A collaboration of real estate investors and organisations have produced and published a guide designed especially for property investors. Produced by the property working group of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and other partner organisations, the guide was made to help develop and implement an “impact-based approach” in real estate finance and management.
The property working group compromises over 25 institutional investors and commercial banks, including Germany’s Allianz Real Estate, French state-backed lender Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, and M&G Real Estate in the UK.
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According to UNEP FI, the ‘Positive Impact Real Estate Investment Framework’ guide responds to the needs of the finance sector, highlighting the interest in “investment outcomes for productive, equitable, health and resilient economies and societies”.
The intentions of the guide are to help institutions identify impact “areas of influence” and investment opportunities, to measure ex-ante and ex-post impact and to “ultimately re-orient institutional capacities and capital for intentional delivery of outcomes that support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
The guide was produced to aid decisions at any stage of the property investment cycle. Several leading questions and recommended actions are suggested for each of the four investment objectives, with the framework drawing on the previous work by UNEP FI that translated the SDGs into meaningful terms for financing impact assessment and businesses.
Head of responsible property investment at Hermes Investment Management and chair of the UNEP FI Investment Commission, Tatiana Bosteels, stated: “The Real Estate Impact Framework is a useful tool for investors to map and select the most relevant actions they can take to support the SDGs suiting their specific investment strategies.”
Tatiana Bosteels was one of the lead authors of the guide and co-chairs the property working group along with Anna Murray, vice president at Bentall Kennedy.
The guide is available here.