Page 252 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

230 CHAPTER 8

and clients in the course of a real estate transaction provide brokers with
unique opportunities to educate their clients, promote green building, and
encourage focus on a triple bottom line.
Mouchet begins the chapter with a personal story and then discusses the
brokerage group’s evolution. In section two, Mouchet and Fishel compare
and contrast “traditional brokerage”—brokerage as it has been practiced
and is widely practiced today, emphasizing productivity above all and a
single financial bottom line—with what the company calls “sustainable
brokerage”—brokerage that facilitates real estate choices that are good for
business, good for the community in which a broker plies his or her trade,
and good for the environment. Sustainable brokerage, no different from
sustainability in general, is shaped by a triple bottom line that acknowl-
edges the broker’s appropriate involvement in community planning and
environmental stewardship. In section three, Mouchet and Fishel delve
into the business case for sustainable brokerage, a process that involves
re-framing the notion of brokerage, empowering brokers to play an active
role in shaping the types of development that occur within a community,
and learning to serve as change agents. Section four entails a brief con-
sideration of competitive advantage, since sustainable brokerage is some-
thing of a new-to-the-world business proposition. Section five looks at the
actual business case for sustainable brokerage by considering the addi-
tional resources it costs to be sustainable as well as the benefits that accrue.
The chapter concludes as it began, with a personal story from Mouchet.

The Backdrop: A Personal Story
of Sustainable Brokerage

I won’t lie to you. Despite the fact that I’m head of Melaver, Inc.’s brokerage division,
it has taken me a long time to embrace this whole sustainability thing. It’s not that I
don’t think we need to be better stewards of our land—I do. In fact, for years, I chaired
the board of a local land trust organization devoted to creating permanent easements
on critical habitats in and around Savannah. I’m an outdoorsy guy in general. I kayak
in the coastal estuaries near my home, and I like to hike and backpack. But it’s taken
me a long time to really understand and implement the business case for sustainable
brokerage. I’ve been a broker for almost my entire adult life, nearly forty years now,
and the business model all those years has pretty much remained the same.