Netherlands’ Confectionery Industry Pension Fund Invests €30 Million in Bouwinvest Dutch Residential Fund

“Our due diligence on investment managers identified Bouwinvest as coming out on top.” says Leo Dekker, Chairman of the Confectionery Industry Pension Fund.

The Netherlands’ Confectionery Industry Pension Fund has invested € 30 million in the Bouwinvest Dutch Residential Fund, which, with € 2.6 billion in assets under management, is the single largest fund investing in the country’s housing market on an unleveraged basis.

Leo Dekker, Chairman of the Confectionery Industry Pension Fund said: “The pension fund decided after the findings of our last ALM study that we would start to invest in real estate from 2014. Real estate provides a stable and sustainable return for the retirement income of our pensioners and now is a very attractive time to step into the housing market. Our due diligence on investment managers identified Bouwinvest as coming out on top. The important factors for us in this decision were the quality of the investment team and the portfolio and their solid track record on returns during the past few years .”

The Bouwinvest Residential Fund portfolio consists of around 15,000 high quality homes, mainly in the liberalised higher rental segment of the market and within the major urban areas of the Randstad conurbation — the strongest economic and most densely populated region of the Netherlands. The fund has an active asset management strategy to maximise investment performance within a well-diversified portfolio. It has a target total return of 6.0% a year and since launch has consistently outperformed the Investment Property Databank’s (IPD) Dutch Institutional Residential Benchmark Index by a wide margin.

Dick van Hal, CEO at Bouwinvest concluded: “The Confectionery Industry Pension Fund’s selection of Bouwinvest as its investment partner in the Dutch residential market follows on the heels of a € 50 million mandate from the Rabobank Pension Fund a few months ago. Both these mandates show that institutional investors are increasingly aware of the probably  ‘once in a generation’ investment opportunities that are arising in the mid-priced rental sector in the Netherlands due to the upward turn in the cycle and the government’s moves to rebalance the housing market to attract private capital and boost supply.”

The Bouwinvest Residential Fund’s recent acquisitions that are being developed in coming years include: the Pontsteiger building in the Houthaven-area in Amsterdam; Het Baken and Feniks in Amsterdam-East; Halve Maen and Statendam in Amsterdam-North; Summertime and the Kop Zuidas in the Zuidas business district of Amsterdam and Noordblok on the Stadionplein in Amsterdam-South. In The Hague, the City Prince and Oostduinlaan projects have also been included in the fund’s portfolio, as has new developments in Hilversum, Pijnacker, Den Bosch, Ede and Hilversum.

In total, around 1,900 homes are in the process of being developed with investment from the Bouwinvest Residential Fund and the manager is the single largest investor in new housing in the City of Amsterdam.