Mr. Winters is the managing principal of Evolution Partners, an advisory firm specializing in high performance, environmentally responsible real estate projects. Mr. Winters works with leading real estate developers and owners across North America to financially maximize a client’s “return on sustainability” by triangulating and coordinating the market positioning/messaging, leasing, and financing perspectives which includes debt and equity capital raising for green projects. Mr. Winters also consults with select real estate firms on both corporate strategy and asset-specific strategy concerning sustainability-related aspects, then works directly with executive management on strategy implementation.
He was the first, and remains one of the few, LEED-accredited financial professionals. He is contributing author to two ULI textbooks including “Professional Real Estate Development: The ULI Guide to the Business” and “Green Office Buildings: A Practical Guide to Development”, has written numerous trade journal articles on green building finance, and has served as special advisor to Building Design & Construction’s white paper “Green Buildings and the Bottom Line”.
Mr. Winters has been a keynote speaker and/or panelist at industry events across North America including the ULI’s national conferences on sustainability, Canadian Real Estate Forum, Greenbuild, ULI / NAIOP / USGBC regional conferences, the Green Building Alliance, BetterBricks, Cascadia Northwest, NAREC, Canada USGBC, and the Federal Home Loan Banks among many others. He is a member of the Gerson Lehrman Group Real Estate former Vice Chairman of the Board for the USGBC Baltimore Chapter.
In 2006, he was a member of the District of Columbia Mayor’s Green Building Task Force in which worked to successfully pass the DC Green Building Act. He is currently involved in an international capital markets initiative to incorporate green building attributes into investment banking origination and rating agency underwriting processes. He is also involved in several start-up companies including LoraxPRO, a software firm designed as a “Virtual LEED Consultant”.
He earned his Masters in Real Estate Finance and Development from Harvard Graduate School of Design, an MBA from Southern Methodist University, and is an alumni of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s real estate program. He is an adjunct professor in the Real Estate Development program at University of Maryland.
Topic for Green Building Focus
The Green Building Underwriting Standard: Maximizing Your Financial Return on Sustainability.
More About the Topic
The Green Building Underwriting Standard and the CMP Green Value Score is a straightforward, easy-to-implement tool allowing lenders, private equity investors, developers, and real estate owners the ability to rate an asset’s “greenness” at the time of financing or acquisition. The tool is structured as an underwriting overlay that enhances current underwriting practices, increases transparency, and serves as an indicator of investment risk and long-term asset value.
The CMP Green Value Score takes into account asset features that lead to energy and water efficiency, reducing current operating costs while also insulating tenants from future energy and water price increases and price volatility. The CMP Green Value Score incorporates location-based attributes that affect a tenant’s commuting patterns and/or carbon footprint, as well as factors inherent to indoor environmental quality that can affect rents, risk, and liability exposure.
Following an analysis as detailed in this Standard, an asset can be assigned a CMP Green Value Score from 0-100 based on the presence or absence of financially tangible criteria that influence the asset’s financial, operational, and market-based risk profile. Understanding an asset’s green profile and CMP Green Value Score on a relative basis allows for improved decision metrics along with greater market transparency across all facets of the investment decision process.
The tool is applicable to asset-based and portfolio-based analysis and investment decision processes. Once a specific asset’s CMP Green Value Score is determined, this analysis can be expanded to the portfolio level through an aggregation of asset-specific CMP Green Value Scores on a weighted basis improving investment decision making and investor reporting.
The Standard addresses critical market pressures that include the rapid and continuing rise in conventional energy and water costs, increased ongoing operating costs, exposure to price volatility, tenant preferences swaying in favor of green buildings, and current/future climate-change issues. Implementation will improve underwriting processes leading to increased capital market confidence. Ultimately, determining and disclosing an asset’s CMP Green Score will better enable investors to fulfill fiduciary responsibilities, improve real estate industry underwriting, and lead to better risk-adjusted investment decisions.