U.S. Green Building Adoption Index 2018

Since its inception in 2014, the Green Building Adoption Index, developed by CBRE and Maastricht University, has helped the commercial real estate market measure and understand the importance of “green” buildings, by tracking the adoption of green building certifications over time.The 2018 Green Building Adoption Index shows that across the 30 largest U.S. office markets, about 4,700 buildings, representing more than 41% of commercial space in those markets, have now been certified as “green,” the highest total in the index’ history. This year’s #1 market is again Chicago, followed by San Francisco and, newly rising, Atlanta

On the Value of Environmental Certification in the Commercial Real Estate Market

A significant part of the global carbon externality stems from the real estate sector. Environmental certification is often hailed as an effective means to resolve the information asymmetry that may prevent markets from effectively pricing the energy performance of buildings. This study analyzes the adoption and financial outcomes of environmentally certified commercial real estate over time. We document that nearly 40% of space in the 30 largest U.S. commercial real estate markets holds some kind of environmental certification in 2014, as compared to less than 5% in 2005. Tracking the rental growth of 26,212 office buildings, we measure the performance of environmentally certified real estate over time. We document that certified office buildings, on average, have slightly higher rental, occupancy and pricing levels, but do not outperform non-certified buildings in rental growth over the 2004-2013 period. Further performance attribution analysis indicates that local climate conditions, local energy prices and the extent of certification lead to significant heterogeneity in market pricing. On aggregate, these findings provide some evidence on the efficiency of the market in the adoption and capitalization of environmental characteristics in the commercial real estate market

International Green Building Adoption Index 2018

In this report, we are expanding the U.S. Green Building Adoption Index to the global real estate market, seeking to measure the adoption of green certification programs across several international real estate markets. Information on market size (number of buildings and/or square footage of space) is provided by the local teams of CBRE, while the numerator of each index includes a wide variety of "green" and energy certification schemes, such as BOMA BESt, BREEAM, DGNB, HQE, LEED, NABERS, and Green Star (see Appendix A for an overview of schemes). This International Green Building Adoption Index (IGBAI) is similar in spirit to the U.S. Green Building Adoption Index described above, and initially covers 10 cities in Australia, Canada, and Europe. Each market is covered in detail in this report, including a detailed discussion of the methodology

Energy efficiency and economic value in affordable housing

Strong rental protection in the affordable housing market often prohibits landlords from charging rental premiums for energy-efficient dwellings. This may impede (re)development of energy efficient affordable housing. In the netherlands, affordable housing institutions regularly sell dwellings from their housing stock to individual households. If they can sell energy efficient dwellings at a premium, this may stimulate investments in the environmental performance of homes.we analyze the value effects of energy efficiency in the affordable housing market, by using a sample of 17,835 homes sold by dutch affordable housing institutions in the period between 2008 and 2013. We use energy performance certificates to determine the value of energy efficiency in these transactions. We document that dwellings with high energy efficiency sell for 2.0–6.3% more compared to otherwise similar dwellings with low energy efficiency. This implies a premium of some eur 3,000 to eur 9,700 for highly energy efficient affordable housing

Environmental Performance of Commercial Real Estate:New Insights into Energy Efficiency Improvements

This article provides new insights into the performance of commercial real estate, focusing on the environmental performance of institutional assets. The authors employ a proprietary dataset of energy consumption data that includes more than 26,000 buildings between 2009 and 2018. They document that, in their sample of commercial real estate, the median energy intensity decreased by more than 40% over the decade. Using a difference-in-difference analysis, the authors find that adoption of environmental building certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is associated with significantly lower energy consumption and that there is substantial variation in these effects, depending on certification level and program, and label tenure. Moreover, specific interventions aimed at improving the energy efficiency of buildings considerably reduce ex post energy consumption, with effects varying based on local climatic conditions

The economic effects of owner distance and local property management in US office markets

This paper is one of the first empirical studies to investigate the role of owner proximity or distance on the performance of commercial real estate and it is the first to analyze the economic benefits of property management in that regard. Using a large dataset of U.S. offices we analyze the relationship between investor distance to their assets and the effective rent of these assets, and study the extent to which property managers can influence this relation. We construct propensity score weighted hedonic rent models to control for other known rent determinants. It turns out that proximity matters: holding everything else constant, investors located closely to their office properties are able to extract significantly higher rents from these assets, especially if these buildings are of low quality. Interestingly, property managers can affect this relation, mitigating the adverse effects of investor distance on effective office rents. Especially if the property owner does not reside in the same state as the building, external property management is of importance, most prominently so for class-B office buildings