Breathing space on the housing market

BPD Woningfonds consists entirely of sustainable, affordable and new rental homes for middle incomes: starters, families and independent elderly people. With the fund, BPD aims to increase the number of affordable rental homes and to speed up the upward movement in the stagnated housing market, especially in urban areas. Rebecca Haasdijk, together with the BPD Woningfonds team, will purchase the property, set up the internal organisation and manage the portfolio. She has extensive experience in this field. “I’ve been working in property management since I was eighteen, fulfilling a wide variety of positions ranging from technical to senior management. This means I went through a real practical training school and experienced almost everything related to new construction and rental properties.” In 2016, she was one of the five nominees for the Yardi/Property Market Young Talent Award. She studied at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences and the Amsterdam School of Real Estate, among others. It was here where she won the prestigious thesis prize in the 2018-2019 academic year.

At BPD, she is working on setting up the new BPD Housing Fund. On 4 November 2019, the first steps were taken in this regard: the legal entities have been formed and the team has been set up. A new milestone will follow in January 2020: the first thousand (rented) homes of BPD’s internal investment portfolio will be purchased. Half of it has already been let, the other half is under construction. Haasdijk: “And then we will continue thereafter: with new projects to fill the fund and further set up the internal organisation.” Rabobank takes care of financing and funding. The initiative fits in seamlessly with the bank’s mission of ‘Growing a better world together’.

Haasdijk, an ambitious pioneer who loves to build something from the ground up, works at BPD Woningfonds in a specialised, approachable team. The rental properties are developed by BPD itself and delivered to the fund. “We will experience some strong growth but will, of course, do so carefully. Ultimately, it concerns 15 thousand rental homes. This will contribute to creating attractive neighbourhoods with a mixture of all kinds of homes, both owner-occupied and rental.” “BPD has always been a natural partner for municipalities and associations, but this can now become even more interesting, because mid-priced rental homes are increasingly seen as the crucial link for a healthy housing market,” Haasdijk explains.

BPD Woningfonds was founded by BPD and Rabobank. It is a unique housing fund in the Netherlands that consists entirely of affordable and sustainable new-build rental homes intended for middle-income households.