Green Buildings Gaining Ground
Yet a lack of assessment criteria continues to make valuations difficult
Environmental aspects are gaining increasing significance for the investment strategies of real estate investors. Demand, too, is rising – but how do you tell just how sustainable a given building actually is? The lack of generally binding assessment criteria continues to hamper the hunt for suitable properties.
On behalf of Union Investment Real Estate, the Ipsos market research institute polled investors in Germany, France and the United Kingdom – and the findings have substantiated a clear trend: 64 percent of all poll respondents intend to step up their investments in green property in the future; one in two interviewees considers the sustainability factor a decisive criterion for the own competitiveness. Nowhere are the effects of this development more conspicuous than in project development. Three out of four polled principals and project developers plan to raise sustainable buildings. Events are bearing them out, if you can believe the findings of an international study conducted by the Corenet Global real estate interest group on the subject of corporate real estate usage. 92 percent of the interviewed corporate real estate managers said they were taking the sustainability factor into account when deciding in favour of a given location; every other respondent is prepared to shoulder higher costs in return for an ecologically efficient building.
With these facts in mind, it would seem all the more urgent to lay down a clear foundation for the assessment of environmental aspects. While stakeholders largely agree on the key ratios that should provide information on sustainable property characteristics, the relevant data have hardly been systematically captured so far: While at least 59 percent of the investors interviewed for the Ipsos survey were able to quote the primary energy consumption of their buildings, only 32 percent had identified the life cycle costs and the climate-relevant carbon emission balance. After all, barely one in four poll respondents was aware of definitive criteria for the appraisal of a green building in their country of origin.
In Germany, the interest group of valuation experts, HypZert, has decided to remedy the situation: In the future, a checklist is supposed to help valuers to assess the energetic characteristics of a given building in a technically accurate manner. That being said, the definition of uniform key ratios for Germany – to say nothing of the European or international level – still seems a far cry off, though.
