GRESB January Update | GRESB Guides, Advanced Ratings Feedback, Results Consultations & Findings from GRESB & MIPIM Sentiment Survey

We are pleased to announce that GRESB Guides is now live, marking a complete redesign of our resource experience—built to be more intuitive, practical, and closely aligned with how participants complete GRESB Assessments.

Developed in response to direct Member feedback, GRESB Guides brings together all core assessment guidance into a single, streamlined platform, replacing our legacy resource areas. What this means for participants:

• All guidance in one place: Reference Guide content, Scoring Document content, technical FAQs, indicator summaries, and asset-level data instructions are integrated directly at the indicator level.
• Clear, intuitive navigation: A redesigned structure makes it easier to move from high-level concepts to detailed, indicator-specific guidance across assessments.

GRESB Guides is designed to support more efficient preparation, clearer interpretation, and a smoother Assessment experience overall.

Explore GRESB Guides.

Join us online on January 29 for a webinar providing an overview of the GRESB Real Estate Lender Assessment, covering why it was developed, how it works in practice, and how it supports benchmarking, oversight, and credible engagement for lending and credit teams.

This session is designed for real estate lenders and credit teams. If that’s not your role, we encourage you to share this invitation with any colleagues who work in the space.

Building on a successful multiyear collaboration with real estate lenders and investors globally, the GRESB Real Estate Lender Assessment is a structured, independently validated framework purpose-built for lenders. It evaluates how sustainability considerations are embedded across lending practices—from risk management and due diligence to loan portfolio oversight—delivering validated, comparable insights for credit and investment teams.

Register here.

Many Participants use the Results Consultation to support investor discussions, clarify scoring and validation outcomes, and identify both short-term and long-term actions to strengthen performance.

How to Request Yours

You can purchase the service directly in the GRESB Portal by January 31. For any questions, contact the GRESB Member Success team.

As shared in late 2025, this year marks a period of extensive industry engagement to advance the Foundation’s vision of rewarding measured, real-world performance.

As an investor-led body, the GRESB Foundation governs the Standards to ensure they evolve in line with investors’ priorities and market maturity. The evolution of the Real Estate Standard toward performance-based scoring is a natural and necessary step in aligning with investor expectations and needs, reflecting both market readiness and the growing emphasis on impact and accountability within the investment landscape.

Learn more:

• Read how GRESB is reshaping its Real Estate Standard to focus on performance-driven outcomes and impact.
• Watch the 2026 GRESB Real Estate Road Ahead webinar on demand.

Your Opinion Matters

As an industry-led initiative, the GRESB Foundation highly values stakeholder input in shaping the Road to Performance for the Standard.

A public consultation will therefore be held starting February 2026. Members and stakeholders will be invited to comment on the Road to Performance, including the overall direction of travel, milestones, and implementation strategy.

Sign up to participate in the Public Consultation.

Foundation End of Year Reflection

In the Foundation’s end of year reflections, Sarah Welton highlights the growth of the GRESB Foundation, shares the evolution of the Foundation’s strategy and Standards, showcases engagement with global stakeholders, and offers gratitude to the Foundation’s nearly 200 members for contributing to the Standards’ steady progress toward sustainable real assets. The Foundation especially appreciates the support of our Board, Real Estate and Infrastructure Committees, and Data Center Working Group Chairs, Katie Jowett, Aleksandra Njagulj, Neil Krawitz, and Bethany Brantley!

2026 Standards Work Plan

The Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards Committees recently hosted their first meeting of the year. They have already begun executing their work plans to update the 2026 Standards, which will soon be presented to the Foundation Board.

As highlighted in the GRESB Foundation Roadmap, the real estate topics include performance scoring, decarbonization, embodied carbon, data quality, building certifications, and physical climate risk, as well as indicator retirement and scoring adjustments. Real Estate Standard development will focus on the longer-term vision toward rewarding measured, real-world performance. The Secretariat will work to ensure updates are predictable, transparent, and responsive to industry feedback.

The infrastructure topics include reducing reporting burden, performance scoring, risk management, net-zero materiality, as well as improving GRESB tools. Infrastructure Standard development will share the focus on streamlining and technical improvements. The Secretariat will also continue to integrate the Investor Group on Climate Change’s Net Zero Investment Framework into the GRESB Infrastructure Asset Assessment.

Expert Resource Group membership update

The Foundation Board recently approved the addition of five new members to the Real Estate Expert Resource Groups (ERG): Yetunde Abdul (UKGBC), Antony Verroiopoulos (LAMDA Development SA), Mika Kania (Cushman & Wakefield), Randy L. Moss (Yardi Systems, Inc), and Liang Liao (NEXT Academy), as well as one new member to both the Real Estate and Infrastructure Expert Resource Groups: Petya Miteva (SeaBridge Sustainability).

See a list of all the current ERG members here. You can apply to join the ERG here (note: applications are reviewed twice per year). The Foundation is grateful to ERG members, who have been instrumental in shedding light on the current market sentiment and on, to the effectiveness of the Standards in facilitating communication between investors and managers.

Industry insights from our partners and members into “Sustainability Fundamentals” and other rolling topics:

• The new climate test for private equity: ambition or unrealistic ideal? | Verco

Interested in contributing? Check out the 2026 GRESB Editorial Calendar for fixed monthly topics and submission guidelines. The topic for January is “Performance-Driven Real Assets.”