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Using data to do more with less
Source: Yardi white paper
As investors sharpen their focus on sustainability, how do real estate companies respond? Yardi’s regional director Bernie Devine takes stock.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that we are now in the decade of decarbonisation, pressure is mounting for lagging economies and companies to step up, and for leaders to make even larger strides towards net zero emissions.
Seventy per cent of the world’s economies, representing two thirds of global carbon emissions, have made strong commitments to carbon neutrality, says the UN, and a third of the world’s assets are moving towards net zero by 2050 through the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance.
Meanwhile, the Climate Bonds Initiative has tracked US$1.2 trillion of green bonds, and GRESB has recorded a 22 per cent increase in real estate companies disclosing their environmental, social and governance (ESG) achievements in just one year.
Despite the signals sounding loud and clear, sustainability is “still stuck off to the side of business process and reporting, rather than front and centre,” observes Yardi’s regional director, Bernie Devine.
Devine sees a similar scenario playing out across the Asia Pacific.
“The investment manager receives a query about sustainability and funnels it off to the ESG team to answer. This immediately tells me two things. Firstly, that the investment manager doesn’t know the answer; and secondly that the sustainability team is not central to the investment management process.”
Yardi’s latest whitepaper, Using data to do more with less, outlines five steps for real estate companies to take on the road to sustainability. It includes insights from Goodman Group’s chief financial officer, Nick Vrondas, and co-founder of Seoul-based Reimagining Cities, Chunga Cha.
While the report suggests strategies that real estate companies can adopt to capture the right data for better decision making, Devine warns that many business systems need an entire rethink.
“Spreadsheets won’t solve the sustainability challenge,” he says, noting that 58 per cent of real estate companies across the region remain reliant on Microsoft Excel to manage leasing, sales and property management information.
Much like security-by-design is embedded into software, business processes must be redesigned with sustainability at the core, Devine suggests.
“The real estate sector understands it must put the customer at the centre of its mission. To that I would add, if your objective is customer satisfaction, sustainability is central. The goal must be sustainable customer relationships through sustainable outcomes.”
Yardi helps real estate companies to complete sustainability assessments, manage ESG data and advance ESG performance. Download Yardi’s latest white paper: Using data to do more with less.
This article was first published in Property Council of Australia.
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This report provides insights to investors into real estate transactional volumes as well as the emerging trends and opportunities in the Asia Pacific commercial real estate markets. So far, we’ve received very good feedback about the report’s content from our audience.
Some key takeaways of the report:
“Despite operating under the shadow of the pandemic, warehouse markets across the region have remained largely stable, driven by sustained demand from the e-commerce sector. Recent events that have impacted commitments to customers have put the development of supply chain resilience into focus and major occupiers are responding by re-configuring their strategies through building out inventory buffers and expanding urban distribution nodes. This will have positive knock-on effects for demand to strengthen for logistics spaces. Developers in the region remain on the hunt for opportunities to capitalise on growth trends, indicating sustained confidence in the region’s warehouse markets.”
Download the Report Read MoreThe ongoing recovery in key property markets across Asia Pacific continued in the second quarter of 2021 and looks set to sustain through the second half, aided by strong demand for commercial assets from end-users as well as investors.
In China, a total of 30 deals were finalised across major markets, as both domestic and foreign market participants sought to acquire key assets across property segments. Korea continued to witness record-high unit prices for prime office space in Seoul, and Japan’s property markets remained buoyant in the face of stringent restrictions. In Singapore, investment activity was dominated by the privatisation of REITs, while in India, global private equity (PE) firms and developers made significant acquisitions in metro markets. Taiwan witnessed a surge in demand for commercial property from manufacturers on the back of strong export growth. In the Philippines, e-commerce companies and outsourcing firms took up space in data centres while healthcare and logistics companies should lead office take-up in the coming months. Thailand’s office market remained stable though its troubled hospitality industry could see higher transaction levels as beleaguered owners look to sell assets. We also expect to see more joint ventures between Thai and international investors across sectors. In Indonesia, the residential sector is expected to receive a boost from the extension of a tax waiver while urban mixed-use projects in the capital, Jakarta, received an influx of foreign funds as investors bet on a speedy post-COVID-19 recovery.
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