| Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors
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| Bouwinvest invests in new platform in the enabled living segment in Australia |
Bouwinvest has invested in a specialist disability accommodation (SDA) with Macquarie Asset Management. In total, Bouwinvest is investing $A 65 million (€42 million) in the venture, 40% of which will contribute to a seed portfolio of 239 high-quality SDA units, which Macquarie has financed in Australia’s mainland capital cities over the last three years. The remaining equity will be used to expand the portfolio over the next two years.
Tjarko Edzes, Director Asia-Pacific Investments, said: “We are longstanding investors in the residential sector in its various forms and particularly like the positive societal and environmental contribution we are delivering through this new venture. This form of impact investing is completely in line with our own focus on real value for life and gives us exposure to an underserved niche.”
The enabled living sector is supported by the federal government under its National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). |
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| Bouwinvest helps measure circularity impact |
The real estate sector is playing a fundamental role in making the built environment more sustainable. Bouwinvest, for example, is working hard to make its property portfolio carbon neutral by 2045, five years earlier than the target set in the Paris climate accords. The other major challenge the sector faces aside from the energy transition away from fossil fuels, is the transition to a circular built environment, where we look to minimise waste by reducing the amount of materials used during the entire lifecycle of a building and recycling them where possible.
The first circular building in Bouwinvest’s portfolio is the Villa Verde complex in Harderwijk, a former office block which has been converted into a healthcare complex and which is now providing a business case for circularity. And, together with the Dutch Green Building Council (DGBC), we have created a framework for existing buildings which have been recycled in line with circularity principles.
Bouwinvest is one of the co-founders of the Circular Framework, an organisation which aims to apply the principles of circularity to existing buildings and to quantify the results. We have teamed up with several pioneers in this field to work towards a built environment where today’s buildings become tomorrow’s raw materials. The Netherlands has approximately eight million buildings and the major challenge in making them more sustainable is the volume of materials required to do so. It is important, therefore, to define how to achieve a circular approach and the new Framework provides tools to apply the principles of circularity at individual asset level. The key strength of the Framework is that it incorporates existing methodologies and quality assurance processes such as BREEAM (In-Use) which can then be integrated into Bouwinvest’s sustainability strategy.
Villa Verde business case
The challenge we now face is to demonstrate the financial value of circular buildings and Villa Verde is serving as an example. The complex is highly adaptable which reduces the risks of vacancy and loss of rental income. In addition, materials were recycled during the transformation of the building which creates positive ecological benefits. But until now neither of these factors have been accounted for in the building’s cash flow models.
By integrating the principles of circularity into the business case for Villa Verde, we aim to obtain better insight into its sustainability impact and the potential financial returns, which in turn can be applied to other projects. We are working with Copper 8 on this project and expect to be able to reveal more about the results in mid-September. |
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| Bouwinvest targets European countries and Canada for new investors; plans impact fund |
| Bouwinvest is actively researching and contemplating the launch of new products such as for example an impact strategy and in parallel is stepping up efforts to raise capital from institutional investors outside the Netherlands, Bouwinvest’s recently appointed chief client officer Mark Siezen told REFI Europe (a European real estate magazine) in an interview.
“Right now, our key client base mostly consists of Dutch pension funds and a few insurance companies. We would like to continue to win market share in these core markets but also make a push into attracting more foreign capital to our platform from places like Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Canada, the Nordics and others.”
For most of its history, Bouwinvest has invested on behalf of one key investor – the pension fund for the Dutch construction sector bpfBOUW. However, bpfBOUW is reaching a stage where it is potentially hitting its exposure limits for real estate investing.
Around 10 years ago, Bouwinvest opened up three of its largest vehicles - Dutch Residential, Dutch Retail and Dutch Office - to investments from investors other than bpfBOUW. Significantly more than half of the shares in each of the three funds is still held by the Dutch construction sector pension fund, but this is expected to decrease as other investors enter the vehicles through new commitments and possibly through divestments of bpfBOUW’s shares. For example, earlier this year, it transferred a €400 million commitment in Dutch residential to existing investors in the fund.
Bouwinvest would also like to open up its healthcare platform to third-party investors, either through opening of the current Healthcare fund or through the establishment of a new healthcare mandate/fund. The minimum target volume for a healthcare and/or impact fund strategy would be €500 million, with a potential launch date aimed at early 2022.
“Right now, our healthcare platform isn’t open to other investors but that is something we would like to change, either by opening up the current healthcare fund to new investors or by leveraging our platform to launch a new vehicle for institutional investors,” Siezen said.
He added that his team is actively talking to institutional clients to better understand the current and expected future demand for real estate investment strategies and in parallel is assessing what acquisition/portfolio opportunities are available in the market to address these demands. |
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| Mark Siezen |
| Chief Client Officer |
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| Bouwinvest invests €75 million in Irish social and affordable rental housing venture led by Ardstone |
Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors has allocated € 75 million on behalf of its European mandate to a newly launched venture from Irish investment manager Ardstone to invest in social and affordable rental housing in Dublin. The transaction follows investments earlier this year for Bouwinvest’s institutional European mandate in affordable housing in Scandinavia and Belgium.
Robert Koot, Director European Investments at Bouwinvest, said: “Dublin is by no means alone in experiencing a shortage of suitable accommodation for lower and middle-income earners, with many developed cities around the world facing similar issues. At Bouwinvest, we adjust our affordable housing strategy in line with the needs of each individual market. In addition to affordability, sustainability is a key pillar of the residential investments we’ve made in recent years, such as those in France, Germany, the UK, Belgium and the Nordics. Affordability and sustainability are also high on Ardstone’s agenda in Ireland.”
Jasper Petit, Senior Portfolio Manager Europe at Bouwinvest, added: “Specialists like Ardstone, who have boots on the ground, give us local market knowledge and access to the increasingly sought-after affordable and social rental housing asset class. In our home market, the Netherlands, there is a huge shortage of rental accommodation in the mid-range and social segment. A similar situation exists in Dublin. That supply/demand imbalance in Dublin is precisely what we are targeting with our investment, as this enables us to create value in both social and financial terms.” |
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