LOOKINGFORWALLS Co-creating a strategy/platform to visibilize green properties by VerdeUrbano Colombia

This is a very good idea assuming that many people now have permanent contact with internet and is closer to the public. Have a graphic handy offer enables a quick read of information that provides the necessary and allows offer diverse and sufficient information in the same time.

Hello and greetings from the contest fellows! Thank you for submitting a proposal to our contest, and congratulations on making it into the top 8! We are very excited to have your proposal, and hope to see it do well. We would love for you to keep improving your proposal prior to the next round of judging. Don't forget, both Judges Choice and Popular Choice winners will be connected with people who can support the implementation of their proposal, which may include policy makers, business executives, NGO and foundation officials, scientists, and others. They will be recognized and publicized by the MIT Climate CoLab and invited to showcase their proposals at a conference held at MIT November 2014, where a $10,000 Grand Prize will be awarded. I would like to encourage you to take a moment and consider how you can improve your proposal, before the next round of judging. The judges comments from the 1st round have been shared with you as a comment (above), feel free to consider these as you make edits. In addition, you may want to consider adding additional information on: - What other places outside of Columbia might be appropriate as a second phase of deployment - More details about the website and the marketing campaign behind it, especially with a more detail timeline

This proposal has been chosen to advance as a Finalist. Congratulations, and good luck during the voting period! Comments from Judges: (1) The idea of promoting green credentials of residential or commercial properties through the network of real estate firms or agents is a good one, as they are able to influence both buyer and seller. Online is also a powerful media. However, the proposal sounds as though it would be technically complex in terms of creating a platform that would integrate with existing platforms. The incentive to a real estate firm to participate is not clear: in my experience, most are protective of their listings. The identification of green features would also be subjective, and in the absence of specific criteria, could lend itself to green wash. (2) This is affordable, has merit because it recognises that it will be by nature dynamic and adapt to information and needs. The proposition to engage buyer and seller and connect wants and green building attributes is cleaver. The idea could establish a series of attributes that can be detailed by notes, a score, a tick etc. and can be the data source that is agnostic and therefore can be a rich data source to be added to existing online real estate sales platforms is a neat concept. This has potential to at the least match green sellers and green buyers. Would be good to know more about how the interface / partnership could work between the information and the existing real estate sales platforms. How would "green wash" be identified or better still how could attributes that are of merit have recognition/status etc.

Hi VerdeUrbano Colombia and friends, kindly consider to vote for my proposal shown in the link below https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300206/planId/1002 Thanks in advance.

Thank you so much for your comments, Regarding to your note: Same as you, we are concerned about greenwashing, it is already happening in the real state language and is also a reason to act now. That is why we proposed in the project the co-creation as the core of the strategy. A series of parameters, a common language, and a shared list of attributes are to be created all together via collaboration. Those will be the ones to be acceptable as 'green building features'. Ideally we will be partners of the organizations that have been proclaiming this kind of language already, for example the CCCS, Carbon trust standard, Leed experts, among others that will be acting as counselors and guardians in the first steps. Eventually, the network itself will be involved in the language enough to self-regulate.

On other hand, we find that one of the main motivations for the real estate companies to participate is that finally they will be able to see if it is possible to attach a financial value to the benefits of green buildings, that issue that has remained unanswered for a long time will be valuable information for their investors. The incentives also includes the recognition from the public ( -top of mind- given the creative advertising that goes as part of the innovative communication tactic) to specialized trainings for their agents. On other hand, we find that one of the main motivations for the real estate companies to participate is that finally they will be able to see if it is possible to attach a financial value to the benefits of green buildings, that issue that has remained unanswered for a long time will be valuable information for their investors. The incentives also includes the recognition from the public ( -top of mind- given the creative advertising that goes as part of the innovative communication tactic) to specialized trainings for their agents. Other challenge that we recognize is that wont be very easy to present a multi compatible platform, but we will try. The first premise is keep it simple, and until now a lot of resources have shown to be effective to standardize attributes (dynamic tags, hashtags, etc). The second premise is to present the platform as a initiative not to invade their information but to invite their information to be shown. Finally, we have a point in our favor: The real state market changes very quicly their database, normally a building is listed and transacted in less than a year, this means that once a common language be established, the voice will be sprayed very quickly. We do believe that empowering the buyer with a new voice can change their demand. They (us) will be able to create greener cities.