A green groundswell grips the multifamily industry, influencing everything from building materials to construction standards and certification systems. Green financing is no small part of this trend. As sustainability becomes further embedded in the multifamily sector’s fabric, so are the capital sources available for environmentally responsible upgrades. Both investment and commercial banks are increasingly entering the space, for a variety of reasons. “We’re definitely seeing that banks have shareholders who are driving investment into this space,” observes Jason Haber, a broker with New York City-based Warburg Realty. “And it’s not just for concessionary gains. What’s proven out is by being green, your returns can now be commensurate with the market—or even outperform the market.” Studies indicate that improving energy and water efficiency can generate economic savings of 28-38%, clip energy costs as much as 31% and spur 40% in utility cost reductions for residents, according to Peter Giles, president of production and sales at Freddie Mac, which, along with its fellow government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) Fannie Mae, offer the multifamily sector’s most comprehensive green financing opportunities Cutting utility costs can also help increase the availability of affordable housing. According to a 2015 Freddie Mac analysis, a 10% cut in utility costs can increase affordable rentals by at least 10%, Giles notes. Fannie, Freddie Go Green Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sponsor loan programs for construction and renovation projects that include lower interest rates, higher leverage and energy audits. Those features are designed to promote energy consumption reductions of 20% or more, noted Ray Sturm, CEO of AlphaFlow, an online real estate investment management firm. Lower interest rates and larger proceeds can help offset the cost of green building materials and labor and cut utility bills, resulting in improved overall cash flow. The GSEs have no...

In preparation for Earth Day on April 22, we are exploring a few ways to celebrate that can benefit your business while promoting sustainability. More than 190 countries celebrate Earth Day every year. Individuals, families, and organizations combine efforts to support sustainable initiatives. Aside from employee participation and donations, businesses largely miss out. The sustainable programs below offer notable benefits to for-profit entities. Yardi Smart Energy Suite Yardi Smart Energy Suite includes products for total insight and management of your energy consumption and costs, including REC purchases and Yardi E2 Insight. Combining your energy initiatives into one platform for utility billing recovery, paperless utility invoice and payables processing, HVAC optimization and smart thermostats, let’s you leverage the data with your property management information for better results. The mobile-ready stack of energy management solutions can be customized to meet your needs and facilitate the greatest cost savings for your company–without sacrificing tenant or employee comfort. Yardi E2 Insight You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Yardi E2 Insight collects cost and usage data down to the individual building meter. The reports generated allow you to precisely measure and moderate your energy usage. Program analytics can be adjusted to account for seasons, building size, occupancy, and other factors to ensure that you report the true performance of your assets. Modules within Yardi E2 Insight dashboard facilitate easy benchmark reporting. Get effortless access to the data that you need to complete complex reporting requirements. Such reports can help your company qualify for portfolio-wide certifications issued by GRESB and ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®. For more on Yardi E2 Insight, call (800) 866-1144 or request more information online. Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) It is now cheaper than ever to offset the harmful emissions that your company generates. The prices...

Floatovoltaics is the name given to the floating solar plants that have started to pop up all over the globe—Japan, the UK, Brazil, the U.S. and Australia. This type of system is relatively new, but seems to gain popularity. It’s easy to understand why, the floatovoltaics preserve land, while minimizing the aesthetic impact. Kyocera TCL Solar LLC is one of the pioneers of the technology; they state that the floating system is not only typhoon-proof (due to their sturdy, high-density polyethylene and array design), but also superior to their land-based counterparts because of the cooling effect of the water, which enables them to work more efficiently. Kyocera’s word is to be listened to as they are the developers behind the largest floating solar power plant in the world—in a joint venture with Century Tokyo Leasing Corp. In 2016, the company started developing a 13.7-megawatt floating solar power plant on the Yamakura Dam reservoir, managed by the Public Enterprises Agency of Chiba Prefecture in Japan for industrial water services. The system will consist of approximately 51,000 Kyocera modules installed over a fresh water surface area of almost 2 million square feet. The project is expected to generate an estimated 16,170-megawatt-hours per year, enough to power almost 5,000 typical households, while offsetting about 8,170 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The planned launch date for the solar plant on the Yamakura Dam is spring of 2018. Japan was somewhat forced to find new surfaces on which to install photovoltaic panels mostly due to the decrease in tracts of land suitable for utility-scale solar power plants. Other countries and regions view solar power as the solution to the drought that’s been drying up their hydroelectric plans. In 2015, Brazil announced that it will build an overwhelming 350-megawatt...