Aedes benchmark tenant verdict: get more out of it than a report card

In mid-August, your last submission for the Aedes benchmark went out the door. The tenant verdict data sits in the portal, the confirmation has come through, and the rest of the week is already piling up on your desk: outstanding repair requests, a tenancy change running late, a tenant calling for the third time about the same report. At a moment like that, the benchmark feels like something that's done. Tick the box, move on to the real work.

Yet this is exactly the moment when that submission is worth the most to you. According to Aedes's milestone calendar, the draft feedback reaches you on 8 September, the letter grades land on your doormat on 19 October, and the Aedes benchmark 2026 goes public on 19 November. If you wait until November, you're looking at a report card. If you use the coming weeks, you're looking at the processes behind that number.

That difference is bigger than it sounds, because the tenant verdict isn't a snapshot. The measurements ran from September 2025 through July 2026: eleven months of responses from tenants who'd just moved into a home, had a repair carried out, or moved out. You already have that mountain of answers in house. You don't need to wait for Aedes to dig into it.

What the tenant verdict in the Aedes benchmark actually measures

This performance field consists of three sub-scores: the verdict of new tenants, of tenants who had a repair request, and of tenants who moved out. They don't count equally. According to the performance field's methodology, the repair process weighs 55 per cent, new tenants 25 per cent, and departed tenants 20 per cent. The class boundaries are fixed: from 8.0 you're in class A, between 7.5 and 7.9 in class B, and at 7.4 or below in class C.

The sector figures show where the bar is set. In the results of the Aedes benchmark 2025, the repair process scored an average of 8.1, new tenants gave a 7.9, and departed tenants stayed stuck at 7.4. 256 woningcorporaties (Dutch housing associations) took part in that benchmark, together accounting for 98 per cent of all rented corporation homes. An average score is therefore not a niche signal, it's the entire playing field.

The sub-score that lingers: departed tenants

That 7.4 for departed tenants is no coincidence, and it's exactly the upper limit of class C. For many woningcorporaties, the move-out process is the most fragmented customer moment there is: the notice goes through lettings, the pre-inspection through the inspector, the final settlement through another department, and no one owns the whole. On top of that, the departed tenant has no reason left to give a socially desirable answer. That makes this the most honest mirror of the three.

The temptation is to do little with it, since the sub-score only counts for 20 per cent. But the same process that leaves departing tenants with a poor impression also determines your vacancy days and your turnover costs. A messy handover costs you twice: first in the verdict, then in the weeks the home stands empty.

Use the weeks until the feedback

Between now and 8 September, you have something the benchmark itself never gives you: time and your own raw data. Three things that pay off more than waiting for the letter grade:

• Read the open-text answers per sub-score, not just the numbers. That's where you'll find where tenants really lose faith: the engineer who didn't show up, the final settlement that only arrived after three months.
• Put the sub-scores next to your process data. Link the repair verdict to turnaround times and the number of contact moments per report, and the departure verdict to the time between notice and final settlement.
• Find the moments without human contact. Aedes concluded in the 2025 benchmark that contact with staff is decisive for a positive experience. The lowest scores are rarely about the technical work and almost always about silences: not knowing where your report stands, no one calling back.

If you do this now, the draft feedback on 8 September becomes a check on what you already know, rather than the first time you look at it. And when the whole sector is lined up on 19 November, you'll already have six weeks of improvements running that will show up in next year's measurement. The report card is the by-catch. The list of moments where tenants lose faith, which you already hold in your hands, is the real yield of the survey.