A buyer typically knows a property’s size, price and location, but may be unaware of the environmental and financial burdens it could carry throughout years of use due to poor thermal insulation, inadequate ventilation and natural lighting, or other design shortcomings that are not visible through finishes and may not emerge during a pre-purchase inspection.
This gap highlights a missing element in Jordan’s local real estate market: the absence of a standardized environmental rating card that would allow buyers to assess a property’s environmental performance and verify its technical characteristics, rather than relying solely on information provided by a developer or owner without independent evaluation. This limits buyers’ ability to compare properties using criteria beyond price, size and location.
The issue has exposed a divide between experts calling for new projects to disclose their environmental performance and those favoring a market-driven approach in which adoption of such a tool is left to supply and demand.
Experts told Al-Ghad that the absence of reliable information affects not only buyers but also weakens incentives for developers to improve properties, preventing environmental efficiency from becoming a competitive factor in the market.
Environmental Burdens
Samer Abu Ghazaleh, a professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Jordan, said some architectural designs may involve environmental and operational burdens that buyers cannot easily identify during a pre-purchase visit.
The appearance of an apartment and the quality of its finishes do not necessarily reflect its environmental efficiency or the level of comfort it provides, he said.
Examples include inadequate natural lighting, insufficient ventilation, inappropriate building orientation, oversized windows without proper treatment, poor thermal insulation and inefficient room layouts.
These factors can increase the need for heating and cooling and artificial lighting, while reducing residents’ thermal and visual comfort. Therefore, evaluating an apartment should not be limited to its size, price and location, but should also consider its architectural characteristics, impact on quality of life and long-term operating costs.
Abu Ghazaleh said building codes are essential for ensuring safety, construction quality and compliance with approved technical requirements, including those related to thermal insulation and energy efficiency. However, compliance does not necessarily mean that a building will deliver the best environmental performance during actual use.
He explained that there is a difference between meeting minimum technical requirements and conducting an integrated assessment of a building’s performance. Environmental performance is affected by architectural orientation, facade design, window-to-wall ratios, natural lighting, ventilation, shading, thermal comfort and construction quality, as well as how the building is operated and maintained.
Abu Ghazaleh therefore called not for replacing building codes, but for complementing them with a system for assessing and disclosing environmental performance. Such a system would provide buyers with clear information about a property’s actual and expected characteristics while distinguishing between design performance and performance measured after occupancy.
Completing the Picture
Abu Ghazaleh said some environmental characteristics of an apartment can be assessed independently, including orientation, natural lighting, ventilation, the ratio of window area to room area and exposure to sunlight. However, evaluating an apartment in isolation from the building could provide an incomplete or even misleading picture.
An apartment’s performance is also affected by its location within the building, neighboring apartments, floor level, number of exterior facades, thermal insulation of the building envelope, sun-exposed surfaces, common areas and mechanical systems, he said.
He therefore advocated a two-level assessment: one for the building as a whole and another for the individual apartment. This would allow buyers to understand the specific advantages and limitations of the apartment they intend to purchase rather than relying solely on a general building rating.
The environmental rating card should include clear and verifiable architectural indicators, as design quality affects residents’ daily comfort and operating costs throughout the building’s lifespan.
Among the key indicators are the adequacy of natural lighting, potential for natural ventilation, orientation toward the sun, shading effectiveness, thermal insulation quality, window characteristics, thermal comfort, visual privacy and indoor environmental quality.
It should also assess how effectively space is used and how efficiently the design limits heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter.
The location of the building within its neighborhood should also be considered, including access to public transportation and essential services, walkability, the quality of outdoor spaces and the availability of shade for pedestrians.
Most importantly, Abu Ghazaleh said, these indicators should be based on clear measurement standards and presented in a simple format that buyers can understand rather than reduced to an overall score that does not explain the reasons behind the rating.
Mandatory Disclosure
Abu Ghazaleh stressed that mandatory disclosure could significantly influence the design of residential projects if it is linked to independent verification, clear standards and accountability for the accuracy of the information provided.
If disclosure were limited to a formal certificate issued without an actual assessment of design and construction, however, it could become an administrative procedure that fails to achieve its objectives, he said.
Once a property’s environmental characteristics are known to buyers before purchase, natural lighting, ventilation, shading, insulation and thermal comfort could become competitive features among developers rather than the market focusing primarily on location, size and finishes.
He proposed introducing the system gradually by requiring new projects to provide a standardized environmental rating card when marketing and selling properties. The rating could initially be based on design reviews, followed by construction verification when necessary.
The system could later be expanded to include measurements of actual performance after occupancy, while making clear that actual consumption is also affected by residents’ behavior and climatic conditions.
The environmental rating system should take differences in building age and construction conditions into account, he said, rather than imposing the same requirements on existing buildings as those applied to new projects.
For older buildings, assessments could initially focus on their current characteristics, followed by recommendations for improvements based on priority and cost. These could include improving window sealing, adding shading systems, addressing insulation deficiencies and improving ventilation and natural lighting where possible.
Abu Ghazaleh also recommended a rating that identifies existing performance and opportunities for improvement rather than automatically reducing a property’s value because it does not meet standards applicable to new buildings.
This should be accompanied by a transitional period and appropriate incentives for economically viable improvements, while avoiding costly requirements that are unsuitable for the building’s nature or age.
He said the purpose of environmentally rating older buildings should not be to penalize owners, but to provide transparent information that helps owners and buyers understand a property’s condition, identify possible improvements and encourage gradual upgrades to the existing housing stock.
A Reliable Tool
An environmental property rating card could provide a reliable tool for property owners to demonstrate environmental advantages based on clear standards and criteria, away from unsupported claims, according to Abdullah Bdeir, chairman of the Jordan Green Building Council.
Bdeir said the absence of such a rating card in the local real estate market has created a trust gap between developers and buyers. Developers have little incentive to spend additional money on improving a property’s environmental quality if they cannot demonstrate those improvements to buyers, even when the resulting price remains within buyers’ purchasing capacity.
At the same time, buyers are generally unwilling to pay more for an apartment said to have environmental advantages because there is no trusted body confirming that those benefits are genuine, he said.
Bdeir proposed establishing an independent body, such as the Jordan Green Building Council, to develop an environmental rating or certification for residential apartments based on clear criteria for measuring the carbon footprint or environmental performance of each apartment individually, rather than the building as a whole.
He noted that owners of large buildings can afford internationally recognized green-building certification because it can be economically viable, while applying the same approach to small apartments or individual residential units is more difficult due to the high cost of assessment and certification relative to the size of the property.
Bdeir stressed that developing an affordable environmental certification specifically for apartments, with simple assessment procedures, has become necessary to allow its use in the real estate market without imposing significant financial burdens.
Simplifying the assessment process does not mean lowering quality or relaxing standards, he said. Rather, it means developing an easy-to-apply assessment method based on clear and carefully studied principles, with the tool itself subject to evaluation and verification before being officially adopted.
Joint Cooperation
Bdeir said the Jordan Green Building Council has made significant progress in developing an environmental property assessment tool. The tool has reached an advanced stage of readiness and is now suitable for implementation, but introducing it to the market requires investment in a clear accreditation mechanism and determining which entities will adopt it.
He noted that implementing the tool requires cooperation among relevant stakeholders to ensure that its use is clear and to avoid bureaucratic procedures and administrative complications that could turn it into a burden on the commercial sector rather than a means of improving it.
He warned against adopting complicated assessment tools that are difficult to implement in practice or require lengthy procedures, calling instead for learning from successful international experiences in applying simpler systems.
Bdeir called for introducing an environmental performance assessment tool to the real estate market through supply and demand mechanisms rather than making its use mandatory. Its adoption and spread, he said, should be determined by the level of interest among investors and buyers and by market acceptance.
Broad adoption of the environmental assessment tool by a significant segment of the real estate market would gradually strengthen its wider use, he added.
Bdeir concluded that the real estate sector’s readiness to adopt environmental performance assessments depends not only on technical considerations, but also on growing public demand for clear and transparent information that enables citizens to determine whether a property complies with the required technical and environmental standards.
Source: Al-Ghad
