The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), the global authority for driving market transformation through healthy buildings, organizations and communities recently released a case study about Lakehouse to demonstrate how an organization can utilize WELL to reach their health and well-being goals.
As one of the first multifamily residential projects in the US to achieve WELL Certification, Lakehouse’s analysis demonstrated that WELL Certification helped the project stand out in comparison to other developments. The property’s health and wellness-focused design and amenities attracted significant interest, resulting in favorable sales prices for the condos and competitive rent prices for its on-site retail spaces.
“It’s invigorating to see an organization like NAVA propel the healthy building movement forward in the multifamily sector,” said Rachel Hodgdon, President and CEO of IWBI. “That their commitment to prioritizing health and well-being also translated to benefits to the bottom line showcases that an investment in health pays back.”
Through a three-year study conducted by Colorado State University’s Institute for the Built Environment (IBE), NAVA found that implementation of WELL features measurably and positively impacted residents’ physical and mental well-being across 36 statistically significant markers. Simultaneously, NAVA set out to better understand how the implementation of WELL Certification impacted its financial returns – and could potentially drive other organizations’ financial returns.
“At Lakehouse, we had the opportunity to measure both the social and financial impacts of investing in human health and well-being through real estate. We found compelling evidence of a meaningful benefit on both accounts and in ways we had not expected from our initial modeling,” said Brian Levitt, President and Co-Founder of NAVA Real Estate Development. “We are happy to share our analysis of the financial impact of WELL at Lakehouse with the development community and hope it will provide teams with a replicable model for prioritizing human and environmental health in residential projects everywhere.”
In conducting its analysis of the economic benefits derived from advancing the evidence-based health strategies in WELL, NAVA developed its own ROI tool that helps provide a fuller picture of these potential financial benefits.
“What we learned through this process is the way that investing in strategies such as WELL Certification that are designed to optimize resident health and well-being can provide a variety of returns across a variety of both social and financial markers which will ideally elevate the perceived value of making design decisions that prioritize our built environment and its occupants, going forward,” added Levitt.
Download the full Lakehouse case study here.
