Australia Green Office Performance

This paper analyzes the performance of Green Star office buildings in Australia’s three largest office markets (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane). The COVID pandemic and climate change concerns, have led to increased interest among institutional investors in green buildings. Thus, it is important to understand how Green Star office has performed on a relative basis for both investment and operations.

Utilizing a paired t-test, this paper analyzed historic data from Q1 2009 through Q1 2022 to compare the quarterly mean performance of Green Star prime office with the quarterly mean performance of all prime office across variables such as total return, vacancy and net operating costs. Key findings are that Green Star prime office had higher total returns, lower vacancy, higher rent receivable per sqm and lower net operating costs per sqm, relative to all prime office and these are significant at the 5% level for the period of study.