Promoting sustainability in the United States multifamily property management industry

Efforts to promote environmental sustainability in the real estate industry continue to proliferate throughout the United States in response to both economic and social forces. This trend has received a considerable amount of attention in the academic literature, yet relatively little is known about the importance of sustainability to third-party property management firms operating in the multifamily sector of the housing market. For those interested in promoting sustainability, an important question that arises is whether barriers to environmentally-friendly business practices commonly observed throughout the housing industry extend to the market for third-party property management services. A second question of equal relevance focuses on determining what sustainability initiatives third-party property management firms are actually using in their efforts to procure new clients or retain existing ones. The qualitative analysis presented in this paper is one of the first to the authors' knowledge to explore third-party property managers' perceptions about sustainability in an attempt to address the aforementioned issues. The findings of this study support two overarching conclusions. First, sustainability is increasingly being promoted by large, third-party property management firms in the multifamily housing industry. Nonetheless, numerous barriers are perceived to exist that may impinge upon future efforts to reduce the environmental impact of the rental housing stock. Second, some firms appear to be better positioned than others to take advantage of sustainability initiatives as a result of the types of properties they manage and the characteristics of the owners they represent.