How can Impact real estate investment in South Africa be described?
Direct real estate impact investing is an investment in real estate, which has an intentional focus on measurable positive social impact above the norm, embedding impact into everything we do and influencing all stakeholders, alongside a good financial return.
Does impact investing require the real estate industry to think in a different way – and is the industry capable of doing this?
Impact investing requires the real estate industry to think about the long-term impacts of investments and look for opportunities that achieve multiple objectives – not just financial and positive social and environmental impact, but at the nexus of both. It requires us to look at how we do business and who we do business with, to hold ourselves to a standard of excellence, that we believe will enhance performance over time. The focus is no longer on misusing people’s misfortune to enrich themselves, which was the norm in the distressed real estate industry for many years.
Why do astute real estate investors have such a strong drive towards impact real estate investment?
Impact investing is a trend driven by underlying investors, wanting to better understand how their money is being applied and the impact it makes. As an industry, we have moved away from simply avoiding investments, that are perceived as being harmful, to proactively seek out opportunities to achieve a positive result.
Impact investing in real estate, to date, has focused on positive environmental impact – energy efficiency, and so on – but leading asset originators like Wealth Assist for example – through more innovative approaches of investing in the real estate market, but still linked to social enterprise models, are currently making a huge social impact.
Real estate impact investment funds are now being created by specialist impact investment managers with other initiatives from mainstream asset managers also being implemented.
Reasons why the impact investing trend is taking hold in the real estate sector:
- There is great interest in impact investment overall since the past decades have shown the need to better align investment with environmental and social outcomes – and what happens when these outcomes don’t align
- There is a clear opportunity for positive social impact through real estate investment – the need for both residential and commercial real estate to scale up social enterprise models is huge and still largely unmet.
- There is increasing diversity, track record, and scale to the opportunity investors have in this area, and real estate is an asset class they are already comfortable with.
What Impact is Wealth Assist (and the Assist Group) making?
Make a social impact in the lives of people and communities by assisting to stop the sale in executions and legal action of properties – build a family structure and prevent the breakdown of social fabric through:
- Helping real estate owners in distress to recover
- Minimizing potential loss of real estate or proceeds
- Generate measurable, beneficial social impact alongside above market related, sustainable financial returns
To be continued in the next issue: How to onboard as an IMPACT REAL ESTATE INVESTOR
Get in touch with us today and register with Wealth Assist in four easy steps and start making your first measurable impact real estate investment
