Top Takeaways from PERE Asia Summit 2023: How Do Your Buildings Stack Up?

Joanna Frank at PERE Asia Summit 2023. Photo courtesy of PERE Network.

This week, our President & CEO, Joanna Frank joined more than 600 of the real estate industry’s leading managers, developers, and investors across the globe — many of them Fitwel Champions, affiliated partners, and Best in Building Health honorees* — in Singapore for PERE’s 16th Annual Asia Summit.

In her featured keynote speech, The Future of Buildings Already Exists: How Do You Stack Up?, she discussed the dominant drivers that are defining the future of the built environment. In case you missed it, here are some actionable insights and key takeaways.

We Can’t Unsee the Last Three Years.

The pandemic spurred a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we think about the buildings we occupy, bringing the connection between health and the built environment to the forefront in the minds of both individuals and investors.

Post-COVID-19 tenants across all assets are demanding health-promoting environments and are willing to pay a premium for spaces that enhance the overall quality of life. This demand has been further strengthened as a result of the existential threat caused by climate change.

“I thought I was in the bricks-and-mortar business, building buildings, but what I've learned over the last decade is that we are in the people business, creating places where people live, work, and play.”

— Joanna Frank, CEO & President of the Center for Active Design, Fitwel Operator

Real Estate is a People Business.

A portfolio is no longer just a collection of assets, and an asset is no longer just a building. It is a space filled with people. And the demand from those people determines value today and in the future. The result: health has become real estate’s biggest opportunity.

In other words, Bricks & Mortar + People = Optimized Value.
Investment managers, owners, and operators must consider both the physical and people impact to maximize asset value and mitigate risk by concentrating on longer-term demand drivers.

Fitwel Relational Data Portfolio Performance Among Certified Projects

Fitwel Relational Data Portfolio Performance Among Certified Projects

Where Do You Stack Up?

Joanna also took the opportunity to unveil a new (industry-first) Fitwel product at the live event. The Relational Data Insights tool will enable companies with Fitwel-certified properties to understand how they stack up against their peers, ultimately providing a data-driven roadmap for investment decision-making. The tool uses data that quantifies good, better, and best when it comes to overall performance against the evidence-based Fitwel Standard. It is also the first tool of its kind to begin to track and quantify “S” metrics for ESG, including Walkability and Environmental Quality for ESG.

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The Future of Buildings is Here. Don’t Get Left Behind.

Leveraging the built environment to impact people’s quality of life isn’t new, but having meaningful data to optimize that impact is the future. While the E in ESG has been the industry’s focus for the past 10+ years, people-centric factors, quantified through the S, represent the greatest opportunity for differentiation in the decades to come.

To learn more about Fitwel’s healthy building footprint in Asia, read Creating Real Estate’s New Blueprint.


*
Fitwel Champions, affiliated Providers and Partners, and Best in Building Health honorees include GRESB, JLL, Brookfield, Cushman & Wakefield, and Blackstone.


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