ENTERPRISE RETROFIT AUDIT PROTOCOL ESTABLISHED TO STANDARDIZE GREEN AUDITS FOR THE NATION'S AFFORDABLE HOUSING STOCK

February 4, 2010

COLUMBIA, MD – (February 4, 2010) - Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. (Enterprise) and Recap Real Estate Advisors today announced the joint development of a green audit protocol for existing affordable multifamily buildings. ...This new protocol gives the user an evaluation of the physical and capital needs of a building that is complete and can be underwritten. It incorporates the energy audit as a component of a broader capital needs assessment (CNA) and allows for cost projection benefits. ...

“With this protocol, we will help building owners, lenders and providers of public subsidies establish clear guidelines for how to approach evaluating the potential retrofit of a building,” said Dana Bourland, vice president of Enterprise Green Initiatives, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. “As we seek to improve the energy and water efficiency in a multifamily property, we must use financial resources efficiently as well. That requires a complete understanding of how the building is currently operating and what its total needs will be over the next 20 years in order to provide decent housing to its tenants.”

“Greening an existing property is a process, not a single event,” said David Smith, CEO of Recap Real Estate Advisors. “If we want to make progress toward greener, healthier multifamily housing, we have to retrofit properties, incrementally, over time. But owners and lenders are reluctant to make retrofit decisions without consistent, well-grounded financial underwriting. Now, they have it.”

The Enterprise Retrofit Audit Protocol establishes a clear methodology that can be applied nationally, resulting in better decision making and more consistent comparisons. Enterprise will collect and analyze data and publish its findings to enable the retrofit of the national affordable portfolio and to further the collective effort.

On-Site Insight, a wholly owned subsidiary of Recap Real Estate Advisors, developed the green capital needs assessment (GCNA) built upon its industry recognized CNA. Over the past two decades, On-Site Insight has performed more than 6,000 assessments to help building owners with their capital planning. Enterprise is using the GCNA as an underwriting tool as it seeks to retrofit multifamily properties nationally. Environmentally centered features of the GCNA include energy and water audits, air quality testing and a detailed analysis of “sensible green” improvements. Results are presented with metrics designed for decision making, including Simple Payback, Savings to Investment Ratio (SIR), Green Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Life-Cycle Net Present Value (NPV). As a Recap Real Estate Advisors product, the GCNA is also commercially available to any multifamily property owner with a need for green capital planning.

“To make a significant impact on resource conservation, global climate change and other pressing environmental challenges, greening our nation’s existing housing stock is critical. Over half of the existing housing stock was built before the first energy codes were introduced,” said Nate Kredich, vice president, Residential Market Development, U.S. Green Building Council. “There is a need for reliable and consistent retrofit standards in order to access private capital to finance the most cost-effective improvements. The work that Enterprise and Recap Real Estate Advisors have done with the Enterprise Retrofit Audit Protocol is a significant step forward in this regard.”

About Recap Real Estate Advisors

Recap Real Estate Advisors is a Boston-based financial services company that provides solutions to complex multifamily asset problems. It is the financial services and asset management group of CAS Partners.  Over the company’s history, Recap Real Estate Advisors has completed transactions on more than 780 properties nationwide, with aggregate property value of more than $3.5 billion. It currently manages nearly $4 billion in multifamily assets. Through its wholly owned subsidiary On-Site Insight, it has performed more than 6,000 capital needs assessments. Visit www.recapadvisors.com.  

Contact

Alex Jablokow
T: 617.338.9484 x5907