What the Future Holds – a Study on the Environmental Pressure Affecting the Real Estate Market

Over the past few years, environmental sustainability as a whole has gained significantly more attention globally, and the connection between sustainability and the built environment has been made clear. The built environment is now more widely known to have major implications on both climate change, and resource use. This study draws on a previous study, which identified environmental pressure as one of the key future forces of change in the real estate market. The findings of the earlier study are re-visited to establish which of the expected outcomes have realized, which have proved to be irrelevant, and which might still occur in the future.Future studies employ a number of different tools and methods to forecast the future. This study first utilizes a method called environmental scanning to reveal the forces through which the environmental pressure shapes the current real estate market. Following the environmental scanning, the possible impacts of the forces are identified and their causal relationships are structured with the help of a method called the futures wheel. The futures wheel is a qualitative method based on expert opinions, and resembles structural brainstorming. The results of the future wheels are complemented utilising expert interviews. The results are analysed to verify the potential future impacts of those forces, and to finally arrive to a consensus about the most probable future impacts of the forces as currently foreseen.The study finds that while the future views have developed from the earlier study, few key issues remain. More specifically, the presumed primary sustainability influences are still related to the rise in demand of green buildings, and the existing density paradigm in urban planning. Another important finding is that, not all identified influences derive from environmental pressure, but stem from other major forces of change, such as urbanisation or digitalisation.The study offers insight into potential future pathways in the field of sustainable real estate. Most importantly, the study design enables attaining a holistic view of the possible impacts to the real estate market, as the combined methods reveal the complex relationships and even indirect impacts that could otherwise go unnoticed.