Oparo Highly Commended at the Property Week ESG Edge Awards 2025
At the Property Week ESG Edge Awards 2025, Oparo earned recognition in two categories — ESG Developer of the Year and ESG Investor of the Year — with Toby Wilde, Founder of Oparo Social, behind the work in both.
For Toby, that recognition carries more weight than any single result. It reflects years spent improving housing outcomes, pushing back on conventional approaches to asset management, and showing that strong social impact and strong investment performance can be built together rather than traded off against each other.
We were glad to be named alongside such a strong field across both categories.
ESG Developer of the Year finalists
- Oparo Social (Highly Commended)
- Muse
- Related Argent
- Thriving Investments
ESG Investor of the Year finalists
- Oparo Social (Highly Commended)
- Bridges Fund Management
- Legal & General Investment Management
- Octopus Real Estate
Why recognition in both categories matters
Being recognised across both development and investment means a great deal to Toby, because it mirrors a conviction that has run through his whole career. The two are usually treated as separate disciplines with separate goals, yet he has long argued that they are bound tightly together.
The choices made when acquiring, funding, improving, managing and operating homes shape resident outcomes, asset quality and long-term returns all at once. Seeing housing as one connected lifecycle, where every decision carries consequences for both people and performance, has defined his approach for years — and being recognised in both categories is, in a sense, an acknowledgement of that wider view.
What Toby has built
Much of Toby’s work has gone into finding better ways to understand, manage and improve housing assets. Frustrated by the limits of traditional reporting and scattered data, he led the development of internal systems such as REACT and RAM, built to give real-time visibility across portfolios and operations so decisions could be made faster, accountability held more firmly, and problems caught earlier.
The aim was always practical: give teams tools that improve operational performance, lift the resident experience and protect long-term asset value. That emphasis on transparency, accountability and steady improvement now sits at the centre of how Oparo operates.
ESG in practice
Toby has always treated ESG as a question of outcomes rather than labels. Frameworks, policies and reporting standards matter, but their worth comes down to whether they actually change anything on the ground. In practice that means asking some fairly direct questions:
- Are homes safe, secure and well maintained?
- Are they energy efficient and affordable to run?
- Are residents seeing better housing outcomes?
- Is capital being allocated responsibly and effectively?
- Are maintenance programmes proactive rather than reactive?
- Are assets becoming more resilient over time?
- Are environmental impacts falling in measurable ways?
- Are governance processes improving accountability and transparency?
- Are investment decisions supporting long-term social value?
- Are providers creating sustainable outcomes for the communities they serve?
To Toby, the answers to those questions are what ultimately drives investment performance, which is why they sit at the heart of how the business is run.
Looking ahead
As the industry matures, Toby sees ESG becoming embedded in everyday business decisions instead of sitting off to one side as a standalone exercise. He finds that encouraging, because real progress tends to accumulate through the countless small choices made across acquisition, investment, development, management and operations.
Recognition across both categories is a welcome marker of how far the work has come. For Toby, though, the attention stays fixed on what comes next: better housing outcomes, capital deployed responsibly, stronger operational systems, and a continued case that long-term value appears when social impact and investment performance move in the same direction.
Toby Wilde
Founder, Oparo Social