Circularity Practices in Real Estate: Understanding the Costs and Benefits of Circularity in Building Construction - MIT Center for Real Estate
Climate and Real Estate Multi-PI Research Cluster

Circularity Practices in Real Estate: Understanding the Costs and Benefits of Circularity in Building Construction

Principal Investigators: Fábio Duarte (lead)
Researchers: Randolph E. Kirchain, Siqi Zheng, Erez Yoeli
Year: 2022
Sponsor: MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium; Concrete Sustainability Hub
Topics: Climate and Sustainable Real Estate, Urban and Real Estate Economics

Circularity Practices in Real Estate: Understanding the Costs and Benefits of Circularity in Building This project aims to characterize the barriers and opportunities for increased circularity of building materials and develop a preliminary roadmap to overcome those barriers for construction materials. A key barrier to circularity is uncertainty about the supply of and demand for recycled materials (Linton et al. 2002; Salmenperä et al. 2021). Uncertainties create real and perceived risks that dissuade firms from engaging in circular practices. Increasing information and understanding about secondary materials supply and demand has the potential to reduce perceived risks and, therefore, foster more materials and components reuse.

This project seek to understand the extent to which reduced uncertainty will aid in circular building adoption by surveying members of at least one large state building association, real estate developers, and producers of building materials and components.

The aim is to identify barriers and incentives for the adoption of circular building practices that might be targeted for further adoption, and to develop interventions to address misperceptions amongst builders. The research will result in an academic publication, and white paper(s) to engage industry members and policy makers in the circularity of building materials and components.

Research Survey

We are interviewing practitioners working in the built environment such as suppliers, GCs, designers, engineers, investors, developers, consultants etc. This study will assess the perceptions of reuse in industry, and willingness to pay for circularity.

If you’d rather discuss over Zoom, here is a link to our Calendly, we would be happy to meet to go over the survey in person.

It should take about 10-15 minutes. Your perspective and experience is so valuable to us; thanks so much for your time.

Circularity Practices in Real Estate: Understanding the Costs and Benefits of Circularity in Building Construction