Samenvatting

Executive summary 
Smart buildings are becoming of increased importance in the Dutch office building environment, due to the new legislation of the government to only build ´energy-neutral´ buildings. The increase in Smart Buildings and technology in real estate is also of importance for the Facility and Real Estate Management (FREM) field, because this will require a different FREM approach. Institutional real estate investors seem to be hesitant to invest more in these more expensive buildings. Therefore, the following research question will be answered: “Which factors affect the willingness of big institutional real estate investors to invest in Smart Building technology in the Dutch office building developments?” To assess factors associated with the willingness of institutional real estate investors to invest in Smart Buildings, structured interviews were conducted among institutional real estate investors, experts in the field and real estate developers. The results obtained through these interviews indicate that there is a lack of a clear definition of a Smart Building – in literature, as well as among the surveyed institutional real estate investors. None of the surveyed participants stated to have a clear definition of a Smart Building. Nevertheless, institutional real estate investors were able to identify certain buildings as being ´Smart´ in the market. In the surveys, institutional real estate investors did agree on the following features of a Smart Building: recognize and prediction of patterns, connection to the IoT, the ability to optimize processes leading to more efficiency and sustainability. Furthermore, through the interviews it became clear that only two of the institutional investors claim that they are already investing, although very minimal, in Smart Building Technology. The most important reason for the reluctant attitude of investors to invest in Smart Buildings is the uncertainty of return of investment (ROI), also related to the investment strategy, and the novelty of the Smart Building Technology. Nevertheless, all of the participants in this thesis stated a great willingness to invest more in Smart Building Technology. Lastly, the surveyed investors all stated to have a big influence on the number of Smart Buildings that will be built in the future, since they considered themselves as the main drivers behind the developments on the office building market. The following factors could increase the willingness: core plus location, increase in demand, becoming more common and an increased certainty on ROI. This last factor, increased certainty of ROI, was the most important factor, stated by all participants.
 
The results of this master thesis show that institutional real estate investors are still hesitant to invest in Smart Building Technologies but there is a high willingness of these investors to invest more in Smart Buildings, especially if return of investment becomes more certain.  Investors seem to await Smart Buildings to become more common in the Dutch Office Building Market, leading to more profitable examples. Future research and government legislation should focus on methods to determine return of investment (both in the financial as in the sustainable sense) in Smart Buildings. Furthermore, the results of this thesis indicate that investors themselves could be the main driver behind an increase in Smart Building Technology, by investing and developing new technologies to incorporate into their building portfolio. Potentially leading to an increase in end user comfort and well-being which could lead to an increased market demand and this will eventually lead to more financial benefits for the