Key Takeaways from the GRESB Insights Event in Toronto 

Two weeks ago we co-hosted the GRESB Regional Insights 2025 – Toronto event, bringing together Canadian investors and real estate managers to unpack this year’s GRESB results and what comes next for the market. 

Data quality, greenwashing legislation like Bill C-59, and the use of GRESB as both a fundraising proof point and a day-to-day management tool dominated the discussion. 

This article pulls together our reflections from the session and our work with clients across Canada and North America: how scores are moving, where regulation is helping or hindering, and what investors can do now to protect value, manage risk, and keep sustainability decisions on track. 

What the 2025 GRESB Cycle is Telling Us 

Overall, the 2025 GRESB cycle landed as business as usual for most managers: no major surprises, but a few clear patterns worth paying attention to. 

A few signals stood out: 

• Scores sometimes fell even where programs stayed strong, as global performance improved and peer groups tightened. 
• The framework itself felt stable and easier to work with. The structure is clearer, and the link to standards like ASHRAE helped lift certain indicators for managers who already focus on energy and HVAC performance. 
• Fewer first-time submissions meant a more mature response pool. More portfolios are now several years into the journey, which raises the bar for everyone. 
• The quiet headline is still data. Better coverage, stronger quality checks, and consistent metrics make it far easier to explain results to non-sustainability colleagues and to investors who care about risk and comparability more than the details of each question. 

The takeaway for us is simple: data quality is central to how you hold your position in the benchmark and how credible your story sounds when scores move. 

Fear of Greenwashing Shouldn’t Create a Culture of Silence 

Greenwashing is always going to land hard in a market that talks a lot about sustainability. The question is whether it pushes people to improve substance or just talk less. From our vantage point, the most advanced programs are keeping their foot on the pedal. 

• Established sustainability strategies aren’t being rewritten every time the headlines change. Materiality, governance, and credible targets still anchor the work. 
• New rules, especially around communications, can have unintended consequences. When disclosure requirements increase, companies may actually release less into the public realm, causing shared learning in the market to suffer. That’s a loss for everyone who needs to understand how risk is handled in practice. 
• Sustainability is being treated more explicitly as a risk variable alongside vacancy, interest rates, and capex. Reporting helps managers learn from each other; shutting that down doesn’t make the risk go away. 

The real danger isn’t over-scrutiny. It’s that fear of greenwashing creates a culture of silence when investors and regulators need real performance data in plain sight. 

Valuations, Politics, and the Next 12 Months 

If sustainability isn’t properly reflected in appraisals, the market will keep mispricing assets. Energy efficiency, physical climate risk, and transition exposure have real financial effects, but they’re still not consistently embedded in valuation models. That leaves managers who invest in upgrades wondering if the effort will be recognized when pricing is set. 

Many Canadian managers are operating with a global investor base that compares conditions across regions. Europe and parts of Asia feel relatively steady on sustainability expectations, while some US markets feel more uncertain. Canada sits between those poles, and that ambiguity seeps into decision-making. This is where strong industry associations and membership bodies matter: they can help shape practical policy, defend shared standards, and keep decision-useful data flowing. 

Treating GRESB as a Daily Tool, Not an Annual Hurdle 

The most encouraging shift we’re seeing is how investors are using GRESB between submissions. It’s moving from a once-a-year test to part of the daily toolkit. 

• In fundraising, GRESB shows up as a quick but critical checkpoint. Limited partners look at scores, star ratings, and peer positioning as shorthand for how serious a manager is about sustainability risk and performance. 
• On the portfolio side, GRESB data is being used to aggregate performance across funds in the same region, compare strategies, and slice results in different ways for internal committees and external reporting. 
• Value-add strategies can feel under-recognized in the benchmark because the work often precedes visible outcomes. That’s where interpretation matters. Scores tell a story, but progress doesn’t always look like a straight line upward from one year to the next. 
• Teams that really understand their data can explain why scores moved, what changed in the portfolio, and how that links back to risk, asset value, and investor expectations. That context is often what wins confidence. 

For us, the message from Toronto is clear. Treat sustainability as a standing part of fiduciary duty, and use the benchmark as both a performance mirror and a way to back up your fundraising story. 

Download EVORA’s Guide to GRESB

EVORA has helped support hundreds of GRESB submissions – if you’d like to talk about how we can improve the performance of your funds and assets, contact us.