HISTORY OF
SBT
IMMOBILIEN
GRUPPE

The founding of SBT

The population in the border region on the Saar faced almost insurmountable problems against the backdrop of the economic and social conditions after the end of the Second World War. The “Gemeinnützige Baugenossenschaft Saarland eGmbH”, a non-profit building cooperative, was founded on 21 July 1949 to help find a solution to this unusual situation. The founding shareholders of the cooperative were the Kreissparkasse Saarbrücken district savings bank, the Einheitsgewerkschaft des Saarlandes unity union, the Christliche Einheitsgewerkschaft Saar Christian unity union and the Allgemeine Saarverbrauch eGmbH. The company was entered in the cooperative register on 26 October 1949, and the non-profit status was recognised by the Ministerrat des Saarlandes council of ministers on 2 August 1950.

The development of activities

The conditions for real estate industry in Saarland changed from 1959 onwards owing to a decline in excess demand, changes to the buyers’ market, rising land and construction costs, the introduction of development contributions and changed housing subsidy conditions.

The “Gemeinnützige Saarländische Wohnungsbaugesellschaft mbH” municipal housing association was founded during this period with a significantly increased capital participation from the Saarland savings bank organisation.

The task of the housing association was to build superior condominiums and single-family homes for private sale. The company also engaged in strategic acquisition of property, and new sales policy instruments were developed in collaboration with the Saarland savings bank organisation for this purpose.

These efforts resulted in extensive construction activity in the home ownership sector, and the basic features have continued to this day outside the non-profit organisation; the cooperative and the housing association have built approx. 6,000 residential units to date. The housing association also managed as many as c. 3,500 apartments both managed by itself and by third parties.

The tasks of urban development funding and municipal development

The Städtebauförderungsgesetz (Urban Development Promotion Act) came into effect on 1 July 1971. This gave rise to numerous new tasks which “Gemeinnützige Saarländische Sanierungsgesellschaft mbH”, a non-profit renovation and refurbishment organisation and “GEKOBA Gesellschaft für Kommunal Bauimmobilienn mbH”, a society for municipal real estate construction were founded to undertake. The founding of these companies expanded the profile of the group of companies from traditional residential construction to new business sectors. They provided planning and construction support services, general contractor tasks and a fiduciary financing responsibilities as a service provider for private investors, commercial companies, cities, municipalities and districts, the state and the federal government. GEKOBA has since been renamed “GEKOBA Gesellschaft für Gewerbe- und Kommunalimmobilien mbH”, a company for commercial and municipal real estate which embarked on increasingly complex construction projects in a wide variety of asset classes in the 1990s as a developer on its own behalf and for third parties in south west Germany. An extensive real estate portfolio was developed over time, which is now grouped into a separate division and makes a significant contribution to the overall performance of the group of companies. The group of companies was the only real estate-oriented company in Saarland to date which crossed the border into Luxembourg in 2005, and has enjoyed great success as a housing developer since then with its Luxembourg parent company SBT IMMOBILIEN LUXEMBOURG SA.