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

Half August your last submission for the Aedes benchmark went out the door. The tenant verdict data is in the portal, the confirmation has arrived, and the rest of the week is already piling up on your desk: outstanding repair requests, a turnover that's running late, a tenant calling for the third time about the same issue. At a moment like this, the benchmark feels finished. Tick the box, move on to the real work.

Yet this is exactly the moment you get the most out of that submission. According to Aedes's milestone calendar, the draft feedback reaches your organisation on 8 September, the grades land on 19 October, and the Aedes Benchmark 2026 goes public on 19 November. If you wait until November, you're looking at a report grade. If you use the coming weeks, you're looking at the processes behind that grade.

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 dive into it.

What the tenant verdict in the Aedes benchmark actually measures

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

The sector figures show where the bar sits. 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 a 7.4. 256 woningcorporaties (Dutch social housing associations) took part in that benchmark, together accounting for 98 per cent of all rented association homes. An average score, then, isn't a niche signal, it's the whole playing field.

The sub-score that lingers: departed tenants

That 7.4 for departed tenants is no accident, and it sits exactly at the upper limit of class C. At many woningcorporaties, the departure process is the most fragmented customer moment there is: the notice runs through lettings, the pre-inspection through the inspector, the final settlement through another department, and no one owns the whole. The departed tenant, moreover, has no reason left to answer diplomatically. That makes this the most honest mirror of the three.

The temptation is to do little with it, since this sub-score only weighs 20 per cent. But the same process that leaves departing tenants with a poor feeling 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 before 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 grade:

• Read the open answers per sub-score, not just the numbers. That's where you see tenants really drop off: the engineer who never showed up, the final settlement that only arrived after three months.
• Lay the sub-scores next to your process data. Link the repair verdict to turnaround times and the number of contact moments per request, and the departure verdict to the time between notice and final settlement.
• Look for 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 technical skill and almost always about silence: not knowing where your request 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 stands side by side on 19 November, you'll already have six weeks of improvements running that will show up in next year's measurement. The report grade is the by-product. The list of moments where tenants drop off, which you already hold in your hands, is the real yield of the survey.