Standard real estate valuation models (e.g., hedonic regression) rely heavily on quantitative financial metrics, failing to capture the intangible “social value” of the built environment. While Large Language Models (LLMs) can process qualitative descriptions, standard vector space models (Real Hilbert Spaces) typically utilize cosine similarity, which is additive and struggles to model “opposition” or “cancellation” of concepts effectively. This paper proposes a novel framework, Semantic Interferometry, which maps architectural descriptions into a simulated Complex Hilbert Space. By treating “Social Value” and “Exclusionary Value” as opposing phases (angles), we demonstrate how destructive interference can be used to mathematically penalize misalignment. This allows for a “Net Social Value” score where negative traits (e.g., “gated, segregated”) actively cancel out positive traits (e.g., “community, park”), providing a more rigorous, automated method for qualitative building assessment.

This paper investigates how new EU sustainability regulations, specifically the
EU Taxonomy, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD),
Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), and Corporate
Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), are reshaping highest and best
use (HBU) valuation in real estate. A literature review on Highest and Best Use,
sustainable real estate valuation and real options theory is conducted. A
theoretical model is developed for HBU analysis under regulatory constraints,
with formal stochastic calculus derivations illustrating how real options can be
valued. Investors must account for regulatory uncertainty and technological
change, which elevate the value of flexible strategies. A real options approach
enables the quantification of the value of waiting to retrofit, expanding green
features, switching asset use, or abandoning projects in response to stochastic
factors, such as energy prices or carbon costs. This study integrates the
impacts of EU sustainability policy with real estate valuation principles and
real options financial theory. A mathematical derivation for real estate
valuation under regulatory uncertainty is presented. The results inform
appraisers, investors, and policymakers on aligning valuation methods with
sustainability objectives.

Every entrepreneurial venture, regardless of how innovative its technology or compelling its value proposition, ultimately depends on its ability to secure, manage, and allocate financial resources. The most brilliant product idea will fail if the founding team cannot fund product development, sustain operations through early revenue shortfalls, or scale production to meet market demand. Finance is the lifeblood of any business, and for startups, it determines whether an enterprise will survive long enough to achieve product–market fit.

This course text introduces master’s students to the financial architecture of entrepreneurial ventures with a specific emphasis on the European context. While much of the global entrepreneurial finance literature draws on American examples and institutions, European founders operate within a distinctly different ecosystem, one shaped by bank-oriented financial systems, strong regulatory frameworks, and a capital market infrastructure increasingly integrated through the European Union’s (EU) Capital Markets Union initiative.

Traditional real estate valuation methods predominantly emphasize quantitative financial metrics, often overlooking qualitative factors that influence stakeholder perceptions and decisionmaking. This work proposes an integrative framework combining transformer-based Large Language Models for semantic extraction of textual property descriptors with Quantum Probability Theory to model valuation as quantum states within a complex Hilbert space. Such an approach captures the superposition of qualitative attributes and their interference effects, reflecting the diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives of stakeholders. Non-commutative operator sequences capture the order-dependent nature of evaluations, while unitary transformations encode alignment and conflict across valuation criteria. By embedding narrative-rich qualitative data into multidimensional quantum state vectors, this methodology enables a nuanced representation of property value that transcends additive classical models. The framework addresses limitations of conventional income-based and market comparison approaches by incorporating intangible dimensions such as cultural heritage, environmental impact, and social value into formal probabilistic computations. This synthesis offers a pathway to more comprehensive, context-sensitive property appraisals that accommodate stakeholder diversity and dynamic valuation contexts through mathematically rigorous yet flexible structures.

Standard valuation methodologies, specifically Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), rely on the additivity axiom, assuming that "Financial" and "Social" capitals are commutative, independent variables that can be linearly aggregated. This paper challenges this "Additivity Assumption" when using a Geometric-Semantic Valuation Model (GSVM) (e.g., Transformer-based Large Language Model). Drawing on the mathematical formalism of Quantum Cognition, we model the built asset not as a static object, but as a normalized state vector |ψ⟩ within a high-dimensional semantic Hilbert space. We demonstrate that the Financial and Social valuation frameworks are non-commuting projection operators (p fin , p soc ] ≠ 0). Through a simulation of N=100 distinct asset descriptions, we provide a computational demonstration of path dependence: the order of valuation perspectives (projectors) alters the asset's final overall value (from an ontological-state perspective). Where the initial projection onto a "Finance" subspace yields a significantly more constrained ontological state than the "Social" first strategy, which preserves greater aggregate dimensionality and overall system value.

Real estate valuation has traditionally relied on periodic, point-in-time assessments that provide only static snapshots of a property's worth. This paper introduces a framework that integrates Internet of Things (IoT) sensor networks with geometric-semantic and quantum-inspired mathematical models, making valuation a continuous, dynamically updated process. Environmental, operational, and experiential data streams are embedded into complex Hilbert spaces, capturing both measurable building performance and intangible stakeholder perceptions. Projection operators map fused sensor and textual embeddings into valuation subspaces, allowing real-time assessment of attributes such as sustainability, governance quality and experiential comfort. Non-commutative operators model the observed effect that the order in which information is presented influences value judgments, while unitary transformations represent stakeholder-specific preference structures and negotiation dynamics. The framework is continuously recalibrated through empirical feedback and transformer-based semantic encoding, keeping the model aligned with changing market narratives and new sensor data. Practical challenges, including sensor heterogeneity, temporal synchronisation and semantic drift, are addressed through layered system designs. By bridging the gap between physical building performance data and the complex socio-cognitive processes that shape property values, this methodology offers an adaptive valuation approach suited to the sustainability and stakeholder-diversity goals increasingly required in modern real estate markets.

Purpose
Institutional investors play a critical role in adapting the built environment to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. However, little is known about their decision-making behaviours and the factors driving climate adaptation (CA) investments. Drawing on institutional theory, this study aims to examine how organisational and institutional contexts influence CA decision-making.

Design/methodology/approach
This study employs a qualitative approach, drawing on nine semi-structured interviews with senior managers at different management levels in Dutch real estate investment organisations.

Findings
Although coercive, normative and mimetic pressures drive CA, their capacity to generate action remains limited by low legitimacy perceptions for taking CA actions, lack of prioritisation of CA goals, partial enforcement of regulatory or policy frameworks, divergent views on climate uncertainty and low environmental interconnectedness. These limitations point to a prevailing institutional pattern of sustainable finance 2.0 that positions CA as a risk management tool rather than a systemic response.

Practical implications
This study highlights structural institutional constraints that can limit stronger CA adaptation approaches and provides insights for policymakers and industry practitioners seeking to promote or engage in more coordinated, collective and systemic adaptation responses in real estate investment.

Originality/value
The study contributes to a limited but growing body of knowledge on CA in institutional real estate investment by empirically enquiring about the drivers and institutional factors shaping CA decision-making. Grounded in theory, it contributes to the sustainable finance debate by providing new explanatory insights into why growing awareness does not consistently translate into CA actions, pointing to a structural lock-in that constrains CA.

Purpose - Integrating sustainability considerations into valuation practices is essential for promoting sustainable real estate investments. However, a comprehensive understanding of how sustainability factors impact the value of real estate assets is required. This study addresses the growing importance of renewable energy and the underutilized potential of rooftops by proposing an innovative framework for the valuation of roofs when used for renewable energy production.

Design/methodology/approach - This study uses the concepts of residual value analysis and Highest and Best Use methodology, adapting them to create a new framework for rooftop valuation.

Findings - The value of a roof can be determined based on their energy generation capability, where the conditions for enhanced energy harvesting potential distinct a higher value to the host asset. This removes the hurdle for investors to use rooftops for renewable energy investments.

Originality - The novelty of this study lies in using the Highest and Best Use methodology in the valuation of roofs. To the best of our knowledge, no explicit valuation of roofs has been done in the context of renewable energy production.

Practical implications- This study contributes to innovative valuation methodologies by incorporating sustainable measures. Social implications - Social implications include the evaluation of third-party investments in renewable energy on rooftops. This could lead to increased investments and higher renewable energy production, thereby lowering energy costs and enhancing the energy supply's reliability.

The short-term reuse of vacant real estate has demonstrated to be able to generate multiple benefits (Bishop, 2015; Madanipour, 2017; Oswalt et al., 2012; Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berlin, 2007), and being a quick solution to prevent abandonment risks, providing opportunities to access low-cost space. Research has demonstrated that short-term non-profit projects have the potential to drive innovation and generate social value (Mangialardo & Micelli, 2017; Pinard, 2020; Saleh, 2022). In fact, temporary initiatives can establish transient communities, test new land-use models, and inform real estate transformations (Lepik, 2012). Mostly, creative, artistic, and informal occupations (Andres, 2011; Honeck, 2017; McArdle, 2022; Shaw, 2005; Vivant, 2022) gained attention over the last 25 years, because they have demonstrated capacities for placemaking (Camerin, 2024; Hernandez-Santin et al., 2020; Karachalis, 2021) and urban regeneration (Darchen & Simon, 2022; Martin et al., 2019). For these and other reasons, temporary use projects have been increasingly integrated in urban studies (Chang, 2021) and in urban planning (Lehtovuori & Ruoppila, 2012), despite that the seduction of short-term solutions can hide unfair dynamics (Ferreri, 2015). In this context, Temporary Uses (TU) have been observed critically, considering issues as gentrification risks (Assiter, 2022), benefit distribution (Ferreri, 2020; Mens et al., 2023; Vivant, 2022), negotiations among actors (Zhang, 2018), and outcomes in co-production (Jaspers & Steen, 2019). However, we still don’t have models to measure the economic impact of real estate TU in their urban contexts. Thus, we ask: 1) What are the economic impacts that the social value of a TU produces on urban context? 2) What factors describing urban changes and TU of vacant buildings correlate? And, consequently, 3) how does TU social value contribute to urban dynamics? To address this gap, this study aims at defining and test a methodological framework to measure the economic impacts generated by the social value of temporary uses on the urban context, with a focus on some non-profit initiatives1. The objective is to understand how social value generates effects and impacts on the urban context (street or neighbourhood) improving the place quality, considering both space (urban context) and effects (observing its changes over the years). A mixed method analysis is applied to a set of case studies first at the urban scale and then at the real estate scale. We consider multiple cases of temporary use in the Region of Brussels (Occupation Temporaire OT), that have been mapped and monitored by temporary.brussels. First, we conduct an urban analysis of the neighbourhood place quality (Carmona, 2019) to observe the characteristics and the trends of main socio-economic indicators, land use functions, presence of services and amenities, and ongoing transformations in the area together with local policies. Then, we will assess the impact of each temporary use case measuring a set of quanti-qualitative indicators with data from direct observations, project reports, and interviews2. The TU assessment framework has been developed based on literature review and qualitative analysis of cases in the Netherlands, in Belgium and in France. Finally, we’ll carry out a correlation analysis applying the Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) (Fotheringham et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2019) in GIS (running R packages). Findings from this research contribute to the ongoing discourse on temporary urbanism by discussing how temporary uses support not only communities but also long-term urban development. The proposed framework for defining, measuring, and analysing temporary use provides insights for scholars, policymakers and urban planners interested in leveraging these initiatives considering a fair resource distribution for sustainable and inclusive urban regeneration.

The real estate sector must transition towards a low-carbon economy. In current investment decisions, carbon emissions are insufficiently considered and may not contribute to a low-carbon portfolio aligned with the sector's target. Therefore, investors require a change in the current DCF model-based investment decision to direct capital to projects that support this goal.

This paper examines the impact of carbon accounting and pricing on a standard investment model using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Three additional cash flows are modelled, representing the costs for Embodied Carbon (ECC), Operational Carbon Cost (OCC), and Maintenance Carbon Cost (MCC). This paper introduces a novel application of carbon pricing in real estate investment, accounting for embodied, operational, and maintenance-related emissions during the use phase, which results in a practical framework and guide for practitioners.

The Carbon Price needs to be sufficiently high to make an impact and contribute to excluding energy-inefficient assets as an investment opportunity. Furthermore, the influence of ECC is minor compared to OCC, making carbon pricing for ECC less relevant in investment decisions. Ultimately, the MCC is a significant factor to consider when making an investment decision.

Carbon pricing can encourage the use of circular and biobased materials, reducing emissions during the construction, renovation, and use phases. Investors should apply a carbon price to affect investment decisions by excluding carbon-intensive assets from investment portfolios. Investors could align their capital with the sector's low-carbon goal by including monetised carbon emissions in an investment decision.

The extreme weather events of recent years have highlighted the vulnerability of real estate assets to climate risks and the urgent need to adapt the built environment to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Institutional investors, as key stakeholders in commercial real estate, play a critical role in this effort. However, little is known about their decision-making behaviours and the processes that drive or hinder investments for climate adaptation measures in existing assets. This paper investigates the decision-making behaviours of institutional real estate investors through the lens of institutional theory, offering a framework to analyse both the rational and the cognitive tendencies that influence climate adaptation investment decisions. Using a qualitative research approach, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with senior managers across the different management levels of institutional real estate investors in the Netherlands. The findings aim to identify and classify the underlying tendencies shaping these decisions into normative, coercive, and mimetic pressures. By doing so, this study will provide valuable insights for industry practitioners to enhance their decision-making practices towards climate adaptation, offer guidance to policymakers on where regulations, policies, and incentives are needed, and contribute to the existing body of literature on real estate investor behaviour in the context of climate change.

Value drives actions in our modern day economy. In their turn, these actions are the pillars for how well societal transitions are achieved in the long run. In the past decade, we’ve seen governments heavily funding and subsidizing transitions in action to better achieve desperately needed societal targets. Examples are the prevention of climate change, climate transition, and a decrease in resource consumption. However, these significant initiatives are not nearly close to being self-reliant. And with the current retraction of a lot of funds and subsidies on the horizon, the achievement of these transitions has gotten in serious jeopardy. The authors of this abstract posit that these funds and subsidies have not been able to make a significant step forward to successful transitions, mostly because the efforts still focus and rely on the monetary values and motivations and ignore the rest.. It is argued that the introduction of value beyond monetary terms and a way to determine this value is needed. In response, this abstract is intended as the ontological start for developing a summer school, which is part of a recently granted Marie Curie Doctoral Network programme, called QuiVal, where the concept of value is revisited using quantum theory. The summer school under development marks the doctoral network's first educational notes. The aim of the summer school therefore is to stimulate conceptual creativity and critical thinking on the concept of value and offer first clues on how value can be reimagined in practical fields of application surrounding the real estate sector. As preliminary examples to the content of these lecture notes, the authors aim to discuss the implications on value from the position of quantum finance versus classical finance, the potential of these implications to unlock perceptive capability for hard-to-measure value (e.g. social and environmental values) and how it can open up various dimensions of potential value measurements that are important to the multiple transitions in our built environment. To this background summer school, QuiVal aspires to broaden the recognition of non-financial values in industry, government, and research unlocking more sustainable approaches to real estate. For example, by developing models and tools for (non-financial) value measurements we could support decision-making and demonstrate the attractiveness of social and environmental projects better through the research by the doctoral network.

De transformatie van kantoren naar residentiële ruimtes is een belangrijk onderwerp in de context van de huidige woningnood en stedelijke regeneratie. Deze transformatie omvat diverse financiële aspecten die zowel kansen als uitdagingen bieden voor ontwikkelaars. Wanneer er puur wordt gekeken naar de financiële haalbaarheid van een transformatieproject is er steeds een uitdaging (Geraedts & Van der Voordt 2004). De opportuniteit van de transformatie zit in het maximaal hergebruiken wat er reeds aanwezig is. Dit om zowel duurzame als circulaire doelstellingen te verwezenlijken. Echter vanuit een puur financieel perspectief is dit niet altijd even eenvoudig. Bestaande bouwstructuren leggen randvoorwaarden op aan het project die tot suboptimale eindresultaten kunnen leiden na transformatie. Wanneer er dan enkel een financiële waardebepaling wordt gemaakt, zoals deze vandaag gangbaar is op de markt, kan het project niet de gewenste rendementen halen. De sleutel zit in de waardebepaling, die zowel een financiële als een maatschappelijke component moet bevatten (Remøy & Van der Voordt 2007). Alleen een integrale afweging leidt tot een gedegen inzicht in de haalbaarheid van toekomstbestendige (transformatie)projecten.

This paper examines the limitations of the current European Union (EU) Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities as applied to real estate investments. It argues for a revised approach that incorporates the broader environmental impacts of real estate assets, including the effects on surrounding investments and infrastructure. By integrating these considerations, the taxonomy can promote more holistic and sustainable urban development practices.

Meeting rooms are reserved 30% of working hours but only used for 20% of that time. By implementing a strategy where the available capacity is leased to the wider market rather than just the building users, there is a positive impact on the economic, environmental, and social factors of the building and its surroundings. This study uses the building ‘The Globe’ in The Hague as a case study, and then projects the results to the entire city. In case of The Globe, implementing a lease out strategy achieves a reduction of 36% of the annual rent of the meeting rooms to the building's tenant. The owner benefits from a revenue increase of 12.5%, with the same operational expenses (except the reservation system), leading to a proportional higher valuation of the building. Annual energy consumption may be lowered by 6.2%. This study contributes to the literature by considering the total benefits that could be obtained by more efficient use of office space that is currently underused. The application of technology generates added value for economic, environmental, and social factors. These factors are important in real estate as they (among others) have a direct link to the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) analysis that investors make before proceeding with an investment.

Investors are currently obliged to take environment, social, and governance (ESG) issues into consideration as part of their fiduciary duty. As such, it becomes increasingly important to identify sustainable investments that also hold financial value. A sector where this is especially underdeveloped is real estate. This has a lot to do with the obfuscated conceptualization of ESG. The article identifies key gaps in the literature and practice and provides a framework to further the understanding of how ESG factors can add societal and financial value in the real estate sector. A key premise of the article is that the user in the building is grossly overlooked. Drawing on insights from behavioral social science and environmental psychology, the paper explains the role of the user in improving buildings’ ESG, also taking into account the investment value. To conclude, the article makes the case that the transition to user-centered smart real estate is the solution to improving both the environmental (E) and social (S) sustainability of buildings, as well as their investment value. Therefore, practitioners and academics are encouraged to critically evaluate and contextualize the ESG framework they are using as well as the extent to which users are considered and smart technology is employed.

The data generated in buildings are used for all types of purposes. The quality of information used in assisting people to escape an emergency situation is of importance. In practice today, none of the data-generating systems that aid in the escape from emergency situations is validated on a regular basis. This study is based on the smart building concept. The rationale behind this concept is to provide information about a building and the usage of that building at each moment in time. An experiment was conducted to measure the impact of different types of information on participants’ choice of exit, exit time and distance travelled. Seven identical floors of one building were used with different setups to see if the choice of exit is influenced by the type of information provided at the moment of an alarm. It was found that the information does have a significant impact on the choice of exit, escape speed and distance travelled. Furthermore, it was shown that false information can increase the time it takes to leave the building and the distance travelled, impacting the survival rate. The more imperative information is visualised, the stronger its influence is on the choices made.

Buildings are responsible for 40% of our worldwide energy consumption and 50% of this energy is converted for Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems in buildings. The increasing share of renewable energy production required to make the transition towards a carbon neutral energy system challenges the stability of the grid. Through demand response it becomes possible to activate these systems in support of grid balancing. However, this flexibility is currently not rewarded in the market. We simulate a domestic water heater participating in the balancing of the electricity net and calculated the revenue from this action. We simulate a water heater in connection with an Economic Model Predictive Controller (EMPC) which takes future usage, energy cost, and reward for delivering balanced power into account. We show that the choice of an EMPC controller is valid as it allows the setpoint to change if certain conditions are met, leading to a more optimal revenue stream from selling flexibility. We find that the economic benefits of participating in delivering balancing power is considerable and offset an increase in energy costs. The increase in energy consumption could be justified as the participation in net stabilisation allows the macro-system to integrate more renewable energy sources. More importantly, the simulations also show that the poorer the energy performance of the water heater, the more flexibility can be sold. From a policy point of view, a minimal energy performance should be determined before allowing participation in net stabilisation.