At the end of April, members from London, Cambridge, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Vienna, Copenhagen, Paris, Regensburg, Frankfurt, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam came together for two days in the Dutch capital.
The group was unusually international, the programme was packed, and Amsterdam somehow delivered two days of near-perfect weather. The result was a pretty good example of what an REA City Trip should be.
Day 1: Starting with the city itself
If the goal was to understand Amsterdam’s Real Estate, there were few better places to start than EDGE.
After an introduction at the firm’s headquarters, the group visited Valley – the landmark mixed-use project developed by EDGE and designed by MVRDV in the heart of Amsterdam’s Zuidas. It gave members a first-hand look at the kind of ambitious development that has made Amsterdam such an interesting market for architecture, sustainability and urban innovation.
From there, the agenda became slightly less corporate.
The group traded meeting rooms for the canals and spent the afternoon exploring Amsterdam by boat.
Day 2: Two investment cases and an Orange Bar
Friday started early at Greystar. Over breakfast with the team, members split into groups to work through an investment case before presenting their conclusions back – turning the morning into a genuinely interactive look at how investment decisions are approached in practice.
Next stop: Orange Capital Partners. At OCP’s Amsterdam headquarters, the group received an introduction to the firm and its investment platform before moving into another extended case study. Teams worked through the opportunity and ultimately presented their recommendations in an IC-style setting to members of the OCP team. OCP is an Amsterdam-headquartered European real estate investment and asset management firm.
And then came perhaps the most Dutch part of the programme.
The case study eventually gave way to drinks with the team at OCP’s own Orange Bar inside the office. We will leave the detailed minutes of that session out of the official event recap. Let’s just say: the group got a fairly comprehensive introduction to Dutch working culture.
The part that doesn’t fit into an agenda
Across two days, members went from a major development project to investment cases with Greystar and OCP – gaining very different perspectives on development, investment and the Amsterdam market.
But some of the best parts happened in between.
Twenty people arrived from 13 different chapters, spent two days moving around Amsterdam together, worked on cases in teams, sat around the same tables, explored the city by boat and continued long after the formal programme had ended.
That is what makes these trips different. Deep access to a market matters. But putting great people from across the network in the same city – and giving them enough time to actually become friends – matters just as much – if not more.
