EPRA & INREV: Staying Ahead of Rising Benchmark Expectations

Author

Megan Hall

How listed companies and non-listed funds can use better data, clearer disclosures and stronger analysis to meet rising investor expectations.

Sustainability regulation is being simplified, but investor expectations haven’t eased, and the latest evidence from the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) and the European Association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (INREV) disclosures and research suggests the bar is still rising. Listed and non-listed real estate report through different routes, yet investors are increasingly asking both for the same things. Strong reporting now depends more on judgement than on volume, and the next step is linking it to value.

So, what does good reporting look like in practice, and how can organisations move beyond disclosure to understand what sustainability is worth? Drawing on the latest EPRA and INREV research, this article explains where the two frameworks overlap, what the evidence shows and what managers can prioritise ahead of their next reporting cycle.

EPRA and INREV: understanding the two frameworks

EPRA and INREV serve different parts of the real estate market, but both help investors judge the quality and consistency of sustainability information.

EPRA: listed real estate	INREV: non-listed real estate
The Sustainability Best Practices Recommendations (sBPR) guide how listed property companies report sustainability performance.	The Sustainability Guidelines, applied since January 2024, set expectations for fund managers. The ESG Standard Data Delivery Sheet (ESG SDDS) gives investors a standard template for comparing them, though an aligned format can also be used.
EPRA publicly assesses reporting each year, so every assessed company’s position is visible.	There’s no public scorecard. Investors compare managers privately, through fund disclosures and due diligence.
Core emphasis: transparent data, reporting boundaries, methodologies and explanations of performance.	Core emphasis: fund- and asset-level data, materiality, consistent reporting and climate strategy.

What the latest evidence tells us

This year, 104 of the 160 listed property companies assessed by EPRA earned an award for sustainability reporting, 93 of them at Gold. As EPRA puts it, “the bar is rising at the very top of the distribution” (EPRA sBPR Awards Report 2026). Yet more than a third (56) didn’t reach the Bronze threshold. When more than half of the companies EPRA assesses reach Gold, not having an award can be visible to investors.

In a recent survey cited by EPRA and KPMG, 76% of real estate investors said sustainability had affected their investment decisions over the past year or two (EPRA/KPMG, July 2026). Non-listed funds face the same scrutiny. Sustainability strategy is one of the first questions in INREV’s standard due diligence questionnaire (INREV DDQ guide, 2025), and while sustainability adoption has dipped among US institutions, investors in Europe continue to prioritise it (Hodes Weill, 2025). In our work with fund managers, the questions tend to focus on data quality, boundaries and climate strategy.

The takeaway is not that every organisation should disclose more indicators. It’s that useful reporting lets investors understand what the numbers cover, why they have changed and how confident they can be in them.

Voluntary is the new mandatory

With CSRD now limited to companies with more than 1,000 employees and over €450 million in turnover (Latham & Watkins, 2026), many listed property companies are likely to fall outside it altogether. That makes the sBPR, alongside the EU’s new voluntary reporting standard (Linklaters, 2026), their main way of showing investors credible data. For non-listed funds, SFDR 2.0 is still being negotiated (Travers Smith, 2026), so INREV’s guidelines offer the more stable reference point.

It would be easy to read this as a signal to ease off, but we think that would be a mistake. Neither EPRA nor INREV is legally required but treating them as optional because regulation has eased in other areas is a reputational risk, not a cost saving. EPRA now calls sustainability reporting “a settled practice in European listed real estate rather than an emerging one”, and investors expect reliable data, clear boundaries, sound materiality reasoning and a credible climate strategy from listed companies and funds alike. EPRA and INREV give the sector a common way of showing it.

Report better, not more

The market has moved on from checklist-style disclosure. The strongest reports explain why their numbers moved, are honest about estimates and draw clear boundaries.

For EPRA, the largest gap between Gold and the rest is simply presentation: 96% of Gold winners report all their EPRA measures in one place, against 4% of companies without an award. But several of the next-largest gaps are about methodology: how boundaries are drawn and how estimates are made. Among Gold winners, 95% clearly set out landlord and tenant boundaries and 88% explain how they estimate missing utility data, against 9% and 6% of companies without an award. Narrative follows the same pattern: 86% of Gold winners explain their performance, against 27% (EPRA sBPR Awards Report 2026).

In practice, take a manager with incomplete tenant energy data across part of its portfolio. Rather than presenting a single unexplained figure, a useful disclosure separates actual from estimated data, describes the estimation method and shows where coverage needs to improve. That makes the figure easier to trust and gives the manager a practical plan for better data collection.

Assurance remains a gap even at the top, with only 57% of Gold winners having their EPRA measures assured by a third party. EPRA itself names narrative quality, assurance and boundary refinement as the next phase of reporting quality (EPRA sBPR Awards Report 2026). Other common weak spots include like-for-like waste and water data, asset-level health and safety, and own-office data.

INREV points the same way. Its guidelines ask managers to document a materiality assessment, set sustainability objectives for each fund and test climate pathways against scenarios (INREV Sustainability Guidelines). Its reporting guidelines add that disclosures should cover both absolute and like-for-like data, with management’s analysis of what they show (INREV Reporting Guidelines).

Consistency across EPRA, INREV and GRESB

Many organisations use the same underlying data for several disclosures, yet the figures can differ because frameworks apply different rules. Those differences aren’t necessarily errors, but investors will notice if your EPRA metrics, INREV ESG SDDS, GRESB submission and annual report tell different stories without explanation.

This year that’s harder than it sounds. GRESB’s 2026 rules move emissions from landlord-controlled tenant space and vacant space from Scope 3 to Scope 1–2, while EPRA leaves the split to company judgement, based on metering arrangements (EPRA sBPR 4th edition). GRESB says only around 9% of assets include landlord-controlled tenant space (GRESB, 2025), but where the change applies, the two disclosures can diverge. Aligning boundaries, or documenting a simple reconciliation, shows investors why the totals differ.

Beyond the benchmark: linking reporting to value

Strong EPRA and INREV reporting is also what makes a credible value case possible. An EPRA Gold award or strong INREV-aligned reporting is worth having, but investors increasingly want to know what sustainability performance is worth in the terms they already use: income, costs, risk and asset value. Neither framework scores this today, but EPRA and INREV have both published recent research exploring it.

New work from EPRA and KPMG sets out one approach. Their July 2026 report introduces a Sustainability Value Creation framework that links sustainability measures to net rental income (NRI), EPRA Earnings and net asset value (NAV) (EPRA/KPMG, July 2026). It notes that 69% of real estate investors have seen a “brown discount” on assets that fall short. In one case study, retrofitting a German residential estate could lift annual NRI from around €456k to €750k, an illustration of the approach rather than a typical return. The aim is for sustainability to become “not only a parallel reporting exercise, but a strategy for stronger capital allocation.”

INREV’s research is more cautious. Its December 2025 work on environmental considerations in underwriting (INREV, December 2025) found that energy efficiency has the clearest link to financial returns, but that value is hard to isolate from wider market factors. It recommends engaging valuers early and being transparent about assumptions.

Both studies point to data as a key barrier, whether that’s gaps, inconsistent definitions or responsibility split across teams. As one INREV member put it, “The market will not value sustainability consistently until there is broader industry agreement on factors, measurement methods, and reflection in underwriting and valuations.” The practical route is to make data reliable first, then test a small number of commercially relevant links, such as energy performance and operating costs, or retrofit spend and payback, while being open about the uncertainties.

What this means for you: five priorities for your next reporting cycle

Whatever route you report through, the fundamentals are the same. These five steps are a practical place to start.

Review reporting boundaries – Document organisational coverage, landlord–tenant responsibilities, own-office data and emissions classifications, and explain any framework-specific differences.
Improve data quality and assurance – Identify missing asset-level data, separate measured from estimated figures and record estimation methods. Then review where third-party assurance would add the most credibility.
Explain performance – Include like-for-like analysis and describe what drove material changes, rather than reporting year-on-year movements without context.
Reconcile your disclosures – Check that your EPRA, INREV, GRESB and annual report figures tell a consistent story, with clear explanations wherever the rules differ.
Link one or two measures to value – Neither framework requires this yet, but the EPRA/KPMG framework offers a starting point: test how a measure relates to operating costs, NRI, capex, payback or valuation, and be clear about the limitations.

The EVORA view

Wider regulation will keep shifting, which is exactly why EPRA and INREV remain valuable. Just as EPRA’s financial measures sit alongside IFRS, the sustainability frameworks give real estate a stable, sector-specific point of consistency that general regulation can’t. For funds, INREV’s ESG SDDS maps to EPRA, GRESB and SFDR, and in September 2025 INREV mapped it directly against the EPRA sBPR, finding substantial common ground (INREV, September 2025).

The questions we hear most often from fund managers about data quality, boundaries and climate strategy are closely connected. Incomplete data weakens performance explanations, inconsistent boundaries make cross-framework comparisons harder, and both can undermine the evidence needed for investment decisions.

Scope 3 is a good example of where judgement matters most, because it relies on clear boundaries and often estimates. INREV has required reporting of operational Scope 3 emissions from the portfolio since 2024 (INREV Reporting Guidelines), while EPRA treats wider Scope 3 as optional, though its latest guidelines encourage it, set out an estimation hierarchy and recommend showing how much of the figure is estimated (EPRA sBPR 4th edition). We’d encourage listed clients to report where possible, since both the ESRS and IFRS S2 include Scope 3. Assurance and a transparent methodology matter here too, since estimates tend to draw the most scrutiny. The aim isn’t to force every disclosure into identical figures, but to make them understandable and reconcilable.

Ultimately, strong reporting should make sustainability information more useful for the people managing buildings, assessing risk, underwriting investments and allocating capital. The firms that stand out won’t be the ones that report the most, but the ones whose data is reliable, whose numbers are explained, and who can show what sustainability is worth.

How EVORA can help

Data is a key barrier in both the EPRA/KPMG and INREV research, and better data does far more than improve a benchmark score. Reliable, asset-level data shows where energy and carbon performance can be improved, giving you the baseline to start planning decarbonisation with confidence. It also highlights assets at risk of falling behind on regulation or market expectations, and gives investors, lenders and valuers figures they can trust. That’s what makes it possible to link reporting to value. Collected once and managed well, the same data can serve EPRA, INREV, GRESB and regulatory disclosures without being rebuilt each time.

We support listed companies and fund managers to collect their data and report in line with EPRA sBPR and INREV, along with other reporting requirements. We also help strengthen data collection, boundaries and estimation methods, prepare data for third-party assurance and turn it into practical decarbonisation plans. If you’d like a fresh perspective on where your reporting stands, let’s talk.