Reporting of Social and Governance Measures in 2020 and 2021 by Real Estate Companies Stemming from German-Speaking Countries

Abstract

In recent years, Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) re­lated rules such as the Taxonomy Regulation of the European Union (EU) have had a lasting impact on the real estate industry and other market participants, and this trend is expected to continue. This study compares European regulation with common sustainability reporting practices in the Real Estate (RE) Sector in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH re­gion). The aim is to investigate what type of information related to em­ployees and other social and governance issues is being provided and by how many of the largest RE firms are in the years 2020 and 2021. Our find­ings show that 20 out of 35 sustainability measures are more often report­ed in 2021 than in 2020. Although the trend is positive, there is still a lot of room for improving reporting quality. Small reporting frequencies are ob­servable in the case of the following ESG measures: violations of the code of conduct (mentioned 1 time in 2020 and 2 times in 2021), safety inspec­tions of buildings (mentioned 5 times in 2020 and 8 times in 2021), the to­tal number of suppliers (mentioned 4 times in 2020 and 6 times in 2021), the share of expenses for local suppliers in % (mentioned 2 times in 2020 and 3 times in 2021), and obtained well-being certificates (reported by 5 firms in 2020 and 4 ones in 2021). Only 5 in 2021 (2 in 2020) firms planned to tie the board compensation to sustainability measures. These findings are important for individuals, companies, institutions and policymakers introducing new sustainability reporting rules in Europe as not only the real estate industry needs to prepare for the uniform EU taxonomy report­ing requirements besides CSRD in the future.