Good morning, and welcome to the H and R Real Estate Investment Trust 20 2nd Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Before beginning the call, H and R would like to remind listeners that certain statements, which may include predictions, conclusions, forecasts and projections in the remarks that follow may contain forward looking information, which reflects the current expectations of management regarding future events and performance and speak only as of today's date. Forward looking information requires management to make assumptions to rely on certain material factors and is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the statements in the forward looking information. In discussing H and R's financial and operating performance and in responding to your questions, we may reference certain financial measures, which do not have a meaning recognized or standardized under IFRS or Canadian General Accepted Accounting Principles and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other reporting issuers. Non GAAP measures should not be considered as alternatives to net income or comparable metrics determined in accordance with IFRS as indicators of H and R's performance, liquidity, cash flows or profitability.
H and R's management uses these measures to aid in assessing the RIT's underlying performance and provides these additional measures so that investors can do the same. Additional information about the material factors, assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements in the forward looking information and the material factors and assumptions that may have been applied in the making of such statements together with the details on H and R's use of non GAAP financial measures are described in more detail in H and R's public filings, which can be found on our website at www.sedar.com. I would now like to introduce Mr. Tom Hofstetter, Chief Executive Officer of H&R Rent. Please go ahead, Mr.
Hofstetter.
Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us. I'm Tom Hofstitters, H&R's and R's CEO, and I'd like to welcome everyone to the call. Joining me today are Larry Frum, our CFO Pat Sullivan, COO of Primaris Philippe Lapointe, COO of Lantower Robin Kestenberg, EVP Corp Development and Alex Avery, EVP Asset Management and Strategic Initiatives. All of our lives continue to be disrupted by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. It has created huge economic disruption, restricted travel locally and internationally, triggered dramatic changes in capital markets and changed the rhythm of day to day life to say nothing of the significant illness, death and suffering it has caused.
Our first priority remains the safety of our employees, tenants and visitors to our properties. Like other responsible organizations, we are following all of the recommended protocols, including social distancing, practicing remote working and frequent cleaning some space, among others. As you can see from our results, there has been lots of activity, including temporary closure of properties, hundreds of applications for Sika and other government assisted programs and some notable tenant filings. However, we're pleased to report financial and operating results reflect the high quality of our portfolio that we have built over the past 2 plus decades. Our focus on well located properties, creditworthy tenants and long term leases and financings is evident in our latest rent collections exceeding 90% and limited scope of tenant closures in our portfolio, less than 0.5% of retail space to date.
It seems highly likely there will be more closures in the next few quarters, but we are quite pleased with how limited impact has been so far. Our team continues to work closely with our tenants to find mutually beneficial solutions to support the success of our properties. Our Primaris team in particular has been running flat out to complete all of the secret applications. We are responsive to tenant needs and provide customized solutions to the unique challenges they are currently facing, all the while continuing to perform their normal duties. One interesting side effect of the high volume of activity is that there is a backlog of rent collections related to tenants that have made partial payments less than recently agreed upon amounts.
It's just one more small positive data point suggesting further rent collection improvements as circumstances slowly return to more normal state. Next up, Larry will summarize our quarterly and annual financial results. Pat will then provide an update on our retail portfolio, followed by Philippe who'll update us on our multi res portfolio. And finally, I'll conclude with some closing remarks. Over to you, Larry.
Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I would like to begin by discussing the 3 unusual items included in this quarter's results. The first two almost offset each other. Firstly, we received $3,300,000 in lease termination fees. Normally, all of it was from a tenant in one of our Dallas, Texas office properties.
This income is included in rentals from investment properties. Secondly, largely due to COVID, we wrote off $3,900,000 of costs incurred for abandoned transactions and an allowance of credit loss on a mortgage receivable. This has increased our trust expenses this quarter. Thirdly, we increased our provision for bad debts from $334,000 in Q1 2020 to $24,500,000 for Q2 2020. The breakdown of this provision is as follows: $2,900,000 is for tenants that have filed for creditor protection under the company's Creditors Arrangement Act, CCAA.
This is amount that was owing to us on the day of the CCAA filing. Secondly, dollars 3,100,000 was set aside for participating in the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance, the SECRET program implemented by the Government of Canada, where we abated 25% of the April, May June rent for tenants that qualified for the program. Tenants making up about 16% of the rent due from an enclosed mall portfolio qualified for the program. And finally, we have set aside an $18,500,000 provision for expected rent abatements and a general provision for tenants that may still file for creditor protection. This total provision of $24,800,000 amounts 43% of our gross accounts receivable as at June 30, 2020.
Net of the provision, accounts receivable at June 30 was $32,500,000 which includes our share of equity accounted investments. As can be expected, most of our $24,500,000 provision for bad debt arose from our retail division, which accounted for 93% of the total provision and specifically in our enclosed mall portfolio. Split of the provision for bad debts amongst our 4 segments can be found in our press release and the management discussion and analysis. As a reminder, we own 100 percent of 10 enclosed malls and own 50% of 7 other enclosed malls. These malls that are proportionate share of ownership account for 21% of our Q2 monthly rent billings.
In July, we filed SECRA applications for the 4 months of April, May, June July and based on these filings are expected to receive $8,000,000 from the government. As of August 10, we had received $5,600,000 and expect to receive the $2,400,000 balance soon. We are pleased that our rent collections in the Q3 have improved compared to Q2's collections. July's overall collections at 91% are the highest since April and we are trending to further improve in August as our rent collection percentage for August stood at 87% by 10th of the month. Same asset property operating income on a cash basis decreased by 7.1% and 3% respectively for the 3 6 months ended June 30, 2020 compared to the respective 2019 periods, primarily due to the provision for bad debt.
Excluding the provision for bad debt, same asset property operating income would have increased by 5.9% and 3.4%, respectively. Breaking this down between the segments, same asset property operating income on a cash basis from our office segments increased by 3.8% and for the 3 months ended June 30, 2020 decreased 0.9% for the 6 months ended June 30, 2020 compared to the respective periods in 2019. Included in the 3 6 months ended June 30, 2020 were lease termination fees of $2,900,000 compared to $100,000 and $5,900,000 for the 3 6 months ended June 30, 2019. Excluding lease termination fees, same asset property operating income increased by 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively. The average term remaining on our office leases is €11.9 Same asset property operating income cash basis from our retail properties decreased by 34.7% 18% for the 3 6 months ended June 30, 2020 compared to respective 2019 periods, primarily due to the provision for bad debt as we have already discussed.
Excluding the provision for bad debts, the same asset property operating income for our retail division would have increased by 2.9% and 0.5% respectively. Same asset property operating income on a cash basis from our industrial properties increased by 7.2% and 5% respectively compared to the respective 2019 period, primarily due to an increase in occupancy and rental rate increases. Same asset property operating income from residential properties in U. S. Dollars increased by 11% and 21.5%, respectively, for the 3 6 months ended June 30, 2020.
And Philippe will provide more color on this during his remarks shortly. Turning to funds from operations. FFO was $0.381 per unit for Q2 compared to 0 point 4 $2.5 per unit in Q2 twenty nineteen. Excluding the provision for bad debts, FFO would have been 0.462 dollars compared to $0.426 per unit in Q2 2019, an 8.7% increase. As far as liquidity goes, H and R had $996,000,000 of unused borrowing capacity available under its lines of credit and $131,000,000 of cash on hand and only had $99,000,000 of debt maturing during the remainder of 2020.
In addition, the REIT had 94 unencumbered properties with a fair value of approximately $3,400,000,000 at June 30, 2020. And I will now turn the call over to Pat to give us an update on our retail division.
Thank you, Larry, and good morning. Over the past 2 years, we've completed almost 800 lease transactions, including 250 new deals, of which 35 were new large format stores. In the last quarter of 2019, over 200,000 square feet of new large format tenants opened, contributing significant rental revenue. Earlier this year, a new 35,000 square foot Best Buy open at Sunridge Mall and another of 180,000 Square Feet of large format tenants has recently or will open shortly, primarily in space formerly occupied by Sears. Moving into 2021, we have approximately 80,000 square feet committed to locate in former Sears locations with several additional transactions under discussion.
With most of the hard work replacing Sears and Target behind us, we are now confronted with the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Our retail partners have faced significant challenges since malls began to close and we have not hesitated to work with them to navigate this difficult period. Within the Primaris division, we utilized the circa program for more than 530 tenants covering the period from April to July 2020. The gross rent paid by tenants in the circuit program amounted to approximately 16% for Primaris and 3% for the overall H and R portfolio. We expect to apply for the circuit program in August.
However, with tenants open and operating and reporting sales, we're reviewing tenant applications on a case by case basis. Due to mall closures and hardships faced by many tenants since reopening, we have negotiated tenant assistance agreements with many of our tenants, which has resulted in a $22,800,000 bad debt provision in the retail division with the majority being allocated to enclosed malls. As a consequence, the retail division has experienced a significant decline in NOI during the Q2. On a positive note, without this bad debt provision, the retail division would have experienced a 2.9% increase during the quarter despite significant decline in percentage rent and specialty leasing revenue, which is associated with the malls being closed. Significant leasing in prior quarters and new store openings has resulted in a notable gain in our retail rent and recovery ratios, which we will continue to benefit from during the duration of 2020 beyond.
Collections of rent in the retail portfolio have trended higher since a low point of 64% in May. In July, we collected 77% and we expect to exceed that figure in August. The enclosed mall portfolio follows a similar trend with collections of 49% in May, rising to 66% in July with August collections expected to improve further. The circa process monopolized much of our team's time recently, but with it nearing completion and terms having been finalized and documented with majority of our tenants regarding outstanding rents, we will focus on updating our expected rents and receivables, which will in turn improve our collection statistics further. While there have been a number of CCAA filings, we manage to mitigate our exposure and have realized a limited reduction in square footage.
While new leasing activity has been light during the past few months, some of the space vacated by tenants filing CCAA is of high quality and as a result we have progressed discussions with replacement tenants already. With all malls essentially being closed in April, properties began to reopen in Manitoba, New Brunswick, Alberta and BC in May. Our Quebec property in Chiquote opened in June and our Ontario properties opened mid June except for Dufferin, which opened at the end of June. Tenants have been confronted with issues since reopening including additional costs for PPE, staffing and maintaining inventory levels. While food tenants and personal care tenants continue to report sales in the 50% to 70% range of prior year comparable sales on average, Other tenants including many electronic, fashion and footwear tenants are performing well with some posting comparable sales greater than last year.
Generally, malls opened since May are showing sales of approximately 70% to 80% compared to the same period last year. Smaller market properties typically enclosed malls that are the only one in its respective region such as Park Place and Lethbridge and Place de Rojem and Chikutomay are performing better than malls located in major markets. Tenants are stating that the most challenging properties are super regional malls in major markets that require a regional draw to generate high sales volume as well as urban properties that rely on daytime traffic. With the majority of our discussions completed with tenants regarding outstanding rents and our major capital program associated with Sears and Target nearing completion, we look forward to focusing on a redevelopment of Duffer Mall that incorporates approximately 1,000 new residential units as well as other intensification opportunities across our portfolio. Thank you, and I will now turn it over to Philippe.
Good morning, everyone. As you can imagine, we spent most of the first half of twenty twenty primarily focused on supporting a high collections rate and just as importantly, value creation through active management. I'd like to begin, however, by highlighting that our success through COVID-nineteen pandemic can be attributed to the unbelievable work and complete dedication that our on-site and corporate staff have demonstrated. And so I'll begin with collections. As mentioned last quarter, collections have been top of mind and so we've enacted a few strategies to support our collections percentage and assisted our residents through this period.
Thankfully, our high collections rate mentioned on our last call has persisted throughout COVID-nineteen. I'm delighted to announce that our teams have continued their success as evidenced by a receipt of approximately 97% of build rent for every month from April to July. For comparison, the National Multi Housing Council's rent payment tracker, which is tracking 11,000,000 apartments across the U. S. Has reported a collections rate of 95% over the same period.
Additionally, Lantower had collected 90% of August rent compared to the industry average of 79% as of the 6th of this month and has collected over 93% of August billed as of yesterday. I'd like to briefly touch on eviction moratoriums. While enacted in an earnest attempt to help renters, eviction moratoriums have yielded an unfortunate moral hazard. Some residents aware of the temporary eviction laws appear to be gaming the system by electing not to pay rent even though they possess the financial means to do so. Upon the release of some local moratoriums, Lantower sent eviction notices to residents who were delinquent multiple months rent, many of whom were suspected of this non payment strategy.
Within a few days, nearly 40% of those notified residents paid a portion of the delinquent balances. Unfortunately, this is a well documented trend across the U. S. And in our opinion, represents a policy failure and strategy to provide aid to residents in need. Having said that, evictions across the country remain low even where moratoriums are lifted and collections remain high.
We mentioned on our last call that we have been implementing specific technology enhancements to a few Land Tower properties. In light of the advancement of property tech and shift of resident road preferences, we've moved forward with a smart apartment pilot program at 3 of our properties in Austin and 2 properties in Charlotte. These properties are in the process of receiving smart locks, smart thermostats, leak sensors that will provide the resident full apartment control all from a single app. Furthermore, we expect operational efficiencies ranging from keyless and remote access to expense savings via vacant unit utilities control. Lastly, our smart tech initiative and software integrates very well with our enhanced self guided tour initiatives that we've begun deploying in early 2020.
And I look forward to sharing updates next quarter regarding the reception of this initiative. On the development front, the Pearl, a 383 unit mid rise multifamily development in Austin, Texas, commenced pre leasing in August and has begun signing leases. The project is scheduled to fully deliver later this year. Despite COVID related construction shutdowns throughout the state of Washington, Nightingale, our 263 unit mid rise development located in Seattle, Washington is still estimated to commence pre leasing by the end of this year and will fully deliver in the Q1 of 2021. Phase 1 of our Hercules development in San Francisco named The Exchange received final CO in July of this year and has fully opened its leasing office.
Phase 2 of our Hercules development started construction during the Q1 of 2019 and is expected to deliver in the Q2 of 2021. Lastly, Shoreline Gateway, a 35 story multifamily tower in Long Beach, California is on schedule and expected to be delivered in the summer of 2021. The project has reached the 29th level and should top out in the Q4 of this year. On the operational front at the end of the second quarter, the land tower portfolio excluding Jackson Park was 90.6% occupied. It was over 92.1% occupied when excluding our lease up properties.
Perhaps more importantly, we've recently seen an improvement in leasing velocity and retention rates. As of this week, the Land Tower portfolio is 92.5% occupied, including lease ups, and over 93.3% occupied, excluding lease ups, representing fundamentals moving in a positive direction and hopefully leaving the Q2 in the rearview mirror. By way of example, in July 2020 alone, we secured nearly 60% of the total number of new leases secured in the entire Q2 of 2020. On the financial front, our same asset quarter end operating income increased in U. S.
Dollars from $18,210,000 in the Q2 of 2019 to $20,217,000 in the Q2 of 2020. This equates to the same asset quarter over quarter operating income growth of 11%, partially due to the inclusion of Jackson Park's lease up stats. When excluding Jackson Park, our same asset quarter over quarter operating income growth equates to 5.6%. We're proud to announce and highlight that our 2nd quarter operating income growth represents 10 consecutive quarters of same asset quarter over quarter NOI growth. Aside from focusing on collections and operating income growth, Land Tower and the REIT have increasingly moved to a more sustainable business approach that recognizes the financial and social benefits of ESG.
Our Smart Apartment initiative will inherently make a double bottom line impact via the utility savings and efficiencies. In addition to the environmental initiatives being pursued, Lantower has also taken positive steps on the social front. We have recently launched 2 national committees led by company leaders from various levels that will be geared towards promoting diversity, inclusion and active employee engagement. As a tidbit that I'm quite proud to share with you, at Lantower approximately 45% of our employees and over 50% of our executive team consists of women. While our achievements on that front are and will continue to be a work in progress, I'm delighted to say that these initiatives stem from an organic movement within our organization that admittedly are representative of our company culture and values.
And with that, I will pass along the conversation back to Tom.
Thanks, Philippe. With those updates out of the way, I only have a few final remarks. Firstly, we didn't see any significant changes to fair value properties. Last quarter, we recorded a significant reduction in fair value. While there still haven't been many market transactions to benchmark off, we believe we have adequately provided for the impact of the pandemic on our portfolio.
2nd, our unit price. We believe the current roughly 50% discounts to our IFRS fair value that our units are trading at is successfully discounting the risk in our business. We hope our Q2 results provide some comfort to investors that our cash flow portfolio value is more resilient than our unit price would suggest. As noted in the past, we are always looking at ways to improve our business, and the variety of options we look at is broad. With the unit price trading where it is currently and with the REIT's adequate liquidity, the option of buying back our units has become very attractive, particularly relative to other investments we might pursue.
Over the rest of 2020, as visibility improves and economic conditions return to a more normal state, we expect to have excess liquidity and will consider buying back units if current price levels persist. And with that, operator, please open the line for questions.
Your first question comes from Matt Kornack.
Good morning, guys. Good morning. With regards to same property NOI growth within the retail segment, I mean, I understand that it's mostly a provision. But as you look ahead and things normalize, what would you think are the at risk portion on a longer term basis, not necessarily relative to collections, you would have had historically looking at sort of the plus 3% excluding COVID and 30% with COVID, where should we think of it in that range?
It's Pat. We've done a lot of leasing and a lot of that rent as I mentioned in my speech is starting to kick in and we're starting to see the benefit. We really were going to experience significant growth over the next this year and next year in terms of rental rate growth just from the all the box stores and development work we've done. And that's not going to change. I think in terms of the small format stores, I think in the short term we're going to have we're going to experience some pressure on just having rates remain flat in some cases and we're going to have issues with some further CCAA filings potentially.
But I think over the longer run, our malls are generally smaller and they're the only game in town. And I think we're going to maintain our occupancy and we're going to be able to grow rents over time.
So you don't see this as permanently impaired vacancy, it sounds like. And then also do you have a sense as to how much of that would have been actual cash rent abatements versus just a deferral and a write off against the deferral?
In terms of the bad debt?
Yes.
Yes, deferrals aren't included in that. We did do some deferrals. They're not provided for. But generally, all our deferrals are either paid back this year or within early next year. We didn't do any long range deferrals for the most part.
Okay. Larry, you have I mean, your liquidity position materially improved with the bond issuance, but also some further credit facility capacity. It Doesn't sound like you have much coming due in the way of mortgages. Just wondering why take out such a huge insurance policy in terms of liquidity?
Good morning, Matt. It's just uncertain times. And in uncertain times, we want to be as liquid as possible and look forward to not necessarily just 2020, but into 2021 as well.
And from a financing standpoint, I mean, do you have any sense as to where bond yields have gone as well as mortgage financing? It seems like you've done both at fairly attractive rates, but have those improved since the height of the COVID crisis?
Yes. Spread lender spreads have definitely come in since the heart of the COVID crisis. We did a large mortgage just in the heart of that process. And for sure, lenders spreads since then have narrowed bonds. So yes, it is cheaper financing available.
So then there was at the beginning in April of this year.
Okay. So needless to say, I guess going forward, you'd think that you'd have access to cheaper capital assuming, again, no second wave etcetera, etcetera?
Cheaper than the financings that we did in April, yes.
Okay. And we have nothing really rolling with any consequence.
So it's not really impactful on
our financials in the near term.
Yes. I guess for 2021 with regards to the maturities that you have there, would you be replacing mortgages with mortgages and bonds with bonds? Or how should we look at your approach to those financings?
Yes. I think it's right now to wait and see. We'll wait fully a bit closer. We'll see where we are in the unsecured world compared to the secured financing world. And we're still too far out to make the nation right now.
Yes.
If our financing is just can also be partnership driven, where our partners require financing, that can't be unsecured. So for example, the retail partnerships with Montes and a lot of the PSP Industrial portfolio, they have to be secured financing rather than unsecured just because our partners don't have access to our unsecured. So that's going to dictate to a great degree where we're going to do secured versus unsecured.
Okay. That makes sense. And then I mean even so I guess when you look at the cost of debt capital relative and you've got cash as well relative to your current price, your comments on buying back shares, do you have a sense as to how long you're willing to wait to see that discount compressed before you start buying back? Or is this something we should expect imminently?
Definitely not imminently, unless the vaccine there's too much grayness in the market right now to give you definitive answers. So we have the capacity. We're waiting just like everybody else's for some light at the end of this tunnel and we'll have to go in.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
And your next question comes from Jenny May.
Thanks. Good morning. Maybe just a bit further, Tom, on the comment about buybacks. I know you said that you're going to wait till there's light at the end the tunnel. But in terms of more concrete thresholds, would you say that the liquidity position that you're in currently and combined with the unit price is enough of a threshold for you to act on if you can see an improvement in the environment?
Absolutely. Okay, great. And then with regards to the fair value loss in the office portfolio, I'm not sure if maybe I missed this, but was it a little bit of a change across the portfolio? Or was there a certain type of office asset or assets in particular that drove that move?
Jamie, it's Larry. No, we basically kept our fair values exactly the same fair value. Our valuations team kept them in the same value as last quarter. But what happened in a few properties, we had CapEx and leasing and CapEx charges. But our valuation started last quarter, let's say, at $100,000,000 and we kept it the same $100,000,000 for the valuations team, but we had CapEx incurred in the quarter of $10,000,000 It resulted in a fair value decrease of $10,000,000 In other words, we didn't increase the fair value by the CapEx work we had done during the quarter.
Okay. So no major fundamental changes, just some tweaks here and there, I guess?
Yes. There were no changes to our assumptions or anything evaluation assumptions that we had made last quarter. We kept the same valuation assumptions as we did last quarter.
Okay, great. And then my next question is for Philippe with regards to the Lantara portfolio. Just wondering if we can get some on the ground insight in terms of what you're hearing from your tenants regarding their ability to pay rent? I know it's been pretty strong, but maybe it's a timing issue. It looks like it's come off a bit in August and it very well could be timing.
But any sense of your tenants' ability to pay? And do you collect any employment data from them? Anything that you could share with us?
Philippe, I think you're on mute.
I am on mute, the cardinal sin of all Zoom calls. I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand your comment that August was a little bit off.
From what I see, the collection was at 90% compared to some of the earlier months in the high 90s. I'm not sure if that's just timing or if there's been a change given that some of the benefits have come off or maybe there's been some changes in employment for some of your tenants. Just any insight on that?
Yes. Okay. So, listen, if I was to wager a bet, I would probably say that we're going to end August exactly where the last 4 months have ended. I think that's just purely a timing issue in that we're having a call today as opposed to in a week from now. As it relates to your question, I think that's the $1,000,000 question that everybody in the Class A space is kind of wondering, right?
It's most of our folks, we have employment data. We know where they're employed, which leads us to believe that the vast majority of our tenants are still employed and either going to the office or working from home. We've noticed a small uptick in credit card usage to pay rent, which I think was more prevalent in April and then petered out as we got further into the summer. And so I would try to answer the question as quickly as I possibly can without going on. I would probably tell you that our residents and this is probably true for most Class A residents in the gateway cities are less sensitive to what ends up happening on the unemployment side.
And so if we are staying the course and there's no improvement, but there's no material deterioration, I wouldn't anticipate there being any material effect to our collections. Does that answer your question?
Yes, yes. I just want some additional color. Turning to Jackson Park, could you comment on the physical occupancy there? I mean, we've been hearing a lot about some segments of New Yorkers moving out of the city. Have you seen that occur in Jackson Park?
And if you could remind us when the bulk of the move ins were from the stabilization? Basically, I'm just wondering if there's a big bump of tenants whose leases are starting to come to expiry shortly?
Jenny, it's Larry. The occupancy at Jackson Park was kind of flat, maybe slightly down at June 30, But the bulk of the leases are coming up not the bulk, a lot of leases come up in the summer. So July, August, September, there's a lot of lease coming up, which was that's the way just the New York apartment building goes. So we're waiting to see how we do with those renewals.
Jenny, a significant portion of our property, Jackson Park and LIC, are foreign students and universities aren't opening. So we're expecting that the vacancy rates will rise because those residences are just not going to renew. They're not in New York anymore. I don't think that's indicative of anything other than our particular location, which was very attractive to foreign students.
That's fair. Do you have a sense of what this percentage of, I guess, non resident tenants would be in Jackson Park?
40% are students, foreign students. So you can expect that the occupancy is going to boil down to the low 80s the low 80% in the short term in either of it. And we'll have to ramp up again as universities start opening again.
Okay. Is that
I'm not sure if you
know, but are they intending to open in person for the most part or?
They are not. They are not.
Yes. That's what I thought.
Right. You can have a lot of Zoom classes. So we're going to take a hit in occupancy in the short term for sure and we'll have to build up from there. Basically ramping out of the student market and attracting the typical LIC market.
Okay. Okay, great. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thanks, Jenny.
And your next question comes from Sam Damiani.
Thanks and good morning. Maybe Pat, just for you, you mentioned you see maintaining occupancy in the malls. Could you just be a little more specific as to what sort of timeframe that comment was referring to?
We haven't had a lot of followed at the moment. And we have actually I just signed one this morning. We have transacted some new deals. We most of our properties didn't have a lot of vacancy. A lot of our vacancy was being carried in the anchor boxes, which we're filling up.
The one strong benefit of our properties there are a couple of benefits. One is we're typically the only mall in town. So if you want to be at a region, coming to our property. And the second thing is our malls are generally affordable. I would suggest to you that we've been one of the better shopping center managers that maintain controlling our costs.
Our average CAM tax package is significantly below a lot of the other shopping centers in other regions. And so we're very affordable for tenants and our GROC levels are very reasonable. And for that reason, we haven't that's one of the reasons we haven't seen a lot of fallout throughout the CCAA filings. And I think as we move forward and tenants continue to rationalize their store counts, they're going to look at our market and say, I want to be in that market and I make money there. I think where you're really going to see the pressure is the larger markets, the super regionals where the rents the gross rent packages are completely out of hand and unaffordable.
And that's where you're going to see a lot of the store closures. But for us, I don't really see occupancy being a challenge going forward, because we are really the only alternative in the region we're in.
Okay. That's helpful. And you made
a comment, I think,
on malls that have been open since May. Sales levels or traffic levels are in the 70% to 80% range. I just wanted to clarify that and wonder if there's any more color you could provide in that regard?
Yes. I think right now sales reports are a little fuzzy, right, because for a number of reasons. One is, although the malls might have opened on a specific date, the tenants not all the tenants opened on that date. That's one. The CERB program has really caused a lot of problems with tenants and that they are having trouble getting staffing.
So some stores are not opening 7 days a week. They're not opening full mall hours. And so their sales are being squeezed by that as well. In general, as we dissect kind of the sales reports and look at who's doing what and who's been open for what period of time, The guys who are basically open full time and open back in May, they've been able to ramp up. They've got their staff in place there.
They've got their inventories kind of at a stable level and they're doing well. I think generally what we've seen is it takes about 30 days for the mall to kind of get back into the swing of things before people really start coming back and feel comfortable there. So Dufferin Mall, for instance, has had a slow start, but we're starting to see it pick up now because it didn't open until the end of June. Right.
And so do you know like what percentage of your stores are open today or your GLA is open today?
Well, I got it, Steven, except for the stores that filed CCAA and might have closed for that reason. I would suggest we're 99% plus like we're virtually entirely occupied.
Fully open. And everyone's opened up?
Everyone's opened, yes. The hours and the number of days per week is still a little hit and miss.
Okay. Thank you. And my last question just on River Landing. I wonder if, Tom, perhaps you could just address the reasoning for the cost increase on
the closures? Primarily COVID delays. We haven't really opened the residential yet. It's waiting for its occupancy permit. And it just carry costs.
We haven't leased any of the restaurant space. It's impossible to do so during this period. The first occupancy is commencing over the Labor Day weekend, Hobby Lobby is opening up. Public is opening up September 17. And most of the 70% of committed retail tenants will be opening up towards the end of the year.
But overall, the office leasing is again, we're still with that 50,000 square foot tenant. But all these delays have basically added to our costs. So it's primarily just COVID related.
Thank you.
And your next question comes from Irina Prokofievia.
Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask you for an update on your tenants in the mall space, just to follow-up on Sam's question, for example, on Good Life Fitness, Movie Theater and Hudson Bay.
Sorry, just to clarify, you're asking about HPC?
Yes. So what's the outlook there and how is business going there?
Hudson Bay stores are all open and operating in our portfolio. They're reporting that their sales are trending up. They had a slow start, but they're doing better now. They have not indicated they're prepared to close any stores. I know that there's been discussions with other landlords where landlords have actually requested them to ask if they would close and they said no.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's just building up building their business back to normal and everything will they'll be open and operating.
And what about Cineplex and other movie theaters and the fitness clubs?
The movie theaters and fitness clubs. Movie theaters right now are open. Their biggest challenge is that they don't have any new releases. The setback they faced was when the U. S.
COVID-nineteen reared its head and basically theaters down in the U. S. Shutdown, the Hollywood Studios put the movies on hold. So the new releases are really key to their getting their business moving forward. There are new releases scheduled to come out later this month.
I think it's the 3rd week of August, which will help significantly. I mean, it's a tough time to open a theater when the weather is nice outside and you're being asked to go sit in door and watch a movie that was on TV 10 years ago. So there's challenges in the short term, but I think once they get the new releases, they'll see a marked increase in traffic. The fitness facility surprisingly are all telling us that they're surprised at how well they're doing. We thought that would be a significant struggle, but they weathered the storm.
They got reopened and they're not complaining at all.
Okay. And so in your enclosed malls, do you usually tenants, the smaller tenants, do they have in their leases co tenancy clause in regards to anchor tenants?
Some tenants do have co tenancy clauses. One of the goals that we've done going through this pandemic and part of our negotiations with tenant regarding their rental arrears or outstanding rents has been to work to eliminate those clauses or defer them for an extended period of time. And we've been very successful in doing that. So I'm not really concerned about any co tenancy and it doesn't look like it's really going to be an issue anyways as our malls are basically fully open at this point.
Okay. Thank you. And I wanted also to ask about the office, the breakout fee that you got from tenant in Texas in the office space. What was the reason that tenant decided to break up the leases? Did they decide to work from home or they've been bankrupt or I don't know some other issues?
It was
a tornado basically a tornado basically demolished the building effectively. So the buildings are going to be demolished and we've got insurance proceeds.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Dean Wilkinson.
Thanks. Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.
Pat, I'm actually looking forward to seeing ET in the theater because I missed it the first time around. So don't discount that fully. Questions for Philippe. I'll give him a second to get off mute. On that couple of percent that you haven't collected and you mentioned some eviction notices, how does that break down between tenants who are in a position to evict and tenants that you are working with on some kind of deferral payment to sort of help them get through this?
Yes. So that's 2 buckets. There's a 3rd bucket, which essentially is the folks that can pay, but know that they don't have to. So they wait until the very last minute for the moratoriums to be lifted and all of a sudden rush for the leasing office, which I would say is close to half of the bad debt that we're carrying. So if I'm using round numbers, if we collect 96%, the net 2% of the 4% is and I want to be polite here, but just folks who are being strategic with the policies.
And of the other half, I would say, are definitely folks that we're having conversations with that are roughly still employed that are on some payment plan. I don't I was looking at the stats the other day from a pure bad debt, I'm not paying, I can't pay, I lost my job and I want to leave. It's a very immaterial uptick versus where we were at pre COVID.
That's what I would have figured, less than one would expect. How does that and then you look at the sort of the stabilization of the lease up and some moving parts around there, and I know it's very hard to say from a guidance perspective. What do you think the timeframe is to sort of stabilize occupancy across the portfolio? Because it looks like there's a lot of juice there, right? Like there's on a stabilized basis, I don't know, maybe 7%, 8% of occupancy left that you could capture here.
Yes. If you recall, since the very beginning, we've always said that we do not manage to occupancy. We manage to NOI and specifically NOI growth. So to be completely blunt, I don't really care if our portfolio is 90% or 96%, as long as we're seeing NOI growth and we're getting the rents that we believe we should be achieving. I think that ultimately the fallacy in occupancy rates is ultimately if you're managing the occupancy, the risk is you're leaving money on the table and you're not turning your units as quickly as you ought to be.
And so if that's I mean, everyone has their own investment philosophy, but ours has always been managing to NOI growth.
Yes. Well, no, that's what drives the bottom line. So that's it. I will hand it back. Thanks, guys.
And there are no further questions.
Thanks everybody. Enjoy the rest of the summer and we'll see you next quarter. Thank you.
That does conclude today's call. You may now