Seattle Contemplates Building Performance Reporting!
The City of Seattle is currently developing an ordinance that would mandate disclosure of building performance. This proposed ordinance is an outgrowth of Mayor Nickel's Green Building Capital Initiative. But it wasn't rolled out before, or even discussed in the run up to, the August Primary election. With Mayor Nickles' defeat in the Primary, whether the proposed ordinance will be discussed before the General Election in November, or get to the City Council any time soon is an open question.
If it does, and is passed into law, some real changes in the Seattle real estate market are in the making. The proposed ordinance is built on Section 6 of Senate Bill 5854 (pdf). However, there are some differences. It would also apply to multi-family properties of greater than 4 dwelling units. It would include requirements for mandatory disclosure to current and prospective buyers, tenants and lenders. In addition, energy and performance ratings would be reported to the City of Seattle annually for all buildings over 10,000 square feet (or every 3 years for multi-family properties of more than 4 dwelling units).
Once the City of Seattle collects all this data, its not clear how they would exempt it from Washington's Public Records Act. In other words, in the near future Seattle tenants, brokers, buyers, investors, financiers and developers may be able to obtain the information through a public records request and better assess the energy performance of a particular piece of real estate - before they lease, buy or develop it. The potential impact to the Seattle real estate market would be significant; the era of High Performance Buildings is just around the corner.
No surprise.... D.C. has done it... federal government will require it.... The "energy star" label for all buildings will be here sooner than we think ... hopefully.