Future Viability and Capital Market

Sustainable and Long-term Growth

Housing has become a scarce resource in many places, particularly in metropolitan areas. Vonovia wants to help solve this problem by providing modern homes at fair prices. In order to achieve this, we are safeguarding our stable corporate growth by focusing on the long-term development of our portfolio and the range of services we offer.

The business model at Vonovia is built on four main pillars:

• Letting good, modern homes at fair prices
• Providing housing-related services
• Developing and building new apartments for our own portfolio and for sale, investing in modernization work and development
• Selling individual apartments to tenants and private investors

The Vonovia business model proved to be robust and highly resilient during the coronavirus pandemic. We concentrated on keeping our business processes going, particularly at the start of the pandemic, and on protecting customers and staff. The fact that our business processes were already largely digitalized meant that our back-office staff could transition to remote working seamlessly. Downtime at construction sites was negligible.

The Vonovia business model is fit for the future because it puts us in a position to provide solutions to the challenges facing society – such as the need to combat climate change – by taking a sustainable approach to construction and modification, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of our real estate portfolio, introducing innovations in the areas of energy supply, (construction) materials and biodiversity, cutting water consumption and reducing waste. Our neighborhoods are where the housing industry needs to focus its efforts in order to be socially responsible; we can improve customer satisfaction by providing appropriate housing, listening to tenants and helping to integrate our increasingly diverse society. Vonovia wants to be an attractive employer that ensures equal opportunities for its staff and supports them in their personal and professional development. This is made possible by trustworthy, dependable and transparent corporate governance.

Since 2013 we have pursued a corporate strategy with four basic pillars: property management, portfolio management, financing and value-add. This strategy is reinforced and rounded off by our acquisition strategy, which includes opening up selected European markets.

More information on our 4+2 strategy can be found in the section Our Sustainability Approach in Detail and in the 2020 Annual Report.