Reflections from MIPIM: performance, value, and what the market is asking for now

Last month at MIPIM, GRESB asked industry leaders a simple question:

What is the market saying about sustainability and real estate performance?

Across those conversations, a clear picture emerged. Sustainability is still firmly on the agenda, but the terms of the discussion are changing. The market is no longer interested in rewarding sustainability as a standalone commitment or a reporting exercise. Instead, it is asking deeper questions about performance, asset quality, resilience, and value.

A more mature conversation

Jean-Marc Zola, Building Segments President at Schneider Electric, described the shift in terms of market maturity. From his perspective, asset owners are no longer treating decarbonization or efficiency as abstract ambitions. They are building clearer roadmaps, allocating budgets, and, as he put it, “moving from intention to action.”

That sense of maturity came through differently in remarks from Robbie Epsom, Co-Founder of Karteria Partners. He argued that sustainability appears, from the outside, to have taken a step back only because it has now reached the point where it has to justify itself alongside every other business priority. In his view, that is not a sign of retreat but of integration. The question is no longer whether sustainability matters in principle. It is whether it can demonstrate value, support investment theses, and stand up to the same scrutiny as other drivers of return.

Taken together, these reflections suggest that the market is asking for more than ambition. It is asking for evidence.

Daniel Chang, Managing Director and European Lead for Sustainability for Hines, and Frédéric Dib, President of MoZaiC Asset Management, echoed this sentiment. They both spoke less about sustainability as a separate function and more about how it is showing up inside the day-to-day logic of real estate management.

Chang’s view was that occupiers and investors increasingly want to see sustainability embedded and actioned in real estate strategy, not appended to it. They are looking for managers who can show how responsible energy management, energy resilience through renewables and protection against potential physical risks related to climate change contribute to stronger buildings and better outcomes. His argument was that, for both occupiers and investors, sustainability performance is becoming a proxy for strong real estate management.

Dib made a similar point from the asset management side. At his firm, he explained, sustainability teams have been merged into asset management teams because the work is no longer separate. “It’s not something that sits on the side,” he said. “It’s part of our core business.”

That is an important shift. For several of the people we spoke with, the real signal from the market is not simply that sustainability remains relevant. It is that sustainability is now being judged through the same lens as any other element of asset strategy: has the work been done properly, and does it make the asset more attractive, resilient, and valuable?

If there was one phrase that captured the mood across multiple interviews, it was the observation from Irina Gilfanova, Head of Private Equity & Sustainability Finance Europe for SE Advisory Services, that “sustainability is becoming a value conversation.”

Gilfanova’s point was that climate risk, stranded asset risk, and green premiums are already being priced into market behavior, whether every firm still uses the same sustainability language. In her view, the conversation has shifted away from theory and compliance and toward practical results, including resilience, access to capital, and financial upside.

Vincent Bryant, CEO and Co-Founder of Deepki, arrived at a similar conclusion from a more explicitly commercial angle. He said sustainability is “no longer a box checking exercise,” because market participants are now asking very directly: “what is in it for me?” How does this protect asset value? How does it improve net operating income? How does it reduce the chance of making the wrong investment decision?

Abigail Dean, Head of Strategic Insights, Real Asset, Nuveen, grounded that conversation in observable market signals. She pointed to the growing body of evidence showing a widening gap between greener assets and brown buildings, particularly in leasing velocity and value retention. In her reading, there is still debate in some areas about whether the market is rewarding a green premium or penalizing a brown discount, but the broader direction is becoming clearer: sustainability performance is increasingly visible in market outcomes.

Dib (MoZaiC Asset Management) pushed that logic further into transaction territory. In a more demanding market, he argued, an asset that does not “tick the sustainability box” will struggle to attract interest or will trade at a discount. If the sustainability work has not been done, a buyer may conclude that something fundamental has been missed—and price accordingly.

Across these interviews, the underlying theme was consistent: sustainability is being pulled closer to the center of the investment conversation because it is increasingly connected to value, liquidity, and competitiveness.

These Leadership Spotlight interviews also made clear that this shift has operational consequences.

For Gilfanova (SE Advisory Services), one of the strongest links between sustainability and financial value is operational efficiency. She pointed to examples where retrofits and on-site efficiency measures had a direct impact on net present value, while also creating additional value through resilience, rental performance, and exit premiums. Her broader point was that the most advanced market participants are no longer treating risk and value as separate discussions. “Resilience is the value,” she said.

Zola (Schneider Electric) made a more practical version of the same argument. When asked where the biggest opportunity for performance improvement lies, he immediately narrowed the discussion to existing buildings. In Europe, he noted, the overwhelming majority of the building stock was built before 2000. That means the biggest opportunity is not in a small number of flagship developments but in improving the performance of what already exists. His answer was deliberately straightforward: measurement and controls. In his view, getting the fundamentals right can unlock meaningful energy savings with relatively short payback periods.

Epsom (Karteria Partners) also pointed to operational efficiency as the biggest near-term opportunity, though he framed it more broadly than energy reduction alone. His view was that real estate has had a difficult few years, and that the value available through better asset management, electrification, on-site renewables, and tighter operational performance is unusually significant in the current environment – these aren’t marginal gains, they’re the core of the investment case. What stood out in his comments was the insistence that sustainability becomes more persuasive when translated into the language of operations and investment rather than remaining in the language of reporting. “But none of this lands without decision-grade data—standardized, auditable, and embedded in the same systems that drive investment decisions, not sitting in a separate sustainability report that arrives after the capital has already been allocated,” he concluded.

That same logic showed up in the discussion of innovation and data. Zola stressed digitization as the core enabler: structured data, standardized presentation, and better intelligence layered on top. Chang described data and benchmarking as foundational to understanding progress and comparing performance against peers. Gilfanova made the point most directly: “you cannot manage what you cannot measure.”

In other words, if sustainability is becoming a performance conversation, then data quality, operational control, and decision-useful measurement become central to that conversation.

When we asked participants what issue the industry cannot afford to ignore right now, the answers were varied but connected.

Bryant (Deepki) emphasized the energy crisis. His argument was not just that energy efficiency matters for climate reasons, but that it has become a resilience issue in a resource-constrained environment. Amanda Skeldon, Built Environment Engagement Specialist with Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), meanwhile, pointed to electrification as the increasingly practical expression of the net-zero conversation. From her perspective, the question is no longer simply whether firms are setting targets, but how electrification is actually being implemented at the asset level.

The response from Dean (Nuveen) pushed the focus back toward performance metrics. In her view, the sector cannot afford to lose sight of actual energy and carbon intensity — and, crucially, how those measures connect to investment performance. That was a useful reminder that not all sustainability indicators matter equally in today’s market. There is a growing premium on the metrics that can demonstrate financial materiality.

For both Gilfanova and Zola, the central challenge remains the existing building stock. Gilfanova put it plainly: most of the buildings that will exist in 2050 are already here. That means retrofits and performance improvements in existing portfolios are not a side issue; they are the core challenge.

Other speakers focused on adaptation. Dib argued that the industry has to take much more seriously the physical exposure of buildings to heat, flooding, fire, and other climate risks. Epsom took that further, suggesting that adaptation could become one of the main drivers of brown discount if markets begin pricing future capital expenditure risk more aggressively. His view was that adaptation is still not systematically embedded in technical due diligence or transaction pricing, but that it will become much more central as investors think beyond the next transaction and consider the next buyer’s buyer.

The one-word summaries we collected at the end of each interview were striking in their variety: mature, rebirth, hopeful, uncertain, value, evolving.

That spread probably says as much about the current market as any single quote. There is no single mood. The sector is dealing simultaneously with pressure and opportunity, uncertainty and increased discipline, short-term constraints and longer-term conviction.

But taken together, the interviews point in one direction. Sustainability is not disappearing from the real estate conversation. It is being tested more rigorously, tied more directly to financial outcomes, and absorbed more fully into the mainstream disciplines of investment and asset management.