Vesteda CEO Gertjan van der Baan announces his departure as of April 2024

Gertjan van der Baan will step down as CEO of Vesteda in April 2024. Van der Baan has held this position since 1 January 2014. In April next year he will have been at the helm of the largest residential investor in the Netherlands for more than 10 years. Prior to joining Vesteda, Van der Baan worked for over 10 years at Van Herk Groep and nine years at Kempen & Co.

Vesteda’s residential portfolio grew from 23,000 to 28,000 homes under Van der Baan's leadership, with the value of the portfolio increasing to € 9 billion from almost € 4 billion. In addition, he made the sustainability of the residential portfolio a major priority. This recently led to a global No 1 position in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB). Vesteda also saw its tenant and employee satisfaction increase significantly under his leadership.

Van der Baan explained his announced departure as follows: “After 10 years at Vesteda, I have decided to do something else. When I arrived, the company was going through a difficult period, partly due to the prolonged financial crisis. Thanks in part to improved market conditions, and with broad support from our participants, supervisory committee members and colleagues, we managed to strengthen and expand Vesteda. Vesteda is now in extremely good shape and I can therefore leave the organisation with peace of mind, and think about my future after Vesteda.”

Jaap Blokhuis, Chairman of Vesteda's Supervisory Committee: “On behalf of the Supervisory Committee, I would like to thank Gertjan very much for everything he has meant to Vesteda. His arrival marked the start of a huge cultural change within Vesteda. Under his leadership, Vesteda strengthened its position as a market leader even further, bolstered its financial position and expanded its portfolio and made it more sustainable, resulting in a leading position in the GRESB benchmark. On top of this, Vesteda’s strategy has enjoyed unanimous support from our participants for the past ten years. In his role as chairman of IVBN (Association of Institutional Property Investors in The Netherlands), Gertjan has also helped institutional investors gain the recognition they deserve for their role in the housing market. In doing so, he clearly demonstrated his social commitment; not only from the investors’ point of view, but also from the tenants’ perspective. We have found our cooperation with Gertjan and his transparent way of working extremely pleasant and professional. We wish him every success and we are very curious to see where and how he will continue his career.”

The Supervisory Committee has now started the process of finding a suitable successor (m/f).