Dieter Kleiner reflects on the return of The London Real Estate Forum and shares his main takeaways from the two-day event.

The London Real Estate Forum (LREF) was unquestionably a positive return to business in person, if not quite business-as-usual.

 

The opening statement by Ian Stewart of Deloitte sought to reassure the industry that the future’s still bright –  noting things aren’t predicted to be half as bad as the financial crash when GDP fell by 5%, when even then 95% of the market was still operating.

 

More reassuring for me however were clear indications that the market has now hard-wired in aspects of both social and environmental sustainability, or ESG to use the acronym of the conference. For those of us who missed the memo, ESG, or Environmental, Social and Governance, is a tool to identify material risks and growth opportunities for financial investors.

 

The metrics of environmental performance whilst not wholly standardised are well understood, with Robert Evans of Related Argent, among others, noting that any real estate needs a credible path to net zero to secure investment. The problem with net-zero however is the word net that allows offsetting. So whilst ambitious, work should now surely focus on losing the ‘net’ and moving towards carbon-positive schemes.

 

As an architect who works closely with communities on LA regeneration projects and CLT’s etc, and as a passionate advocator of social value and social impact, hearing from the likes of Katie Kopec - Head of Strategic Development at JLL – that there is now clear evidence that social value drives economic returns, is a game-changer.

 

The metrics for this are however less clear, and only partly by the response from Emma Cariaga – Head of Residential at British Land – that to apply a standard social value metric would potentially lose what is valuable to each local community as that differs greatly. Instead, I’m keen to pick up conversations with a number of those on the Future of High Streets panel that was excellently chaired by Rumi Bose of the GLA. A fascinating and diverse range of viewpoints and evidence was proffered including simple ways to measure year-on-year improvements in social impact, such as the number of jobs created and/or retained, or how many local people have been engaged.

 

What would make London a true trailblazer in the S of ESG, would be to move from simply listening to the views of local people to inform plans, to devising regeneration plans that focus on legacy, stewardship and the creation of future roles for local people. Harnessing the patent potential of communities to incubate high street assets, or lead in addressing local needs through community trusts that bring new and existing communities together, are the kind of truly impactful initiatives we should be striving for.

 

All-in-all LREF was a great success, and I’ll be watching with interest next year to see whether the disruptive opportunities of the current climate have been used to meaningfully re-position business in-person, to instead place person at the heart of business.