New building portfolio – assessment model for sustainable and future-proof company-owned building stocks

An essential task for residential property companies to maintain their long-term viability is to secure the future rentability/marketability of their buildings. On top of that, they should also be willing to take on more responsibility for the environment and society to contribute to sustainable development. Both tasks are closely interlinked. The question that arises is how and with which tools residential property companies should control the further development of their building stocks in order to meet these requirements. Residential property companies use tools for the analysis and management of their existing building portfolio. Models that link location characteristics and building performance with rental success provide one approach. In the context of using methodological approaches such as cause-effect relationships, scoring methods and regression analysis, the paper discusses how dependencies between megatrends, rental success, location characteristic and property performance can be better modelled. The paper also attempts to introduce additional indicators that are directly related to sustainable development objectives. The result is a concept that supports the advancement of portfolio analysis methods, which both integrates additional sustainability aspects and takes into account a dynamically changing environment (shift in values towards sustainability, political framework conditions, climate change). In particular, the paper presents the interdependencies between external environment and location / building on the one hand, and location and building on the other. By modelling the correlation between the impact of the respective megatrend and the underlying portfolio assessment, the model can support portfolio managers of residential property companies in their work. Results can serve as an early warning indicator and form the basis for recommendations for action regarding the portfolio strategy.