Vastgoed Nederland: stronger together in the real estate market

On Vastgoed Nederland’s Connect (formerly VBO Connect), real estate professionals come together to share their knowledge, skills and experience. The community provides a safe, central environment where they can easily find one another. The community platform was launched by VBO, the trade association for estate agents, appraisers and letting agents. During the merger of VBO with Vastgoedpro, the platform was renamed ‘Connect of Vastgoed Nederland’ in March 2025.

The need

The trade association wanted to create a platform to connect members, encourage them to share knowledge, and proactively invite them to engage with the association. So that estate agents can use the power of the large network. In this way, the trade association can have a greater impact and support members more in free enterprise.

Online community platform

Together with Yard | Digital Agency, they developed the online community platform and associated mobile app. The platform runs on the online community software Yunits. Yunits is the community platform that helps trade and professional associations increase member engagement and connect members more easily and quickly.

Community strategy

In addition, community strategist Mathijs Vleeming worked with the association’s marketing department to develop a strategy and roll out the community. First, together with the association’s office, Mathijs explored the potential added value of an online community. They mapped out the needs and contributions of each department in the organisation and examined the participant’s needs and motivations.

Mathijs then advised on the platform’s roll-out. Together, they applied best practices to set up the platform and drew up an onboarding plan and a content and activity calendar with different departments. As a result, the community platform got off to a flying start. Even without a dedicated community manager.

Platform design:

The online community platform Connect is designed to connect members based on common denominators:  

• Themes: what are members interested in? What do they want to learn more about? What expertise do members have to share? Together, we identified 14 themes relevant to members. Al content, events, activities, and people on the platform are categorised by these themes.

• Q&A: members ask questions and help each other by answering other members’ questions. The questions are divided into themes. Members themselves indicate which themes they find interesting. If new questions are asked within these themes, they receive a notification e-mail adn in the mobile app. So those e-mails are always relevant. Several employees and/or experienced members moderate the community to ensure that no incorrect answers are given. 
• Working groups: Vastgoed Nederland has active committees and project groups. These groups are brought together in online working groups, making it easier for participants to find one another and collaborate.
• Events and conferences: Vastgoed Nederland organises specific events for regional groups. They meet every year during the ‘Tour of the Netherlands’, for which participants can register via the platform with a single tap.
• Profiles: members can easily find each other through a digital member list. Within this, they can search using search criteria.
• Documents: a selection of relevant documents, divided by themes.

Benefits

The online community provides Real Estate Netherlands with 7 different benefits:

• Members can execute their work better, smarter and more efficiently by being able to use each other’s knowledge and expertise. As a result, they do not have to reinvent the wheel.
• The association’s office can spend its time more efficiently as members help each other. Members ask and answer each other’s questions, including those the association office would otherwise receive.
• All knowledge is easily retrievable. Everything is labelled and stored securely on the platform and is easily searchable.
• ‘The association in your pocket’: members are connected to other members and to knowledge all year round, anytime and anywhere. This does not depend only on events.
• Communications and services from Vastgoed Nederland are always relevant. This is because they match members’ areas of interest and expertise. Moreover, members determine how often they receive notifications and newsletters from Connect. This prevents an overload of e-mails.
• Higher member engagement. Connect has supplemented one-way e-mail communication with low-threshold, interactive communication via the community platform. As a result, more members are actively contributing to the association.
• Events and the community platform reinforce each other. Members sign up for events directly and easily on the platform. And the association can use the platform to interact with members before, during and after the event on topics related to the event. This way, it comes to life even more.
• More efficient communication and event management as Vastgoed Nederland only needs one central platform for this.

Results

It soon became clear that Connect meets a need ánd that the community strategy is successful:

• In the first 3 months (May-July 2024), members asked an average of 45 questions per month and provided 227 answers.
• In March 2025 (post-merger), 91 questions were asked and 645 answers were given by members.
• Each question gets an average of almost 6 (5.9130) answers.
• Each query receives an initial response within an average of 8 hours.
• Within the first five months, 90% of all Vastgoed Nederland members had registered for the platform.
• 26% of members actively contribute on the platform. 
• The platform sent about 20,000 personalised e-mail notifications automatically per month from May 2024 to February 2025 to the then about 1,400 members.
• Recipients open 64% of emails.
• From an email, 17% click through.
• In the month of March 2025 (post-merger), 73,384 personalised email notifications were sent to nearly 2,000 members, with an open rate of 55% and a click rate of 19%
• The association office says it is saving about 30% time in preparing and sending newsletters. This is now fully automatic.

Calls were also posted on the noticeboard by estate agents offering their offices for sale. These kinds of ‘marketplace interactions’ arose organically, as members are brought together in a low-threshold manner.

Through this active participation of its members, the association office has a better understanding of current issues and questions, to which it can quickly respond with its services.

Increase engagement by connecting members with relevant digital services and communications

Michel van Dragt, All-round Marketer at Vastgoed Nederland, is happy with the results of Connect: “It’s really cool to see that our members are embracing the platform and helping each other on the platform, especially by asking and answering questions. Previously, these questions were either not asked, or they were asked to the association’s office and answered one-on-one. So this shows that our decision to implement an online community platform for our members meets a need ánd allows us to work more efficiently.”

More engagement and direct communication

Michel van Dragt sees many advantages in Connect: “We now communicate directly with our members, instead of waiting for our newsletter. Because our members participate more actively, we also know better what is going on among members, which we can respond to with more relevant content, services and events. Moreover, our members can more easily sign up for events on the same platform.” 

Further developing together with members

Vastgoed Nederland continues to invest in the platform. Together with community strategist Mathijs Vleeming, they will work to develop the community strategy further. In order to get members even more involved in the community and the association.

Want to know more about an online community platform?

Want to know more about the possibilities of an online community for your association? Then get in touch with us. We are happy to think along with you.

Podcast

Mathijs Vleeming and Dennis van Aalst sat down with Vastgoed Nederland (former VBO) Director Hans van der Ploeg to discuss the value and potential of Connect. They discuss what makes an online community valuable for estate agents and valuers, what the goals of the Connect community are, and how the platform contributes to members’ success.

Watch this online discussion here (turn on English subtitles):