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Leading Dutch office developer OVG Real Estate aims to transplant its high-tech approach to new buildings to cities like London and Paris, founder and CEO Coen van Oostrom told PropertyEU in an interview.

‘We want to remain the leading office developer in the Netherlands and at the same time get developments with smart features off the ground in cities like Paris and London,’ Van Oostrom said.

Founded in 1997, Rotterdam-based OVG has grown to become the Netherlands’ biggest and most sustainable office developer in the past 18 years. Last December it delivered the world’s most sustainable office building, The Edge, in Amsterdam’s Zuidas business district after being awarded the highest-ever rating by the Building Research Establishment (BRE).

OVG has a number of unique selling points to enable it to secure a position abroad, Van Oostrom said. ‘Our contacts with tenants are in better shape than those of our competitors. We score high on sustainability and lead the way in everything to do with technology. The Edge, for example, has 6,800 sensors which register everything that happens in a building. That’s a new driver for growth.’

OVG plans to develop smart systems together with companies such as Philips, Siemens, General Electric and Nest. The Netherlands and OVG’s second home market Germany are test beds for new innovations, Van Oostrom said. ‘If it works in Amsterdam or Berlin, it will also work in London, Paris or New York.’

Like the Netherlands, office markets in Germany, France and the UK are seeing a growing discrepancy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ stock, according to Van Oostrom. ‘We’re seeing a gap in the office market between what is effectively a low-tech living room and a high-tech building where you can monitor everything that goes on. Everything in between faces an extremely tough time.’

Unlike a couple of years ago, he sees plenty of opportunities for office developers which can take on technologically complex projects. Ultimately, technology is all about the data that can be obtained from a building, says Van Oostrom. ‘Technology is going to become a big thing in our buildings. It means that OVG has to evolve from a property into a technology company. If you can pinpoint what distinguishes one building from another by using all your data, you’re a winner.’

Speculative projects
OVG is also keen to develop high-tech office buildings like The Edge on a speculative basis. ‘We’ve learned that if you want to deliver a good building, you can do that by taking risk,’ Van Oostrom said. The company’s strategy is to engage with major end-users rather than local property players. In the case of The Edge, for example, OVG talked to what ultimately became its principal tenants: accountancy firm Deloitte and law firm AKD

OVG has abandoned its previous strategy of transforming itself from a developer into an opportunistic fund platform with a strong development arm. ‘We can’t become a copy of Goldman Sachs or Blackstone. They’re just better at building large funds. They employ a large number of very smart, well-paid financial whizzes and we can’t compete with that,’ Van Oostrom said.

Nonetheless, the company is not short of financial resources. Van Oostrom: ‘If we see an opportunity, we can raise money in London directly. You can’t survive as a developer without access to money.’

OVG’s investment management arm has more than €250 mln in office assets under management in the Netherlands and Germany. Target investments include OVG pipeline assets as well as assets from third party sellers.

Read the full interview in the May edition of PropertyEU Magazine