For socially responsible investors who have been trying to round out their portfolios with allocations in REITs or other real estate investments, the landscape may seem awfully barren right now.
As hard as investors may look, for example, they are not going to find any US REITs that specifically label themselves as “green” or “socially responsible”. Even traditional mutual funds have little to offer.
“With respect to REITs, there are ways to get at it, but it is not as direct,” says Gary Pivo, a professor at Arizona State University who has done extensive studies on the socially responsible real estate market. “There is no list out there of SRI REITs that has been certified by anybody”.
Still, observers say green real estate development is on the rise in both the private and public sectors. The buzz of activity, in fact, has some SRI advocates hopeful that the green real estate sector is poised for robust growth once the broad real estate market picks up.
A growing number of states and federal agencies, for example, have mandated that public buildings incorporate designs and technologies that make the facilities environmentally sustainable.
