Institutional investors expect higher long-term returns due to ESG criteria

The majority of institutional investors (51 percent) expect higher long-term returns on real estate if ESG criteria are taken into account when making investment decisions. That is the key finding of a survey of approximately 100 respondents conducted by Warburg-HIH Invest Real Estate (Warburg-HIH Invest). Of those surveyed, 11 percent said they would even accept a 0.2 percentage point lower return to meet ESG criteria. Approximately 70 percent said ESG criteria were relevant to their investment decisions or that they wanted to introduce them soon. However, the majority of institutional investors are still implementing such criteria. Around 55 percent plan to introduce them in the medium term, while just 13 percent do not plan to implement any sustainability criteria.

“Institutional investors are intensively engaged with the question of ESG. The survey confirms our impressions from numerous discussions with our customers. Most investors are very open to the topic. They are