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This study examines the relationship between environmental building certification Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM-NL) and office rents in the Dutch office market.

A hedonic price model was used to assess the impact of BREEAM certification on office rents. The study is based on 4,355 rent transactions in the period 2015 to mid-2022, in which 331 transactions took place in certified office buildings and 4,024 transactions in non-certified office buildings.

The results provide empirical evidence on quantitative economic benefits of BREEAM-certified offices in the Netherlands. After controlling for all important office rent determinants, the results show a rental premium for certified office buildings of 10.3% on average. The green premiums highly differ across submarkets and vary between 5.1 and 12.6% in the five largest Dutch cities. Additionally, the results show significant positive correlation between BREEAM-NL label score and rents, whereby better performing buildings generally command higher rents.

The study contributes to the current literature on green building economics by providing, as one of the first, empirical evidence on the existence of financial benefits for BREEAM-certified office buildings in the Dutch office market.

Commercial real estate (CRE) indicators typically include asset deals and exclude share deals. This study aims to explore the phenomenon of real estate share deals and assess whether omitting these transactions results in indicators that do not accurately reflect the market.

Various registers in the Netherlands were used to estimate transaction volumes, total values and price developments of both share and asset deals. Share deals are company transfers and its transactions cover more than real estate. To estimate the contribution of real estate in share deals, valuations were used.

In the Netherlands, share deals are most prominent for rental dwellings. Adding share deals to volume and value indicators seems required. In price development estimates, significant differences were found for dwellings between share and asset deals. Price indices should, therefore, also include share deals, but in practice this is difficult and has little impact on the outcomes due to the low weight of share deals.

Legislation has a major impact on choosing a share or asset deal. The significance of share deals is expected to vary amongst countries. Performing similar research in other countries will contribute in harmonising real estate indicators.

Statistical agencies face many challenges in the construction of CRE indicators. This study provides statisticians knowledge that can be used to evaluate possible data gaps.

This is the first study to estimate indicators of real estate share deals and compare these to asset deal indicators.