmark tenant judgement or KWH Woonbeleving: which one helps you on Monday?

You're in the quarterly meeting and there are two figures on the table. One comes from the Aedes benchmark: an 8.1 on repairs, comfortably in the green. The other comes from your latest Woonbeleving survey, where satisfaction with the home in two complexes has dropped to a bare pass. Someone asks how it's possible that tenants give you an eight while at the same time complaining about their home. And you notice you don't have the answer ready, because the two figures seem to be about something different.

That's because they genuinely are about something different. Both are called satisfaction and both produce a score out of ten, but they measure a different part of your work, at a different moment, with a different frequency. As long as you treat them as one satisfaction score, they will keep contradicting each other. Once you know which figure describes which part of your operation, they actually complement each other.

One thing first, because this is where it often goes wrong: these are not two separate, competing measurements. For many woningcorporaties (Dutch housing associations), KWH is precisely the party that supplies the data that ends up in the benchmark, because KWH is the data source for the tenant judgement in the Aedes benchmark. The difference isn't in who measures, but in what is measured and when.

The tenant judgement in the Aedes benchmark measures your service at three moments

The tenant judgement in the Aedes benchmark is built up from three points of contact: a tenant with a repair request, a new tenant who has just moved in, and a tenant who has left. These three don't count equally. The repair weighs 55 per cent, the new tenant 25 per cent and the departing tenant 20 per cent. In the Aedes benchmark 2025, the repair score averages 8.1, the new tenant 7.9 and the departing tenant 7.4, and for the first time a majority of woningcorporaties achieved an A on repairs.

What this figure tells you is how smoothly your transactions run. A repair finished on time, a key handover that goes right, a final inspection without hassle. It's collected continuously, shortly after the point of contact, and summarised once a year into a benchmark score at organisation level. That's the figure your supervisory board puts next to that of comparable woningcorporaties. Pay attention to the rule that has applied since the 2025 validation criteria: the repair survey only goes out once the work has actually been completed. Send it earlier, and you're measuring half a result.

KWH Woonbeleving measures how the home and neighbourhood feel

KWH Woonbeleving asks a completely different question. Not how your repair went, but how your tenant experiences their home and their neighbourhood. The survey covers the condition of the home and its surroundings: insulation and noise, the quality of kitchen and bathroom, mould and overdue maintenance, and on the outside, greenery, safety, cleanliness and nuisance. It isn't collected after every point of contact, but as a deeper survey that many woningcorporaties repeat every few years, neatly broken down by neighbourhood, district or complex.

What this figure tells you is where in your portfolio the lived experience is falling behind. Not whether one repair went well, but whether an entire block is structurally too cold, too noisy or too poorly maintained. That's steering information for your long-term maintenance and your sustainability plans, not for next week's repair process.

Why they sometimes seem to contradict each other, and why that's actually useful

Now you also understand why an 8.1 on repairs can sit alongside a mediocre housing score without either one being wrong. Your repair process can run excellently while the home itself is outdated. The tenant appreciates how quickly you fixed their leak and, at the same time, is fed up with draughty window frames, which aren't a reported issue but a daily experience. The tenant judgement sees the first, the Woonbeleving sees the second.

The danger lies in mixing them up. If you use the benchmark score in a board report to answer an investment question, you're reaching for the wrong figure, because a tidy 8.1 says nothing about whether that complex is due for a renovation. Conversely, a disappointing Woonbeleving score in one district is no reason to reprimand your repairs team, because that team is judged on a different figure.

Which of the two helps you on Monday

For tomorrow's question, is my service in order, you reach for the tenant judgement. For next year's question, where should my maintenance and sustainability budget go, you reach for the Woonbeleving. Put them side by side in your reporting with that distinction made explicit, so the first question in the meeting is no longer why the figures differ, but what each figure tells you to do. Two measurements saying something different isn't a contradiction. It's two views of your tenant, at two moments that both count.