Sustainable Real Estate Trends Across Maslow’s Portfolio

With the built environment contributing around 40% to global emissions, our industry is under immense pressure to revolutionise the way in which we deliver housing. In light of the challenges the built environment faces, I am pleased to see that across our portfolio, there has been a strong transition to heat recovery systems, all electric or air source heat pumps in lieu of dependency on fossil fuel alternatives. This, complemented by passive design standards has enabled notable net gains on Part L of the building regulation standards and it is encouraging to see developers doing their part to help the country achieve a ‘net zero’ ecosystem.

There are also more and more creative building management systems being introduced within PBSA and BTR assets coming to fruition through IoT’s and multi sensors that are being incorporated into the design to determine actual use and occupancy of communal areas and amenities. This will allow the assets to be as energy efficient as possible and has proven highly attractive to bulk purchasers and portfolio sales.

What the future holds:

I am hugely excited to see an expansion into BIM modelling and digital twins to alleviate design performance gaps. Maslow’s growth into Modular/MMC procurement and delivery will naturally synergise with these technologies and enable us to expand our underwriting capabilities under a whole-lifecycle lead approach.

From a raw materials outlook, I foresee an increasing use of cross-Laminated timber/ glue-Laminated structures in low and medium rise developments, ethically sourced and accredited from the FSC (or equivalent). It has also been fascinating to see new technologies that have proven the concept of introducing recycled CO₂ into fresh concrete to reduce its carbon footprint without compromising performance, as well as the growing use of hempcrete to create a robust, thermally efficient envelope and structure.