Tools and Resources

This report by the Institute for Market Transformation is intended to serve as a guide for policymakers and multifamily stakeholders on benchmarking and disclosure rules and regulations. It provides an introduction to the multifamily housing sector, followed by a thorough review of existing benchmarking and disclosure policies and an assessment of continuing policy challenges and opportunities.

What are the cost benefits to building green? This report from Springer Science + Business Media answers the question by exploring the relationship between green building design and leasing, as well as sales markets for commercial real estate. Energy efficient design can cost more, but it results in higher occupancy, rents, and selling prices for your ENERGY STAR certified projects.

This report defines responsible property investing (RPI) as including facets such as investing in ENERGY STAR certified properties, transit-oriented development, and redevelopment areas. It shows that investors could have purchased a portfolio consisting solely of RPI office properties over the past 10 years and had performance that was better, at less risk, than a portfolio of properties without RPI features. The paper then breaks down the ways that various RPI features impact income, property values, capitalization rates, price appreciation and total returns.

This report from the U.S. Green Building Council explains how high performing buildings show proven cost-effectiveness, boost employee productivity, enhance tenant health, reduce liability for owners, and increase a building's property value. Certification programs like LEED and ENERGY STAR are creating common benchmarks, support tools and opportunities for the public which offer market differentiation and create higher value for buildings.

ENERGY STAR Award-winning partner CBRE engaged a research team from Maastricht University to measure the uptake of green building certification in the top 30 largest U.S. office markets from 2005 to 2013. The results are outlined in this 38-page report. Among the key findings are:

This report from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) documents commercial building retrofit, renovation, and upgrade projects that have demonstrated or predicted performance of 30% or better than the average for comparable buildings. These profiles explore successful approaches to deep savings and energy performance, owner motivation and areas of innovation in order to accelerate market adoption of energy efficient retrofits. This work is part one of a three-phase project to develop case studies that demonstrate deep energy savings.

This report from Maastricht University discusses the effects of the sustainability of commercial properties on their operating and stock performance. Investors considering incorporating the environmental performance of a building into investment decisions may benefit from this report. Using a sample of U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), the report estimates that an REIT's sustainability is positively related to return on assets, return on equity, and the ration of funds from operations to total revenue.

This paper from the Institute of Business and Economic Research explores the effect that sustainability improvements in buildings have on the economy. The paper discusses the measurements and data sources documenting the energy efficiency of U.S. buildings, analyzes short-run price dynamics based on a panel of green commercial buildings, and presents new evidence on the economic returns to the investments in green buildings.