Over the past five years, multifamily property owners have faced an increasing challenge: addressing the growing popularity of electric vehicles and meeting tenants' desires to charge their cars at home.

GlobeSt.com spoke with Mark Kerstens, vice president of EV Charging Solutions at CBRE, and Aubrey Gunnels, CEO of 3V Infrastructure. The two companies announced a partnership to expand EV charging infrastructure at multifamily properties. They’re using a variation of a model in which property owners don’t pay an up-front or monthly fee. Instead, the companies provide the planning, equipment, and installation, making their money by charging fees from tenants.

Gunnels said they’re focusing on multifamily because a third of people in the U.S. live in apartments and only 5% of the buildings have chargers. “Even if EV penetration is at 10%, regardless of the pace of adoption, it’s an amenity that is important to residents,” she told GlobeSt.com. “It’s an amenity that buildings are still interested in. It’s a question of how we get them there and how we do it faster.”