The most recent issue of the "Responsible Property Investment Quarterly" is available.
It includes an overview of our 3rd Annual Responsible Property Investment Forum, an outline of
research-backed RPI investment strategies, case studies of RPI in practice, and notes of a few recent publications of interest.
As previously announced, ULI is a member of the Green Building Finance Consortium (GBFC). In the following special report, the GBFC assessing the applicability of the recent and widely quoted CoStar Studies of Green economics. Please follow the links below to the PDF or HTML versions of the Special report as well as a link to the GBFC report. PDF | HTML
The UNEP Finance Initiative has issued its new report, which urges real estate investors to adopt the principles for Responsible Investing into their decision making.
We are pleased to announce that ULI has become a Sustaining Member of the Green Building Finance Consortium (GBFC), which is comprised of leading real estate companies and industry trade groups and organizations who have joined together to support independent research and analysis of investment in "green" or energy efficient buildings.
The GBFC's mission is to develop metrics and measures that recognize and quantify the value and risk of investment in green buildings. The GBFC is tasked with developing the underwriting practices, tools, and valuation methodologies required to assess investment in or lending green buildings and lending secured by green buildings. The GBFC is committed to widely distributing the results of its research process and programs and expects to become an industry-wide resource.
The GBFC's 2008 operations plan includes the development of the following work product and is divided into three phases:
GBFC members include a wide array on real estate industry participants including, but not limited to, the follow: BOMA International, Cherokee Investment Partners, EPA Energy Star Division, Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel, National Association of Realtors, Mortgage Bankers Association, Pension Real Estate Association, and Principal Real Estate Investors.
ULI's membership will benefit from our association with the GBFC by publishing and make available on its web site the results of the GBFC's program of work, thereby providing our members with the models, tools, knowledge, and technology developed by the GCFC and the ability to independently assess the cash flows, values, risks, and benefits associated with an investment in green buildings.
In the best of ULI practices and traditions, members share their insights, experience, strategies, etc. freely with each other.
In that regard, Kirk Sykes, president of Urban Strategy America Fund, L.P., was kind enough to share his fund's "12 Measures of Success".
If you would like a copy, send an e-mail to Steve Blank.
Have something you would like to share with other persons interested in RPI? Please send a copy to me and I'll take care of the rest.
We look forward to seeing many of you in Dallas at the ULI Spring Meeting. Our group is scheduled to meet on Friday, May 9, from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. at the Hyatt regency, Pryor A (Attrium Level).
After distributing Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel's Responsible Property Investing Agenda, a number of you requested that we distribute additional examples of how real estate investment managers have implemented Responsible Property Investment strategies.
Hermes, a U.K. based institutional investment manager, provides significant insights regarding how it implements its RPI strategies on its web site .
Once on the site, click on "Responsible Investment", then click on "Real Estate". Hermes makes available a number of publications (in PDF format) including "Responsible Property Investment - Defining the Challenge" and "Responsible Property Investment - Annual report 2007." We think you will find these insightful.
Have something you would like to share with readers interested in Responsible Property Investment. Send it to blank@uli.org and we would be pleased to distribute it.
REMINDER: We look forward to seeing you at our next meeting on May 9 at 7:30 am at the ULI Spring Council Forum in Dallas. The meeting is being held at the Hyatt Regency, Pryor A (Atrium Level).
Philip Payne, Babcock & Brown Residential
Roger Platt, The Real Estate Roundtable
Kirk Sykes, Urban Strategy America Fund
Geoffrey Dohrmann, Institutional Real Estate
Ron Robert, Kennedy Associates
Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel, LP has forged a leadership position in the area of Responsible Property Investing as evidenced by its track record in the areas of "sustainable development/re-development, property operations, and adherence to economic fairness and worker health standards". A visit to the firm's web site will prove both instructive and enlightening
Bob Ratliffe, executive vice president of Kennedy Associates, and his colleagues at the firm have graciously agreed to allow us to share the firm's Responsible Property Investing "Agenda" with interested parties. If you would like a copy, send an e-mail to blank@uli.org with the "Kennedy" in the subject line.
We look forward to seeing many of you in Dallas at our meeting on Friday, May 9, from 7:30 to 9:00 am. The meeting will be held in the Pryor A room, Atrium Level, Hyatt Regency Hotel.
Regards, Steve Blank
Philip Payne, Babcock & Brown Residential
Roger Platt, The Real Estate Roundtable
Kirk Sykes, New Boston Fund
Geoffrey Dohrmann, Institutional Real Estate, Inc.
Ronald Roberts, Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel, LP
A quick progress report and an invitation:
We continue to make progress on the formation of a Responsible Property Investing Council. We have provided required information to the ULI's Council Counselors and expect to be ready to go by the Fall meeting in Miami in October.
Now the invitation: please join us in Dallas on Friday, May 9th from 7:30 to 9:00 am to share experiences and the best practices and discuss the organizational structure and programming for the RPI Councils first meeting in Miami.
Please e-mail either Philip Payne or Steve Blank with comments and questions.
If you are interested in the area of Responsible Property Investing, please consider joining the Responsible Property Investing discussion list.
TO SUBSCRIBE: Send email to listserv@listserv.arizona.edu with the following
as the only line in the body of the message:
subscribe rpi Firstname Lastname
Substitute your first name for Firstname and your last name for Lastname.
Formation of the Responsible Property Investing Council continues with 30+ persons committed to membership. If you have not responded to our prior "casting calls" for members, please send an e-mail to: blank@uli.org
The 3rd Annual Responsible Property Investing Forum was held in Boston on March 25-26 with over 100 attendees representing a wide array of real estate disciplines. If you would like to be included on the distribution list for future announcements describing the Forum's activities, as well as other relevant news regarding the field of RPI, send an e-mail to: rpi@listserve.arizona.edu
While everyone's attention is focused on market gyrations, credit squeezes and the housing melt down, not to mention the latest sex scandal and—remember—the endless Democratic Presidential campaign, the affordable housing industry is being quietly closed down. Look at what has happened:
Low income housing tax credits—the price for these credits has fallen in the past few months from over $1 per dollar of credit to 80 to 82 cents to the dollar—a 20% decline that is making new deals unworkable. The main reason for this meltdown is what has happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; their accounting scandals resulting in the new restrictions on their mortgage purchases as well as the decline in housing prices and the mortgage-backed securities markets all have combined to reduce or eliminate their profits. Thus the biggest market maker for the tax credits, Fannie Mae, has reduced its purchases of credits from over $2 billion in 2006 to $1.1 billion in 2007 and is now reportedly a net seller of credits. Freddie Mac has also reduced its purchases as well. The major banks that were also buyers are now struggling with loses and don't need or want credits. While the new pricing makes credits attractive investments to the corporations that used be in the market for credits, it will take months or years to get them back in as active buyers.
Continue reading "Collateral Damage: Squeezing Out Affordable Housing" »
3rd Annual Responsible Property Investing (RPI) Forum in Boston at the Fairmont Copley Hotel on March 25-26,
A few things in anticipation of the forum:
We continue making progress regarding the formation of a Responsible Property Investment Council and appear on target to have our first regularly scheduled meeting at the ULI Fall meeting in Miami. We expect a "Council Counselor," whose responsibility is to assist us through the qualifying process, to be appointed shortly.
To qualify for Council status, we need to meet certain requirements, including, but not limited to the following:
To assist us in completing the above requirements, we would appreciate your providing us (by e-mail to blank@uli.org) with the following information:
It is our intention to schedule a combined organization -- "mini" Council meeting on Friday, May 9, from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., at the ULI Spring Council Forum in Dallas. If you have any suggestions regarding program content you would like to have in Dallas, please let us know.
Follow the link below to the 3rd Annual Responsible Property Investment Forum which will be held in Boston on March 25 and 26, 2008:
http://www.responsibleproperty.net/assets/files/rpic_invitation_2_3.pdf
The "Save the Date" notice for the 3rd annual responsibile property investing symposium in Boston is now available on the RPI Center website (under Who We Are/Upcoming Events). Direct link to the notice
Please feel free to pass this notice on to others who you think might like to attend.
A more detailed invitation will follow in a couple of weeks.
A block of room are now available at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, 138 St. James Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, 02116, T.(617) 267-5300.
Space is limited and we expect there will be considerable interest in the
meeting, so please reserve your room as soon as possible and contact us (David Wood at 617-552-1140; wooddl@bc.edu) about registering for the meeting.
The members of the Responsible Property Investing Center (which includes ULI) have developed a Web site that is now available in a "beta," or test, version. The Web site is by no means complete; the members of the Center expect to add additional research reports, case studies, and a variety of resources over the next few months.
Please take a "test drive" and let us know you reactions, suggestions, etc.
Here’s a link (http://www.responsibleproperty.net/assets/files/rpiquarterlywinter2008.pdf) to the first Responsible Property Investing Quarterly, a publication of the Responsible Property Investing Center, of which ULI is a sponsor. It's a project begun in collaboration between the Boston College Institute for Responsible Investment and the University of Arizona.
Inside the Quarterly has a definition of RPI, case studies of RPI in practice, and an overview of some recent research in the field. For more information, see the RPIC website at www.responsibleproperty.net, or contact David Wood at wooddl@bc.edu.
The UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative Property Working Group released its report on RPI last week.
The report includes a collection of responsible investing strategies that investors, asset managers and property managers can implement to improve the performance of a property portfolio, without diluting financial return. Interestingly, the report highlights a wide array of "no cost and low cost, value-added" approaches to implementing an RPI agenda.
The full report will be available in Janaury 2008. In the mean time, do you have any "best practices" you would like to share? If so, send them in and we will, with your permission, share them with our readers.
Twenty-two persons attended the Responsible Property Investment (RPI) Council organizational meeting held on October 25th in Las Vegas in conjunction with the ULI Fall Meeting. After introductions of the members of the "organizing committee," the group discussed a wide array of topics including:
Among our next steps will be a short survey of both attendees at the organizational meeting as well as other ULI members who have expressed interest in RPI; the survey is intended to gather the demographic data necessary to place a proposal to form a RPI Council before ULI's Council Counselors who administer the Council Program.
If you are interested in participating in an RPI council, let us know (blank@uli.org) and we'll send you the survey to complete.
Reminder Notice:
Ad-Hoc Organizational Meeting for the to-be-formed ULI Responsible Property Investment Council
Meeting Date: Thursday, October 25, 2007
Time: 7:00 a.m. to 8:15 a.m.
Location: The Venetian Hotel, Lando 4304, Level 4
A continental breakfast will be served
We are working to develop an agenda for our meeting and welcome your suggestions and input. If you interested in participating in the leadership of the Council, including membership development and program, please let us know. There is plenty of heavy lifting to go around.
We look forward to seeing you on October 25th in Las Vegas.
Please RSVP to stephen.blank@att.net.
A group of ULI members has formed an "organizing committee" to work on the formation of a Responsible Property Investing (RPI) Council.
We have scheduled a meeting to discuss all facets of the Council program of work to be held at the ULI Fall Meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday, October 25 from 7:00 am to 8:15 am, thereby allowing participants to attend the General Session Breakfast featuring Michael Boskin, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute at Standford University. A continental breakfast will be served.
We expect the first regularly scheduled RPI Council meeting will take place at the ULI 2008 Spring Council Forum in Dallas.
Interested in the RPI Council? Want to learn more? Have a question? Want us to send you a memorandum describing RPI?
Contact Steve Blank, ULI Senior Fellow, Finance at blank@uli.org
The following article appeared in a recent issue of the Real Estate Roundtable's weekly newsletter:
A newly released study on "responsible property investing" (RPI) -- co-sponsored by The Roundtable, BOMA, NAREIT and ULI -- shows that over two-thirds of REITs, real estate operating companies, developers and pension funds are investing or planning to invest in "green construction" projects. Specifically, 41.3 percent of respondents said their firms have already invested in environmentally friendly buildings to some degree; another 26.8 percent indicated they were planning to do so. The study was conducted by University of Arizona Professor Gary Pivo, an expert on the intersection of real estate and the socially responsible property investing movement who is scheduled to participate in the June 2007 meeting of the Roundtable's Environmental and Energy Policy Advisory Committee (EPAC) and to attend The Roundtable's June 2007 Annual Meeting.
As Pivo concludes in the study, "Most property investment executives say they're going beyond minimum legal requirements to address social or environmental issues. Many are promoting the conservation of energy and other natural resources, engaging with their stakeholders affected by their work, and recognizing sustainability and social responsibility in their strategies and value statements." Geoffrey Dohrmann, publisher and editor-in-chief of Institutional Real Estate, Inc., wrote in the study's introduction that, despite a cost premium of two- to-three-percent (associated with green building), "In almost all cases, the return on cost from energy savings and operational economies, let alone the benefits to the community and tenants who utilize these new spaces, more than compensates the investor or developer for making these kinds of investments."
Simon Property Group Vice President for Energy George Caraghiaur was also quoted in the New York Times as saying that investor interest in environmentally conscious building design, construction and operation means "green for the environment and for your bottom line." Caraghiaur, who is EPAC's vice chairman, added that optimal energy performance in buildings can be viewed "as a proxy for management strength. The smart investors of the world have come to conclude that energy is a tough thing to manage and that those companies that do manage energy well are seen as those that manage well -- period."
The real estate investment industry and real estate capital markets are confronting another "Sea Change" as they learn that they are not immune or remote to the discussions going on around them regarding the environment and global warming; in fact, as we adjust to an entire new vocabulary, we also learn that we are a major "player" and a major "contributor" in this game and what we do, or do not do, individually, or as an industry, is going to have a major impact on society.
With that said we introduce Responsible Property Investment (RPI). Please take the few minutes necessary to read this brief introduction to RPI (available in PDF and HTML format) and then take a few minutes more and send us an e-mail at blank@uli.org with your reactions, thoughts, comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc. RPI is an evolving topic and issue; for it to reach its potential and impact the "environment" will require input into the discourse from a wide array of real estate industry and real estate capital markets participants.
And if you really become intrigued and think you may want to actively participate in the growth of the RPI community with the ULI, please let us know. We are working on a number of initiatives ranging from newsletters and sharing of information and "best practices" to the formation of a new product council that would hold its initial meeting at the ULI 2007 Fall Meeting.
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