A Proposed Evaluation Method of China’s Socially Responsible Real Estate Development

the face of a slower economic growth since 2012, the Chinese real estate market has undergone structural changes. Most major companies are shifting away from developing land and construction buildings to creating innovative management and marketing schemes to lower property vacancy rate or to renovate underutilized buildings in strategic locations. To create a new corporate image, many companies have labeled themselves as socially responsible real estate developers. Yet the problem of this branding approach is that there is no generally agreed upon definition of socially responsible real estate development (SRRED). Nor are there any good examples to show developers how to undertake this kind of investment. To do both, we need an impartial and effective evaluation method to identify socially responsible real estate in China.

Although there exist some real estate assessment systems, their criteria are too narrowly defined and/or lack the supports from academics, communities, public authorities, and professional groups. These drawbacks undermine the credibility of these real estate performance evaluations.

We propose to create a SSRED evaluation method that considers comprehensively the following values affected directly and indirectly by real estate development:

(*) Economic benefits for the national and regional economies and the real estate sector.
(*) Environmental sustainability.
(*) Social equality and development.
(*) Social and economic benefits for the city.
(*) Profitability and product quality.
(*) Scalability.

Most importantly, we will focus on building consensus among key stakeholders such as architects, community groups, public authorities, real estate developers and professionals, and urban planners on the evaluation criteria that reflect the above-mentioned values. A set of tentative indicators will be complied based on the experiences of international and Chinese evaluation systems. Then an expert group meeting will be held to discuss and refine the proposed matrix, which will be tested by applying it to performance evaluation of 24 projects in six cities. With the help from experts from a multi-disciplinary background, we will use the assessment outcomes to determine the applicability of the proposed SSRED evaluation method to different real estate projects across China. Ample consultations with experts, public officials, and communities will be conducted to ensure that decisions are made in an open and inclusive manner.