European Pension Fund Still Believes In America, Even As Sector Reaches 'Peak AUM'

Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors CEO Mark Siezen doesn’t like the word “crisis” to describe recent global volatility. 

“That word has been overinflated — it’s lost kind of any meaning,” he told Bisnow in an interview at Bouwinvest’s Amsterdam HQ. “From now on, that's reality.”

Siezen is the head of one of Europe’s oldest real estate investment managers, set up in 1952. It has €17.8B ($20.9B, £15.4B) of assets under management and invests on behalf of bpfBOUW, the pension fund for the Dutch construction industry, which has €66B in AUM.

Siezen is leading Bouwinvest at a pivotal moment in the history of the company and the Dutch pension fund sector more generally. 

After decades of growth have made Bouwinvest a major force in the global investment sector, the Netherlands’ ageing population means that its pension funds are nearing “peak AUM,” Siezen said, and at some point in the next decade or so, it will be paying out more to policyholders than it is taking in. 

With that in mind, Bouwinvest is on a push to win more external clients and bring them into funds that invest in the Netherlands — with a particular view to helping to alleviate the country’s acute housing crisis — as well as boost the international portfolio of bpfBOUW. And that includes continuing its push to invest in the U.S. and Canada. 

Bouwinvest’s business grew in 2025, even in what was far from a vintage year for real estate. Its AUM grew 7%, and it produced a return on invested capital of 7.5%, up from 6.4% a year earlier. 

It invested €1B in its home market, including two prime office investments, a student accommodation project in Rotterdam and a mixed-use residential development next to Bijlmer Arena station in Amsterdam, where the Ajax football club plays.

It also launched a senior living impact fund, attracting €130M, which is part of its push to bring more investment into Dutch residential. Siezen said senior living, both in the Netherlands and North America, has it particularly bullish.

Internationally, Bouwinvest invests solely on behalf of bpfBOUW, and it has an ambition to grow its international portfolio from €5.9B to €7B in the next few years. In 2025, its international investments included hostels in Europe, convenience retail in Australia, logistics in Korea and senior living in the United States. 

Earlier this month, it also backed a 321-unit multifamily residential development in Vancouver, British Columbia, in a joint venture with local partners Woodbourne and Strand — a deal it undertook even though Dutch investors pay a tax rate of 26% on Canadian investments, such was its level of belief in the deal. 

There has been much commentary in the past 12 months about international investors shying away from investing in U.S. real estate due to heightened political uncertainty. Siezen said while Bouwinvest is cautious about the U.S. political situation, the country remains very much on its target list. 

“We believe in the strong fundamentals, in the entrepreneurial spirit, the strong economy of the United States,” he said. 

“Of course, we're concerned about governance aspects, and of course, we're monitoring closely in terms of what that means for the risk profile of our investments. But for now, we haven't paused.”

Siezen said Bouwinvest favours sectors with demographic tailwinds like senior living, multifamily and data centres, and it has gained renewed conviction of late in convenience-led retail assets and the office sector. 

“That may be viewed as contrarian by many, but we feel that at certain locations, when it comes to accessibility, health factors, certain types of sectors that are going to be attracting more people back into the office,” he said. “We're carefully making our first allocations back into office.”

When it comes to the company’s home market, attracting international investors can be challenging because the returns in sectors like multifamily can be lower than in other countries, Siezen said. But that needs to be balanced against the fact that the risk is incredibly low because of a sharp imbalance between supply and demand. Nationwide occupancy sits at 94.3%, according to Investropa, but the largest cities are tighter, with Rotterdam recording a mere 2% vacancy rate. 

Regulation controls some rents, but high hurdles to achieve planning in one of the most densely populated countries in the world also keep new supply in check. And renters have fewer options, as 34,000 rental houses were sold to owner-occupiers in the last four years. 

Demand is also spread across multiple cities, rather than concentrated in the capital, as is the case with London or Paris, Bouwinvest said in a research report. 

There is a growing understanding at the highest levels of government that for the country to meet its housing needs, international capital will need to invest in the sector, Siezen said — the sheer size of the undersupply can’t be bridged by domestic capital alone.

The government has an ambition of building 100,000 new homes a year, but official figures show completions averaging at about 70,000 annually in recent years.

For decades, Dutch pension funds were able to meet the need for housing, Siezen said. A perfect storm of a large working-age population, a regulatory environment that forced workers to save, and strong investment returns allowed the pension sector to grow from about €200B in the mid-1980s to more than €1.2T by 2007.

But since then, returns have slowed due to ultralow interest rates, and an ageing population has reduced inflows and increased payouts. That means less money to invest, especially since investing in government bonds can again provide a decent return, with none of the risk and cost of investing in property. 

Hence the need to attract international capital to the residential sector — but also for companies like Bouwinvest to broaden their investor base. The company is looking to attract capital from sources like sovereign wealth funds, private family money and foreign institutional capital. 

“Dutch pension funds will reach peak AUM, if I could call it that, within the next 10 years,” Siezen said. “It doesn't mean they're no longer going to be investing in real estate, because they always will, but it does mean that there won't be a huge, additional investment.”

Even though that moment is still some years off, for Bouwinvest, that means diversification of fundraising needs to come now. 

“We need scale,” Siezen said. “We’re tapping into all those resources because that's where the largest part of our future growth is going to be.”