First Tenant Rep Firm In The U. S. To Endorse And Promote 'Green' Standards
The Tenant Rep Agency, LLC, the first tenant representation real estate brokerage company in the United States to endorse and promote "GREEN" standards and LEED Certified buildings.
St. Louis, Missouri (PRWEB) October 17, 2007
The Tenant Rep Agency, LLC is the first tenant representation real estate brokerage company in the United States to endorse and promote "GREEN" standards, the environmentally sustainable standards for buildings, in the representation of all of its clients. Green building standards are the U. S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) designation and is noted as the industry's best gauge for measuring a building's degree of "greenness".
Typically, aligning with LEED designation standards is purely a landlord or developer issue; they are the parties who make the economic and environmental decision to achieve LEED designation. But, because The Tenant Rep Agency has involvement with tenants several years before an office construction process, the company is in the best position to introduce the material benefits of LEED, or "green" standards and work with its clients to consider degree of "greenness" of each building under consideration.
Real estate property management or development companies already are beefing up their response to LEED certification as newer buildings are built and older buildings are retrofitted. Architectural firms are quickly working through the certification process to keep up with the demand of owners.
For an energy example, According to National Real Estate Investor(1) and The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), a professional trade association among whose members either own or manage commercial real estate, "The commercial real estate industry spends $24 billion annually on energy, contributing up to 18% of the carbon emissions in the U. S. If only 2,000 buildings adopted (BOMA's) low-cost best practices over the next three years, the result would be $400 million savings in operating costs and a 6.6 billion pound reduction in carbon dioxide emissions."
While The Tenant Rep Agency does not require its clients to accept the LEED or Green standards, the real estate agency has adopted the LEED standard as their official benchmark of good stewardship of the many construction and leasing projects its represents. The decision of the tenant in the development of construction and occupational use is theirs alone to make. However, The Tenant Rep Agency utilizes its trusted and influential brokerage position in the process to bring the tenant, who may know very little about the benefits of Green, into full understanding of them.
According to Christopher Desloge, Chairman of The Tenant Rep Agency, "It has long been assumed that promotion of Green benefits or LEED certification construction was the exclusive venue of the real estate owner or as promulgated through their developer or property manager. In fact, as the tenant alone provides the means by which landlords make their money, it seemed more than obvious that the tenant should know about and drive the Green ideas first…especially when it is important to disqualify those landlords that do not or can not meet the Green standards."
Desloge states that he was told by a competitor that real estate agents don't belong in promoting one concept over another, and that agents are to remain neutral. Desloge's response is simple, "Stewardship of environmental essentials and personal health are not topics on which an informed and caring brokerage agent can remain silent. In one office lease alone of 20,000 sq. ft. there are hundreds of items that can be adjusted to sustain good employee health and drastically improve environmental impacts."
Desloge quotes directly from the International Facility Management Association that "tenants recognize the true value of a healthy indoor environment as it relates to enhanced employee productivity and decreased susceptibility to the molds and maladies contributing to 'sick building syndrome.' This is a significant benefit when tenants consider how much time their employees spend at work, and the studies by EPA and other agencies indicating indoor levels of pollutants may be two to five times higher than outdoor levels. For tenants, the enhanced productivity and health benefits provided by a LEED-certified building add to cost savings generated by the operating efficiencies mentioned previously. Thus, the health benefits of leasing in a LEED building might even contribute to a firm's bottom line." (2)
Desloge continues, "As the first real estate brokerage agency in the country, and specifically tenant representation, to accept and promote LEED standards, I challenge and urge ALL brokerages in the country to join our leadership in promoting this important stewardship."
The Tenant Rep Agency can be located at www. tenantrepagency. com
For More information, contact:
Christopher D. Desloge
877-952-6356
References
(1) National Real Estate Investor, Altruistic or Opportunistic? By Toccoa Switzer, Penton Media, Inc. Jul 1, 2006, http://nreionline. com/mag/real_estate_altruistic_opportunistic/ (http://nreionline. com/mag/real_estate_altruistic_opportunistic/)
(2) Green Building and LEED Certification: A New Standard in Property Management By Holly Hughes, Vice-President, Carter, Atlanta, Georgia, undated, http://www. ifmaatlanta. org/leed. pd (http://www. ifmaatlanta. org/leed. pd)
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