ABSTRACT
Land is continuously being taken from rural into urban use and most of this urban land is purchased by municipalities, which dispose of only about half the land they acquire. When disposing of the land for building, some municipalities retain legal ownership, disposing of ground leases only. The Netherlands is small and densely populated, so it might be expected that building land would be scarce and expensive. The Netherlands is fairly uniform and the activities of all the municipalities independently supplying building land with good locational properties maintains that uniformity. The municipality is in most cases the land developer and, as such, bears all associated financial risks. The price of agricultural land when it is traded within the agricultural sector is important for the urban land market, because it is the minimum price at which rural land can be acquired for conversion to urban uses.
