Rabo Real Estate Group's activities are conducted by Bouwfonds Property Development, MAB Development, FGH Bank, Bouwfonds Real Estate Investment Management (REIM) en Fondsenbeheer Nederland (Fund Management). Since December of 2006, Rabo Real Estate Group has been the real estate division of Rabobank, while the history of the organisation goes back even further.
Rabo Real Estate Group has at least a sixty-year history in real estate. The company was founded just as solidly as the real estate projects that it has carried out over the decades.
In 1946, Jacob Wiersema established Bouwspaarkas Drentsche Gemeenten (Drenthe Municipal Housing Savings Bank). He saw this as the realisation of an ideal: a public savings bank to help people of modest means become home owners. He was able to involve dozens of municipalities as shareholders in the projects. Jacob Wiersema was the CEO of the growing and successful enterprise until 1980. By then, its name had been changed to Bouwfonds.
Even though a large part of Rabo Real Estate Group’s staff is now too young to have known Wiersema, his legacy manifests itself in every aspect of the company. This legacy finds expression in Rabo Real Estate Group's deeply-rooted commitment to social projects. Awareness of the social context in which the company is operating is second nature to us. Real estate must contribute to the common good of the community. Society is cultivated in an environment that does not arise from a short-term vision, but rather one that has value for the future. Thinking on the basis of value for the future means opting for quality over quantity, for sustainability over quick profits, for integral solutions and sensible returns, for the investor, the end user and society.
On 16 October 1890, a number of dignitaries from the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen founded the Friesch-Groningsche Hypotheekbank N.V. in Groningen. The aim of the new bank was to provide mortgages to farmers who wanted to buy a small farm. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, FGH Bank was mainly operational in the north of the Netherlands. The bank successfully grew and steadily broadened its horizons. Its merger in 1937 with the Nederlandsche Hypotheekbank, which at the time belonged to FGH Group, actually established the largest combination in the Netherlands.
In the 1950s, five of the (mortgage) banks were taken over. The 60s and 70s were marked by diversification in all areas of real estate, including development, construction and exploitation. During the ’80s depression, when confidence in mortgage banks in general waned, FGH Group sought to join a large, steady, financial institution. In 1987, Aegon acquired almost all shares in FGH Bank. The non-core activities were successfully sold, terminated or privatised. FGH Bank returned to doing what it did best: mortgage financing for commercial real estate. Not as a traditional mortgage bank, but as a specialised real estate bank. As well as focusing on the core business, ‘FGH Hypotheekbank’ (FGH mortgage bank) changed its name to ‘FGH Bank N.V., de vastgoedbank’ (FGH Bank N.V., the real estate bank). Since 1 January 1992, FGH Bank has enjoyed general bank status, and on 24 October 2003, it became part of the largest financial services provider in the Netherlands: Rabobank. Since the end of 2006, FGH Bank has been part of the real estate division of Rabobank: Rabo Real Estate Group.