Chris Laz, associate vice president, sustainability at Realty Income Corp. (NYSE: O), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworks: 2023 Conference in Las Vegas on June 28-29.
Laz discussed the importance of building relationships with tenants in order to meet sustainability objectives.
“It’s parmount,” Laz said. Due to Realty Income’s triple net lease structure, “we rely on the relationships that we’ve built with our clients in order to facilitate collaboration…they rely on building relationships with us as well to break down any legal barriers for any of their goals.”
Laz also commented on the importance of access to tenant data in order to complete current ESG reporting requirements, and touched on how the REIT is preparing for the upcoming SEC climate rule. He noted that access to data is always a challenge, and again stressed the importance of building relationships with tenants. “Data is incredibly valuable, it’s at the crux of it,” he said.
Over time, the goal is to replace estimations with actual data, Laz said.