About CrowdBuilding
We exist because too many good CPO groups dissolve before they break ground.
Founded in Amsterdam in 2025. Not a developer. Not a consultant. A platform — built to give resident groups the coordination infrastructure they need to act as their own client.
How CrowdBuilding began
In early 2024, Brian Garret was working as part of a housing access advisory group in Amsterdam Noord — the kind of civic consultancy that sits between municipality and community, helping residents understand their options. One of those options was CPO. Brian started attending formation meetings for groups interested in collective self-build, helping them think through programme, feasibility, and professional requirements.
The same thing happened three times in eight months: a group of 10–16 motivated households, genuine shared ambition, enough individual financial capacity to make it work — and a collapse at the coordination phase. Not the land search. Not the mortgage structure. Not the architecture. The point where a group simply needed a shared document, a decision framework, and a way to find the right CPO advisor — and had none of these things.
Every developer has a project management office. Every housing association has a development team. CPO groups had nothing equivalent. They were expected to spontaneously self-organise to the same level of operational rigour as a professional development entity, using consumer tools designed for completely different problems.
CrowdBuilding launched in 2025 to close that gap. The platform is not a development company — it does not own land, commission architecture, or take a margin on construction. It is not a consultancy — it does not substitute for a CPO process advisor. It is the coordination infrastructure that these groups were missing: matching, shared programme workspace, verified advisor connections, and phase-by-phase structure from group charter to gereedmelding.
CrowdBuilding at a glance
- Founded 2025, Amsterdam
- Netherlands-only — CPO, Wkb, Omgevingsplan
- Bootstrapped — independent from investors
- Three-sided platform: residents, sites, advisors
- We are not a developer or consultant — we are the coordination layer
What we believe
Three principles we build by
Collective over speculative
Housing built by the households who will live in it produces better homes and stronger communities than housing built for profit by those who won't. We take no development margin, hold no land, and have no commercial interest in the outcome of a build — only in whether the group succeeds.
Transparency over opacity
CPO groups make better decisions when they see the full picture: realistic cost ranges, typical phase durations, what an omgevingsvergunning requires, what a kwaliteitsborger does. We build the platform to surface this information, not to withhold it for commercial advantage.
Neighbourhood as the product
The shared outdoor space, the pedestrian route, the communal growing garden — these are not optional extras in co-housing. They are the point. CrowdBuilding is designed to support the spatial and social programme of a group, not just to process individual transactions within it.
The team
The people behind CrowdBuilding
Brian worked in housing access consultancy in Amsterdam before founding CrowdBuilding in 2025. He sat in on CPO formation meetings for two years and watched the same coordination failure play out repeatedly — which is why the platform is built the way it is.
Eva supports resident groups from first registration through to programme completion. She has a background in participatory planning and facilitated co-design processes for neighbourhood renewal projects across the Randstad.
Sander builds and maintains CrowdBuilding's platform. He previously worked on civic technology and open housing data projects, including tools for spatial planning transparency at gemeente level.