Back

S2 EP 3: The Opportunity for Green Finance in Australian Property

In this episode, we sit down with Michael Di Russo, Head of Property at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), to explore the role of green finance in shaping Australia's property sector. We discuss what progressive finance means for the industry, the key investments CEFC has made in real estate, and the growing take-up of green finance in residential projects. Michael also breaks down a landmark affordable Build-to-Rent (BTR) deal with AXA IM Alts, sharing insights on its structure, key lessons and future opportunities for sustainable investment in housing.

At CEFC, Michael leads debt and equity investments to drive lower emissions in the built environment. With over 20 years’ experience in property, he has worked in town planning, acquisitions and finance, previously holding roles at CBA, Westpac Group, Ashe Morgan and Spectrum Property Partners. At CEFC, he has contributed to over $2.5 billion in purpose-led investments delivering market-leading outcomes.

Join us for a deep dive into the intersection of finance, sustainability and property, and what it means for the future of real estate in Australia.

LISTEN NOW!


EPISODE LINKS

Michael Di Russo LinkedIn
CEFC


LET’S CONNECT

Instagram
LinkedIn
Email Us

This podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment or financial advice. This podcast is not intended to replace or supplement professional investment, financial or legal advice. Please seek professional advice based upon your personal circumstances. The views expressed by our podcast guests may not represent those of Charter Keck Cramer. This podcast may not be copied, reproduced, republished or posted in whole or in part without the prior written consent of Charter Keck Cramer.

Transcript

Precisely Property Podcast

* Mandatory details

Get the latest podcast episodes, expert insights and occasional messages from our sponsors delivered straight to your inbox.

S2 EP 3: The Opportunity for Green Finance in Australian Property

This episode was recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and future.

Richard: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Precisely Property. I’m your host, Richard Temlett. I’m excited to have you with us today.

If you’re here for the first time, thank you for joining us. I encourage you to listen to our previous episodes where we discuss all things property with a focus on dynamic discussions with industry leaders. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the opportunity for progressive finance in Australia with Michael Di Russo. So, sit back, relax, and let’s get started.

Michael is head of property at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, or CEFC, leading debt and equity investments to drive lower emissions in the built environment. With over 20 years of experience in property, he’s worked in town planning, acquisitions and finance, previously holding roles at CBA, Westpac Group, Ashe Morgan, and Spectrum Property Partners. At CEFC, he has contributed to over $2.5 billion in purpose-led investments, delivering market leading outcomes. Welcome, Michael.

Michael: Thanks for having me, Richard.

Richard: Michael, on today’s episode we’re going to explore the role of the CEFC in driving sustainable investment in the property sector. We’re also going to discuss green finance trends, key industry investments made by the CEFC, and the growing uptake in residential real estate. We’ll also dive into the AXA Alts IM affordable Build to Rent deal, its structures, lessons learned and future opportunities. And I can’t wait to get into it. But before we do that, I do like to start the season off with an icebreaker question. So, if you’re able to please let myself and the audience know, if you had to describe your work in one sentence that surprises people, what would it be?

Michael: It’s going to be a long sentence, Richard, but probably I’m not only lucky enough to be exposed to billions of dollars of investments into the Australian real estate market, but I do so knowing that we’re integrating sustainable practices and energy efficient technologies into the Australian property market, driving that transition to the low carbon future. So it’s a heavily purpose-led investment role which is quite unique, I feel, in the marketplace.

Richard: Fantastic. Before we get into the episode, for some of the listeners that are not familiar, are you able to please give a brief overview of the CEFC and its role in the property sector?

Michael: Yeah. So, the CEFC is a unique organisation. It’s a specialist climate investor helping to cut emissions in the race towards net zero by 2050, with access to more than $32 billion from the Australian government. We invest to deliver a positive return for taxpayers, so we’ve got a very broad mandate and a big task ahead of us, but one we’ve been chewing away at for a little over 12, 13 years now.

Richard: Well, you certainly have. And just so the audience knows, I have caught up with you and I love picking your brain and sharing ideas. Audience, all I can say is please make sure that you do listen very carefully to what Michael has to say. He’s one of the sharpest operators that I’ve come across. I love following the work and some of the projects that the CEFC have been investing in. When I met Michael late last year and had a very good chat with him about the education piece that needed to occur in the residential space, that’s what the genesis of this podcast was. And so, today we’re going to talk, at least at the beginning, a little bit about green finance in the commercial asset classes and how that’s starting to occur.

But really, the focus is to talk about what’s happening in the residential space. Because, certainly when I speak with a number of financiers, both local and overseas, they can see the opportunity. And moving forward, it’s definitely a structural trend that is occurring and it’s a trend that we definitely need to be aware of. So Michael, as it applies to the industry overall and green finance, it’s quite a broad question. But in your mind, as of 2025, what does the industry need to know about this sector?

Michael: The industry needs to know that, globally, what’s happening in the building space in terms of decarbonisation is very relevant to the Australian story. We’re all needing to get to the same position, and the transition pathway is very relevant regardless of which jurisdiction you’re in. Where the market is trying to get to in the property space is delivering and repositioning buildings, so they’re zero carbon ready, as defined by the International Energy Agency. So, what does that mean? It means they need to be highly efficient, use lower carbon, embody carbon, have no fossil fuels, be plugged into renewables, and be a balancer for the grid, and be a solution for the surrounding environment and not just a plug and play into the grid environment.

That’s where we’ve got to get buildings both new build and existing. If we look at the Australian landscape, we’re very progressive on the new build space. You look at our listed and unlisted real estate managers, they rank very well on the global scale for delivering sustainable products, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Just look at a recent CBRE report I read a couple of weeks ago, and there’s only six fully electric office towers in Sydney. Less than 30% of office buildings nationally don’t achieve the energy efficiency standards required for government tenancies and a lot of the large corporate tenancies. And in 2050, 80% of the assets already exist today. So, not only do we have to do a lot more in the new build space, but the existing building space is a component or a part of the market that has to do a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of movement, between now and 2050. And this way, the finance market and capital more broadly is going to play a very big role.

Richard: Gotcha. Well, thank you for that. As we start diving into some of these issues more deeply, it probably is easiest to start talking about some of the key investments that the CEFC has made with the industry to date. Are you able to give some examples? And again, it is an education piece for everyone. So whatever examples you’re able to provide, subject to confidentiality, it’s helping the sector of the market start to derisk.

Michael: Yeah. Absolutely, Richard. And look, all of our investments are up on our website, so the listeners can have a look through and see the details of who we invested with, what we’re trying to drive, and what the product is. In a nutshell, as you touched on, we’ve done $2.5 billion of investments directly in the real estate market, and CEFC as a corporation has invested over $3.5billion, which is a big investment in the real estate scheme. Those investments are probably best described as being very expansive in terms of how they look, as opposed to who the investments are with. We invest right across that capital stack, so everything from asset level finance, institutional debt products like your green bonds and your corporate financing solutions, managed credit vehicles where we’re actually placing our capital with other managed partners to pull together with other third party capital to try and drive scaled outcomes, consumer finance, and managed equities, so that’s the full range of what our investments look like. Those investments have allowed us to impact and invest directly across all the subsectors of the Australian real estate market, so we’ve got a really good understanding and history of the hurdles and tailwinds of decarbonisation for each of the subsectors, and importantly, it’s covering new build and existing because we know both are fundamentally different in terms of their rates of change.

New building is right for innovation and really crowding in capital to try and drive some really exceptional outcomes. Existing buildings is a far more fragmented and I suppose slower moving beast, so equally our investments have been focused on driving new standards in that new build space but equally coming back to the existing building space and focusing on that reposition story.

Richard: Very interesting. We’ve discussed offline, but I’m keen to bring it into this session where we’re talking about the take up of green finance in the residential real estate market, especially in Australia, and how there’s not a lot of evidence and data floating around right now. What do you think needs to happen in this space to push us through that threshold to get… there’s a lot of interest, I speak with a number of the fund managers. They are very interested in even setting up funds in the space. But some of their investors are going, yes, we can see some of the fundamentals, but can you show us some evidence or some data to help us with our investment? So what actually needs to happen in this space?

Michael: The residential part of the equation is a far more difficult problem to solve. We’ve been progressively working fairly well through the commercial part of the market over the last decade, and that’s largely led by the institutional managers in the landscape and then looking to branch out those learnings out to the market more broadly to demonstrate that progress. The residential market is a far different beast, it’s a highly fragmented market, it is delivered and owned and managed in a far different capital framework, investment ethos to the rest of the market. Subsequently the rating tools, and the measurement, and the ability to measure progress is probably lagging a fair way from the commercial landscape.

So, we’ve seen a big push for green finance more broadly, obviously leaning more heavily into the commercial landscape because one thing finance does need is governance and comfort around what is being delivered, what is being financed, and what the measurable of that delta is to demonstrate that it’s either true change, that the financing is going to a green asset, or it’s a transition finance to hit a minimum benchmark. But all of that is underpinned off having open and transparent market benchmarking tools to be able to lend through the back of.

Now the residential market has obviously been a little bit lagging in that state, but we are seeing a significant uptick in the frameworks and measurement rating tools in the landscape, and that’s enabling the banks and the non-banks to start seeing an opportunity for crowding in capital through that, and we can see that with even some of the early work that the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute is doing with the Australian Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, which will be a big game changer in the Australian landscape. It’s leaning off the back of the good work done in the European market with the European taxonomy that’s ultimately allowed capital of all forms to be able to come together and lend through that framework to determine what is green, what isn’t, and have more confidence of demonstrating change and innovation, which I think in the credit landscape and the finance landscape, that’s one thing that always holds that part of the market back is the risk of greenwashing and the uncertainty around what is actually being delivered in the underlying projects.

Richard: Gotcha. Could you explain to some of our listeners greenwashing? I’ve certainly heard that term, but what does it actually mean?

Michael: Greenwashing essentially is the event where a purpose is being put to the market that isn’t substantiated by a certified rating tool or an independent authority. So, we saw this in early days with the net zero target setting in the commercial landscape where once the market acknowledged that setting a net zero target had commercial relevance, then it was a choose your own adventure. We saw a lot of counterparties saying they’re net zero aligned, or net zero in 2030, but no reporting mechanisms, or no way to actually report to the market or measure what they’re doing, just essentially come and see them in 2029. So, it’s up to the eye of the beholder in those instances. What we see in terms of a maturity profile in the marketplace is industry starts coming together to standardise what and define what these terms are, so the market can then lend through those frameworks. In the net zero space obviously you’ve got the World Green Building Council, net zero commitment, you’ve got SBTI, so there are a couple of examples of standardised certification pathways that people can then plug into.

On the greenwashing side for mortgages, that’s an area where the taxonomy that’s going to be introduced is going to be a very powerful tool because up until now, majority of the green lending has been into equipment financing, obviously funding more energy efficient equipment, or more recently probably green mortgages. That’s been either underpinned from Green Building Council’s Green Star Homes rating tool, or focusing in on the NatHERS rating, which is the thermal efficiency rating national rating.

Advertisement: Quickly interrupting this episode to tell you about Charter Keck Cramer. Charter Keck Cramer is an independent property advisory firm with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast. Through our collaboration with Andersen Global, we connect with over 18,000 professionals around the world. We provide strategic property advisory services spanning multiple market sectors.

Our advisory team provides specialist advice across transaction management, tenant representation and lease negotiation, strategic portfolio reviews, development advisory and more.

Complementing this, the capital division advises on structured property partnerships connecting property owners and tier one developers.

Our extensive valuations coverage includes prestige residential and greenfield development markets, together with all commercial asset classes.

Quantity surveying is at the core of the projects team, ensuring cost control from planning through to post construction.

And our research team delivers property data and analytics across the residential living sector, along with expertise in strategic land use planning and urban economics.

With specialists across a diversity of sectors, Charter Keck Cramer is your trusted property advisor. Now let’s get back into the episode.

Richard: I’d like to pick up on the green mortgages, your comment there, and maybe you can even connect some of the dots for me. But there’s a lot of stuff in the media talking about green mortgages. And in the office space I’ve definitely seen, and I hope I’m connecting the dots correctly here, but in the commercial office space there’s tenants that are chasing the better-quality buildings. Well, certainly, that’s my observation and it often is driven by their staff. And basically, the tenants, we’ve got a company, we’ve got a business, we want to get into these the best buildings that are the most sustainable. There’s almost like the tenants or the companies or the lessees are driving some demand for these buildings and finance certainly is also driving it from the other end.

In the residential space, there’s a discussion right now about tenants, for example, in Build to Rent, and we’ll get onto that shortly. But will tenants pay a premium rent for a green building? Or in Built to Sell, will buyers pay a premium price for a green building? So I suppose, is that a trend that you’re also seeing? And how does that tie into the green mortgages, which I’m assuming are coming from some of the financiers saying that, as you said, that they have to have a certain NatHERS rating and so forth. Could you explain that a little bit to even myself, but certainly our listeners?

Michael: Yeah. No. Absolutely. I think when we look at what are the key drivers in creating a value proposition for green assets and green certifications. The commercial landscape was one of the first to move because you’ve got capital in there that’s institutionally backed. They’ve obviously got corporate objectives for where they need to place their capital, and a lot of the European and North American capital obviously has been very aligned with ESG principles for a very long time, which has led the Australian institutional asset management market to really up their game and be in a really competitive environment for proving their credentials to attract that capital in.

Obviously, that’s then flowed into the quality of the assets, which leads into underlying tenants wanting a high spec and a high premium offering for their tenancy. Now, ultimately, one could say that that’s ESG linked, or one could say, well people just like a nicer area. But I think the view for us is, and what we’ve learned in the commercial landscape is ESG more broadly is just a more sophisticated way to be able to measure and manage risk. So, you can measure and benchmark what quality is and what quality isn’t. And that’s where I think the true value lies. And, yes, you can link it to a premium that a tenant will pay, but I think that’s just the supply and demand makeup that drives that, and that happens at the top end of the market.

What we’re seeing a bigger movement in, and this creates a functional shift in decisioning, and this is where I think the residential market is probably going to lean a lot more to is it’s a risk-based approach. It’s not necessarily a green premium for how much more will people pay, but it’s more of a brand discount. How much do people want to expose themselves to assets that they’ve still got to contribute more capital to along the way? Either to reposition those and get those away from some of the climate exposures, or just the fact that they’re not as energy efficient and the operational costs are going to be far greater.

So, in the commercial landscape that’s where we’re really starting to see some significant leaps in decarbonisation in the assets is not necessarily what is the energy efficiency benefit of doing the CapEx, but more so what market am I going to be delivering this asset to in four years’ time, and are tenants going to actually want to let the place? Is the office actually going to be able to be tenanted? And to my point before, if less than 30% of the offices can attract government and large corporate tenancies, that starts impacting your valuation profile, and that’s a far greater value discussion than what is the incremental increase in value by me delivering a higher standard. And that’s where I think the residential market has probably been lagging, but the biggest opportunity for the banks that we’re seeing is it’s a risk-led decision. It’s not about leading homeowners to do their part and have more emission resilient houses, but ultimately this is about what risk are those assets sitting on a bank’s balance sheet, and risk is a bit more broad than just financial risk gearing and serviceability. It’s looking at these assets exposed to flood to physical risks, and these assets in areas where energy volatility and energy security is going to be a concern. Are these assets to the quality of living from a comfort perspective?

I mean, we’ve seen the stats coming out of Victoria in terms of the quality of those households during winter periods and the level of health issues that comes out of those households that shouldn’t, not in a developed world like Australia. We shouldn’t have buildings that people are more exposed to the elements being inside the house than outside the house. I think it’s a lot of the risk elements that is going to really transition the residential landscape and that’s the biggest focus for capital.

Richard: I must admit I’ve never ever thought of it with that brown discount, but that’s a very good and important way to look at things. I have heard some of the financiers talking about the risk of some of these assets being stranded if they don’t change or improve some of their credentials. And I do wonder down the line what’ll ultimately happen to them if they’re going to get purchased at a discount and then refurbished or redeveloped. It’s just food for thought. But that brown discounts and that risk-based approach, I think is it’s a very important way to look at things.

Michael: Yeah. And I think Richard, on that one, and then that’s the initial appreciation of the market. The next tendency is capital starts leaning towards green assets versus brown assets, but I think that is just an initial reaction. As the market gets more comfortable with understanding the risks and the measurements, I think capital starts getting more sophisticated, and it comes back to my point about progressive capital is there’s more at play than just deciding where that capital is deployed in terms of is it green, is it not, am I at risk, am I not? I think capital and we’re seeing globally capital is realising that it’s got a role to play. It can positively influence outcomes. We’re seeing banks starting to have those discussions with borrowers from the outset on rating tools and quality of build, and incentivising them with their financing products. So capital is playing a very important role from that perspective, and that’s where we start seeing transition finance come into it. I suppose those improvement packages to reposition these assets, we’re not going to be able to knock every building over and rebuild everything to a high standard between now and 2050. We’ve got existing buildings, we need to reposition them pretty significantly, and that’s going to require capital, and that’s where the opportunity for finance is starting to emerge is how can finance demonstrate they’re positively influencing the real estate market as opposed to just supporting the top end of green delivered assets.

Richard: Great. Well, look, let’s shift gears. You’ve kindly offered to talk a little bit about the AXA Alts IM deal that you invested in. This, for our listeners, was in a number of the media outlets recently. It’s a project in Westmead, and what caught my attention, not just because of the green financing or the role of green financing in it, but it’s also that it’s an affordable Build to Rent project. And I’m keen to talk a little bit more about part of the deal, some of the lessons learned or ideas for the future, given that I’m convinced that if things are replicable or repeatable, whether it’s with how the deal is set up or things like that, it’ll go a long way to educating the industry, derisking the asset class. So, are you able to, by brief background, talk about who the parties were, what the deal was, and then some of the lessons learned?

Michael: Yeah. Absolutely. So, the investment was an equity investment into an affordable residential strategy managed by AXA Alternatives IM. What really resonated with us is for all those points I’ve raised earlier, residential has a lot further to go in this decarbonisation pathway, but it is also a much larger part of the market, if you look at houses and the like. So, the opportunity to start partnering with institutional capital and institutional managers to come into the residential landscape and really accelerate what high quality asset delivery and asset management looks like was really appealing to us more or additionally to the affordable element. This is not just looking at how to deliver high performing assets into the residential market, which desperately needs it, but it’s also delivering it to the part of the market that needs it the most. Now, arguably, there’s a lot of other parts that need it even more, but part of the challenge with what we do is learning from pushing the part of the market that can afford to test and innovate, but then quickly transitioning those learnings into the part of the market that don’t have those skill sets or the capital available.

So, our transition into affordable housing with this strategy is really important. It’s showing that sustainability doesn’t necessarily need to be an either-or. They don’t need to be played off against each other, but it’s not a cost. It’s being looked at as an investment, given that the benefits go through to the underlying tenant, so the strategy is underpinned by an integrated ESG approach. So that’s looking to optimise ESG, which allows a least cost pathway approach taken to it. What I mean by that is this is not a strategy that at all costs needs to deliver A, B, and C. It’s looking at a project, and on an optimised basis, how can we deliver as close to a zero-carbon ready building within the project without doing unnecessary CapEx.

So, that’s looking at very easily manageable components, the energy efficiency, ensuring that the asset is a fully electric asset, not exposed to gas from the outset. Looking at the energy management technology that goes into these assets so the residents can have data and change their usage behaviors, enabling the assets to be plugged into renewable sources so the underlying tenants can get those benefits as well. It’s more of an enabling strategy than a bells and whistles silver bullet. This is a commercial quality ESG product delivered to an affordable part of the market. This is more of an optimised strategy showing that supply can be delivered, and supply can be delivered with the benefit of enhanced ESG outcomes as opposed to an either-or approach.

Richard: Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing part of that. Can I ask the final question on the case study? What is the biggest learning that you’d like, whether it’s government or the private sector or finance or whoever it is to be aware of? If you had your time again, what would you do differently, in terms of a lesson learned?

Michael: Lessons learned. It’s probably acknowledging and accepting that we need to be doing all things at once. This is not a sequential, let’s tackle what we know, and let’s have a look at the next problem. We’re not going to get to 2050 and hit our targets if we take that approach. So, it does mean that we need to be operating in all markets and pushing all standards all at one time. It’s also acknowledging that there is no perfect outcome, this is about trying to appreciate how do you get capital in the market to get a standardised approach to achieving these set objectives, so you can’t let perfect get in the way of progress, which is another big lesson we’ve learned.

The other critical factor is there needs to be genuine alignment with all parties. ESG, if it’s done the right way, it’s a win-win for all parties involved, and that’s parties delivering and managing the capital, delivering the assets, but also the occupants in the assets. This doesn’t necessarily have to be done at a cost to someone in that value chain. ESG that’s done on an integrated basis can deliver outcomes, beneficial outcomes to everyone that’s involved, and we’ve learned that from what’s been occurring in the European landscape where they’ve probably been a bit further down the path of mandatory reporting and standardised policy frameworks for a market to then evolve underneath that to show that there is an integrated way to approach this without actually impacting traditional commercial fundamentals. So, I think that that balance of not being caught up in perfect, ensuring that no part of the market is being left behind, and also having a look at global best practice, because that’ll ensure that the most productive outcome is achieved in these projects as opposed to notional ones.

Richard: Great. Well, look, the final question from me today, I wanted to jump on your comments about global best practice. Is there a jurisdiction that’s doing this, that’s the market leader? I know, for example, for Build to Rent, you can look to the United States, which seems to be the most mature markets, and you can learn lessons. Where is the global leader that you found in your experience or in your travels that’s doing this the best?

Michael: It varies pretty significantly. As you said, you can hone in on the financial model. You can hone in on emerging sectors in the Australian landscape like BTR, and then look at okay, from a historical perspective, who’s been doing it longer and start learning there.

Our lens obviously is more sustainability related, so when we look at the decarbonisation challenges, we’ve got scope two emissions, which is energy efficiency, and that’s really a technology and innovation play in terms of how do we get better performing assets, and that’s obviously looking at some European and North American markets in terms of the technologies that are being deployed into those assets, and operating in probably a more constrained grid environment which has forced those buildings to evolve a little bit more, so we’re looking there for a bit of innovation for what’s being worked on in the Australian landscape for energy transition.

If we look at scope three emissions obviously that’s a big talking point in the market in terms of how do we deliver assets with lower upfront embodied carbon but also operationally less carbon in terms of fit outs and the like. We’ve got a big focus on timber, the Nordic countries have been operating working with timber for a long time and not just because of the environmental benefits because they realise that the efficiencies that brings to a project and the health benefits it does and it’s a big societal push, but with that has evolved into a level of maturity on how to work with that type of material. So when we’re looking at lowering body carbon materials, that European market is a very good one.

The other one that we really like seeing, and this probably lends itself more to the capital markets is that AU taxonomy, there’s trillions of capital that is operating under that framework that is maturing pretty rapidly. We’re seeing everything from managed credit strategies evolve out of that and starting to branch out to global strategies and seeing Australia as a very strong thematic from a policy landscape and a decarbonisation landscape for them to apply their credit strategy into a lot of the managed capital. AXA, another example coming out of Europe, obviously, have been thinking about and adapting and deploying sustainable practices through their managed positions. Having €3 billion of affordable housing under management gave us a lot of conviction that they know how to actually deploy these assets and manage these assets with the end user in mind.

And then you look at individual jurisdictions, you got London has a very, very good circularity policy landscape in terms of protection of existing buildings. You’ve got, Denmark who’s very much leading on the embodied carbon and having carbon intensity measures within policy on their on their building assets. So, there’s different location depending on the solution we’re looking at, but we’re seeing all of those cumulatively coming together as being really relevant for the Australian landscape. Our role is to find those solutions, test those principles through our investments in the Australian landscape, and then try to deliver that demonstration value and that knowledge sharing into the Australian economy so that we can start building momentum and start tackling this transition.

Richard: Well, Michael, you’re certainly a wealth of knowledge, so thank you very much for that. That’s all I wanted to ask you today. But before we leave, did you have anything else you wanted to add on this topic again in the spirit of educating the industry?

Michael: Probably the only thing I’d leave with is the property market in Australia is the best placed for decarbonisation. I say that because of the scale of the market, but also our experience is, it’s the most sophisticated market with adopting innovation and finding new ways to do things better. ESG is an element of that.

So, we’re seeing while the property market does emit a lot of carbon, it is responsible for 23% of Australia’s emissions, it’s got a far greater role to play in terms of enabling the rest of the market. That’s where innovation is starting to come about in the Australian landscape, both on a finance perspective and an asset management/asset delivery perspective. We’re seeing a lot of opportunity in the energy market, but what role are buildings going to play as part of this energy transition? Because energy, obviously, is a commodity in itself, and we’re seeing a lot of property groups starting to understand and look at the opportunities that managing energy has to play with, not only delivering a high performing asset, but looking at commercial opportunities to vertically integrate some of those solutions within their organisation. So, there’s a lot of innovation that’s on the doorstep I think in the Australian landscape, which is really exciting.

Richard: Fantastic. And, again, I wanted to thank you so much for your time and your expertise. I’ll put links to your profile and the CEFC. I think a lot of listeners now certainly know who you are. Feel free to either reach out to Michael or his team or myself if you are interested.

And I know we’re doing a few bodies of work in the Build to Sell or Build to Rent space about the green premium. And certainly, there are jurisdictions overseas that we can learn from and I’m doing a bit of research into them. But thank you also for sharing your views and your insights. It goes a long way to educating the industry. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Michael: Thanks for having me, Richard.

Richard: And thanks everyone for listening.

Hi, everyone. I hope that you really enjoyed this session with Michael and learned a lot about the opportunity for progressive or green finance in the Australian market, particularly the residential markets. I’m absolutely convinced that there’s a significant opportunity moving forward, and it’s one of the structural changes that, certainly, I’m aware of and I’m starting to talk with financiers or developers, and we’re looking at more mature markets overseas to see where the Australian market could potentially go.

Three findings for today that I’d like everyone to go away and think about and potentially either reach out to myself or reach out to Michael about are as follows. I loved his comments about the green premium or the brown discount and basically looking at more and more at a brown discount in that risk-based approach to assessing assets into the future. I think that’s a really clever analogy or way of looking at it, and I’d be interested to see how finance starts to approach it with that brown discounts moving forward with the investment and the development decisions.

The second key point was definitely Michael’s very well-made one about financing needing proper governance to proceed. And I think that goes hand in hand with the tools, racing tools or benchmarking tools to help the markets compare assets to one another and to rate them. Again, it often comes back to finance, almost always comes back to finance. And having those tools against which to benchmark projects, I think, are absolutely critical.

And then finally, I loved Michael’s points, and it applies not just to this segment of the investment spectrum, but also for affordable housing or BTR. Don’t get it caught up with perfection. It’s really progress, and that’s what will make things move forward and help things to derisk. And when I look at a lot of segments of the market, whether it’s student housing in Australia, for example, or even the evolution of Built to Sell apartments that initially were investor grade and that have evolved into different tiers of owner occupier and then high-end and now even hotel branded apartments. The same thing is happening, and it’s a stepped change across the industry. So, again, try not to get caught up with absolute perfection at the expense of progress.

Thanks very much. Hope you enjoyed this episode, and please tune into the next one.

Thank you very much for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please make sure to subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode as we’ve got more exciting content coming. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave us a review on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts as it really helps us to grow. Also, follow us on Instagram at Precisely Property for updates and join the conversation.

If you’d like to get in touch with us, subscribe to our newsletter via our website, charterkc.com.au, or write to us at podcast@charterkc.com.au. Lastly, if you found this episode interesting, please share it with your friends and family. Thank you again for listening and stay tuned for our next episode dropping in two weeks’ time, plus bonus content also on the horizon.

Disclaimer: Precisely Property is a podcast presented by Charter Keck Cramer and is for educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be taken as investment or financial advice.

Please engage the services of an appropriate professional adviser to provide advice suitable to your personal circumstances. The views expressed by our podcast guests may not represent those of Charter Keck Cramer.