NEW YORK, January 29, 2025 /3BL/ – The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), the global authority for driving market transformation through healthy buildings, organizations and communities, today announced a significant expansion of its WELL program. Two new ratings, the WELL Real Estate Rating and the WELL Operations Rating, will provide real estate companies and funds with a flexible, high-impact way to implement and scale health strategies across their entire portfolios.
WELL serves as the premier platform for leading organizations to invest in health and deliver on social sustainability drivers. The WELL ecosystem supports a growing community of high-performing organizations seeking opportunities to gain recognition as they make progress towards their health and well-being goals. With the debut of these two ratings, IWBI is expanding the ability of real estate companies and funds to achieve initial or incremental recognition through WELL.
Now open for enrollment, the WELL Real Estate Rating focuses on enhancing base building infrastructure while the WELL Operations Rating focuses on addressing base building operations and maintenance. From air ventilation and water quality to design elements that encourage movement and mindfulness, these ratings offer a practical pathway to measure and validate the health strategies most critical to base building performance. Derived from a subset of strategies in the WELL Standard, these ratings help real estate companies earn initial recognition while laying the foundation for full WELL Certification and other milestone achievements over time.
“Through rigorous science and verified performance, we’ve proven that buildings and organizations can be a powerful force for human health,” said IWBI President and CEO Rachel Hodgdon. “By achieving these ratings, real estate leaders have new opportunities to earn recognition at scale, establishing immediate trust with tenants and investors while building toward broader organizational goals.”
Ratings allow organizations to be recognized for their leadership in specific focus areas addressed in the broader WELL Standard. These new ratings provide trusted third-party recognition for the implementation of the health and social impact strategies most relevant to real estate investors and tenants. By focusing on essential infrastructure and operations, the ratings offer a practical pathway to measure and validate key WELL strategies, enabling owners to demonstrate incremental progress and address issues that matter to investors earlier in an asset’s lifecycle.
The WELL Real Estate Rating helps real estate funds, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and asset managers efficiently enhance base building infrastructure to support health and well-being, driving long-term asset and tenant value. The rating targets systems that support indoor environmental quality, incorporates strategies that improve asset and community resilience, and addresses responsible material selection.
The WELL Operations Rating helps property and asset managers enhance base building operations and management. This rating focuses on driving operational excellence through building systems maintenance, indoor environmental quality (IEQ) performance, policies for resilience and readiness, and an enhanced tenant experience.
“Our goal is to give organizations the tools to win with WELL,” said IWBI’s Chief Product Officer Jessica Cooper. “Whether starting with a single office or a global portfolio, the WELL Real Estate Rating and WELL Operations Rating offer the initial validation needed to demonstrate impact and meet today’s growing investor and tenant demands.”
For property owners, a commitment to WELL is a powerful differentiator for attracting and retaining tenants. By investing in base building infrastructure and operations, owners provide the verified foundation tenants need to thrive, enabling them to leverage health-forward design attributes and amenities from the base building that can promote productivity from day one.
Assets that achieve these new ratings will demonstrate leadership in health, social sustainability and ESG performance. The results can be referenced in GRESB submissions, investor communications and sustainability reports.
Today, WELL strategies have been adopted in nearly 100,000 locations totaling more than 6 billion square feet in over 140 countries. More than 190 Global and Fortune 500 companies are among the thousands of organizations that use WELL to benefit more than 30 million people worldwide.
For more information and to enroll in the WELL Real Estate Rating or the WELL Operations Rating, please register your interest here.
About the International WELL Building Institute
The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) is a public benefit corporation and the global authority for transforming health and well-being in buildings, organizations and communities. In pursuit of its public-health mission, IWBI mobilizes its community through the development and administration of the WELL Building Standard (WELL), WELL for residential, WELL Community Standard, its WELL ratings and management of the WELL AP credential. IWBI also translates research into practice, develops educational resources and advocates for policies that promote people-first places for everyone, everywhere. More information on WELL can be found here.
International WELL Building Institute, IWBI, the WELL Building Standard, WELL v2, WELL Certified, WELL AP, WELL EP, WELL Score, The WELL Conference, We Are WELL, the WELL Community Standard, WELL Health-Safety Rated, WELL Performance Rated, WELL Equity Rated, WELL Equity, WELL Coworking Rated, WELL Residence, Works with WELL, WELL and others, and their related logos are trademarks or certification marks of International WELL Building Institute pbc in the United States and other countries.
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