REITs sector guidance

Criteria
1

Hi,

Could you please confirm whether a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) falls under the SBTi financial institutions or buildings sector guidance?

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Matias

2

Hi Matias,

Currently mortgage REITs (mREITs) fall under the SBTi FI guidance. All other REITs (i.e. equity REITs) would fall under the Buildings Guidance due to inventory scoping considerations.

Thanks for your question,
Hunter

3

Hi Hunter,

Please can you confirm if a Equity REIT with less than 500 FTE’s would fall under the SME route or Standard Route (Buildings Guidance)?

Thanks,
Katie

4

Hi Katie,

On the corporate side, the SBTi provides a streamlined target validation route for SMEs, where an SME is defined as a non-subsidiary, independent company with fewer than 500 employees.

It should be noted that this(along with the consideration of eREITs being included as an activity of an FI) may be updated upon adoption of the new Buildings guidance after public consultation and upcoming FI Framework updates.

Best,
Hunter

5

Thanks Howard. To confirm i have understood correctly, for now the <500 REIT should submit targets via the streamlined SBTi route but this could change in the future with updated buildings & Fi Guidance?

Do you have any indication on expected timelines for this?

6

If the REIT is not a mREIT, I believe you are correct that it will be considered as an SME for submission requirements of targets.

A provisional timeline for the buildings work is available on their webpage: Buildings - Science Based Targets

Currently there is a public consultation period running until July 16th, which you are welcome to provide feedback to, before it will be finalized and released in the coming months. More information on how this may be considered is included in the consultation document at the link above.

Once in force, along with the updates to the FI Near-term guidance coming this fall, how your submission will be considered is subject to the updated guidance documents.