Sustainability in commercial real estate markets

Alexander Reichardt provides pertinent information on the business case for sustainable buildings, which offer a large potential to abate climate change, which can be achieved at relatively affordable costs compared to other industries. He discusses– although sustainable space offers verifiable advantages to tenants like lower operating expenses, higher employee productivity and reputation benefits –, the small empirical evidence that tenants indeed pay a rent premium for leasing this space. The author, therefore, analyses if sustainable buildings command a rent premium compared to comparable conventional buildings and what contributes to this rent premium. In addition, he analyses what kind of tenants primarily rent sustainable space. It is expected that the demand for sustainable space differs between industries as different industries have different motivations for renting sustainable space.