Saving the Environment and Improving Your Portfolio with Real Estate
The right real estate investments can have a surprisingly positive impact on the environment Buildings account for about a third of total carbon emissions globally. This presents a real opportunity for investors who seek to maintain a diversified portfolio and contribute to improving the environment. The most sustainable real estate companies may also turn out […]
Real Estate Just Got Its Own Industry Classification – It Deserves Its Own ESG Rating
Effective today MSCI and the S&P’s Dow Jones Indices’ Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), will add its first additional Sector since inception in 1999: Real Estate. That’s big news! Historically real estate has been included as part of the Financial Sector alongside banks, diversified financials and insurance companies. Establishing real estate as its own categorization […]
Private Equity & ESG Disclosure: a View across the Risk Spectrum
As PERE Research & Analytics shared in its Q3 Fundraising Report, value-add and opportunistic real estate investment strategies are topping the charts in both number of funds seeking capital as well as in total equity amounts targeted. According to Preqin’s Q3 2016 Fundraising Update, Q3 alone saw 13 value-add and 8 opportunistic funds hold a […]
2016 GRESB Real Estate Assessment: What You Need to Know about Your Results
The 2016 GRESB data has been available for over a month, and judging from the phone calls and emails received by the GRESB Helpdesk, the 750+ entities who submitted their ESG data are busy evaluating their performance and writing internal reports explaining how they did. At the same time, the GRESB team has been playing […]
The Massive Need for Infrastructure Investment and Climate Change – a Balancing Act
Infrastructure is the foundation and connective tissue of society. In its broadest sense, it covers everything above and below surface (including both land and water). That’s buildings; energy generation (renewable and conventional) and transmission; road, rail and the various modes of transport using it; transport hubs like ports and airports; clean and dirty water; etc. […]
Five Key Takeaways from the New GRESB Health & Well-being Module
The GRESB Health and Well-being Module is a new tool to understand how property companies and funds around the world are promoting health and well-being in their internal operations and through the real estate and services they offer to customers. The Module is predicated on the recognition that health and well-being is emerging as an […]
ESG Performance in Australia and New Zealand: the Heat Is on
Looking at the 2016 GRESB results, Australia and New Zealand again are leading the pack in terms of outperforming the other regions on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects. Besides strong government support, this is a direct result of a unique approach by the region’s property market. On one hand, the market has shown a […]
Can the Marriage of Big Data and Sustainability Help Bankers Avoid Another CRE Debacle?
Banks are using big data to stress test and manage credit risk associated with commercial mortgages. A recent article in American Banker highlighted that even community banks, with under $5 billion in assets, are using market and tenant data software to inform commercial real estate (CRE) lending decisions and to monitor exposures. In light of recent warnings from regulators about growing […]
September marked the release of the 2016 GRESB Debt Assessment results which were simultaneously released alongside the GRESB Real Estate Assessment results [see results presentation]. The 2016 global snapshot of the lending market results reflects GRESB’s improved Debt Assessment framework. This resulted in increasing the number of participants from 10 to 18, including two primary lenders which underlines the […]
