Dexus, Lend Lease and Goodman recognised as global sustainability leaders

Sustainability benchmark GRESB has recognised Dexus, Lend Lease and Goodman as a global leaders in real estate sustainability.

Participation in the 2020 Assessment grew by 22% to cover 1,229 portfolios (2019: 1,005) globally worth more than USD $4.8 trillion AUM. Data on key environmental performance indicators was reported at asset-level for more than 96,000 assets, across 64 countries, and aggregated to portfolio-level.

This increase in participation, coming despite the challenges of the covid-19 crisis, shows an industry responding decisively to the accelerating investor demand for comparable ESG data. The private sector led the growth trend, with participation growing 32% to cover 953 non-listed portfolios (2019: 723). On the listed side, 271 REITs and property companies reported to GRESB (2019: 240), an increase of 13% on the previous year.  

While the changes to the reporting structure and scoring weights make it difficult to draw detailed comparisons with previous years, several trend lines remain: 

Listed property companies still outperform the private sector, but with a smaller lead than previous years. The average GRESB Score for standing investments portfolios is 71 for listed companies and 70 for private entities. For development portfolios, the differences are slightly larger and favour the private sector – listed companies have an average score of 73, compared to 75 for private entities.

By sector, average GRESB Scores for offices continue to outperform other property types, but the other sectors are closing in.

The regional breakdown shows Oceania still ahead, with an average GRESB Score of 77. The Asian real estate sector comes in second, with 72, followed by Europe at 69.5, just slightly ahead of the Americas at 69.

Once again, Europe leads the world in transparency with the highest number of new entities participating in the benchmark, while the Americas cohort remains the largest in dollar terms globally. Americas is also the only region where the average score for the private sector (70) is higher than the listed sector (67).  

The 2020 GRESB Real Estate Standing Investments Sector Leaders for the Oceania region were;

Kylie Rampa, Lend Lease CEO Property said, “The call for sustainable and economically viable ways of living and working is loud and pressing and investors continue to demand sustainable real estate that delivers environmental and social value, alongside financial.

“Highly sustainable precincts, shopping centres and retirement villages are very attractive to customers and our belief is that positive environmental and social outcomes will only continue to grow as drivers of value creation.

“The pandemic has shown how resilient property assets need to be against fluctuating market forces and global benchmarks like GRESB further support a consistent approach to sustainability.”

In speaking of the results for Dexus, CEO, Darren Steinberg said: “Our strong sustainability performance is a result of the effective integration of environmental, social and governance factors across our business operations. These GRESB results build on our recent recognition as the global real estate leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) for 2020 and reinforce the long-term value that we are creating for Dexus and our third party capital partners.”

David Yates, Executive General Manager, Sustainability said: “We have delivered on our ambitious 2020 sustainability targets that were set in 2015, which leverage the progress we’ve made over the past 10 years and the new targets we have set help further progress our net zero emissions ambition.

GRESB is the international benchmark for environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of real assets, and its results are an important standard used by investors to monitor their investments and understand performance across ESG factors.