Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 2002 AGM for InterRent REIT. First one we've had in person for, I guess it's been two years here, three years. Big crowd. Obviously, not as big as we'd like and what we've had in the past. Anybody who's listening, welcome to the AGM too. Just wanna say first off, thank you to Paul Amirault. Paul Amirault was acting as Chair for quite a few years here now. He's moved to Lead Independent Trustee. He will go through the formal part of our whole AGM, and Paul's done a fantastic job. Would like us to say thank you to Paul Bazanis.
Paul Bazanis, who has been a trustee for, I believe it was 12 years, and Paul stepped down. Paul's done an amazing job along the years. Helped us really from the beginning formulate the REIT and it continue to grow, and he's done a fantastic job. Wanna welcome two new members to our board. Think they're significant additions to our board. They've got excellent experience, business experience and experience that are items that we could obviously we saw that would really round out what we think is a fantastic board. Jean-Louis Bellemare is here. Jean-Louis, you can step up. Yeah, there you go, just so they can see you. Judy Hendriks has joined the board.
We think it's really, it's been great, and it's just part of the whole process of doing a little bit of renewal and just keep adding to our whole structure of the REIT. For all of you who followed us from the beginning, we've had a lot of great years together, and we look forward to having some more, even more fantastic years. As you know that I've stepped down from being the CEO. I'm my new role as Executive Chair, so I'll be kind of, I guess I have my foot in both sides of the process, so to speak. It really comes down to we've got such an excellent team, and I know Brad's gonna take you through his presentation.
Brad's been with us for seven years. He knows all parts of the business, including the institutional side, as being an investment banker and an analyst. Lots and lots of experience, and the rest of the team is just fantastic. Very, very proud that we've assembled this type of team and this board. At this point in time, we will start the formalized part of the AGM. It's over to Mr. Amirault to take us through.
Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone. It is now past 11 A.M., without further ado and delay, we'll get started on the formal part of the meeting. As Mike noted, my name is Paul Amirault, the Independent Trustee of InterRent REIT. With the consent of the meeting, I will chair today's meeting. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, all of whom are in attendance today, I welcome you to the annual and special meeting of unitholders of InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust. Mike's already introduced a few of those people present, but before proceeding with the business of the meeting, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce all of the individuals at the table beside me. May I ask that each individual rise briefly as their name is read. Mike McGahan, Executive Chair, Current Trustee, and standing for re-election.
Brad Cutsey, President and Chief Executive Officer of the REIT and standing for re-election. Curt Millar, Chief Financial Officer of the REIT. Rona Leslie, Current Trustee and standing for re-election. Cheryl Pangborn, Current Trustee and standing for re-election. John Jussup, Current Trustee and standing for re-election. Jean-Louis Bellemare, standing for re-election or standing for election. Judy Hendriks, standing for election, and Michael Clancy, Corporate Secretary of the REIT. Thank you. Pleased to answer any questions you may have once the formal portion of the meeting is concluded. I would now like to call the meeting to order. I will ask Michael Clancy to act as Secretary of the meeting, and I appoint Lori Winchester of TSX Trust Company to act as Scrutineer of the meeting. In order to facilitate the procedural aspects of the meeting, we have asked certain unitholders to move and second the various motions that will arise.
Voting on certain matters will be conducted by a show of hands and on certain other matters will be conducted by ballot. Only registered unitholders who held shares in their name as of April 26, 2022, the record date of this meeting, or their validly appointed proxy holders are entitled to vote at this meeting. The notice calling this annual and special meeting of unitholders and the Management Information Circular dated May 11, 2022, describing the matters to be considered today, were filed on SEDAR and posted on the REIT's website on May 20, 2022. The required quorum for this meeting is two unitholders present, either in person or representing as proxy, not less than 25% of the votes attaching to all units.
I have the preliminary report on attendance from the scrutineer and can declare that there is a quorum to be present. The Secretary will annex the scrutineer's report on attendance to the meetings of this minute. Notice having been served in accordance with the declaration of trust and a quorum being present this evening is duly constituted for the transaction of business set out in the notice of meeting. To be effective, all resolutions require an affirmative vote of the majority of votes cast. The results of the meeting will be publicly released and available on our website. The financial statements were previously mailed to unitholders that had requested them by completing a request for financial statements form. Copies of these financial statements are also available for review on SEDAR.
I'll place before the meeting the financial statements of the REIT for the year ended December 31, 2021, and the auditor's report to the unitholders. The next item of business is the election of trustees. The number of trustees to be elected at this meeting is eight. The following persons have been nominated by management for election as trustees, each of whom has agreed to act as a trustee and meet the qualifications set out in the declaration of trust to serve as a trustee. They are Paul Amirault, Jean-Louis Bellemare, Brad Cutsey, Judy Hendriks, John Jussup, Ronald Leslie, Mike McGahan, and Cheryl Pangborn.
As the trustees have not received notice in accordance with the declaration of trust of any other nominations, I declare nominations closed. I will now hear a motion nominating these persons as trustees of the REIT for the ensuing year. I move to nominate Paul Amirault, Jean-Louis Bellemare, Brad Cutsey, Judy Hendriks, John Jussup, Ron Leslie, Mike McGahan, and Cheryl Pangborn for election as a trustee to a REIT, of the REIT to hold office until the next annual meeting or until his or her respective successor is duly appointed.
Thank you. As indicated earlier, voting on this motion will be conducted by way of a ballot on this resolution. Upon registration, the scrutineer provided ballots to those unitholders eligible to vote on the ballot being registered unitholders who have not previously voted and proxy appointees. If you are a registered unitholder who hasn't previously voted or a proxy appointee and did not receive a ballot, please raise your hand and the scrutineer will provide you with one. If you have filed a proxy, it is not necessary to complete a ballot. Unitholders can vote for all of the trustees nominated, vote for some of them, and withhold for others, or withhold them, or withhold for all of them. Unless otherwise specified in a proxy, all management proxies received will vote for the election of all eight nominees.
Each registered unitholder or proxy nominee completing a ballot should record his or her vote by indicating whether the vote is for or to withhold your vote against each individual trustee. Each registered unitholder or proxy nominee should print his or her name on the ballot and then sign it where indicated. Once your ballot has been completed, please raise your hand and keep it until your ballot form has been collected by the scrutineer. Any more ballots to be collected? I think we can move on to the next item of business. We will now proceed to the election of trustees and directors for two of the REIT subsidiary entities.
The following persons have been nominated for election as trustees of InterRent Trust, each of whom has agreed to act as a trustee and meet the qualifications set out in the Declaration of Trust to serve as a trustee. Paul Amirault, Jean-Louis Bellemare, Brad Cutsey, Judy Hendriks, John Jussup, Ronald Leslie, Mike McGahan, and Cheryl Pangborn. The number of trustees of InterRent Trust to be elected is eight. I now call for a resolution that the trustees of the REIT be directed to vote the units of InterRent Trust that the nominees whose names have been read are elected trustees of InterRent Trust to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their respective successors are duly appointed. Will someone so move?
I so moved.
Will someone please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? As there is no discussion, I will now turn to voting on the motion. All in favor? I have some hands raised. Any opposed? I don't see any. The motion is carried. Turning now to the other subsidiary entity, the following persons have been nominated for election as directors of InterRent Holdings General Partner Limited, each of whom has agreed to act as a director and meet the qualifications set out in the Ontario Business Corporations Act to serve as a director. Brad Cutsey, Mike McGahan, and Curt Millar. The number of directors of InterRent Holdings General Partner Limited is three.
I now call for a resolution that the trustees of the REIT be directed to vote the shares of InterRent Holdings General Partner Limited, so that the nominees whose names have been read are elected as directors of InterRent Holdings General Partner Limited to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their respective successors are duly appointed. Will someone so move?
I so move.
Will someone please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? As there is no discussion, I will now turn to voting on the motion. All in favor? Hands, raise. Thank you. Any opposed? None. The motion is carried. The next item of business is the appointment of auditor. RSM Canada LLP, chartered professional accountants, the current auditor of the REIT, is proposed as auditor of the REIT to hold office until the next annual meeting of unitholders. May I have a motion?
I move that RSM Canada LLP, chartered professional accountants, be appointed auditor of the REIT at the close of the next annual general meeting of unitholders and that the trustees be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration.
Will someone please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? As there is no discussion, I will now turn to voting on the motion. All in favor? Thank you. I see hands raised. Are any opposed? No. I declare the motion carries. The next item on the agenda is the amendment to the deferred unit plan and approval of allocated units. The REIT currently has three components to its equity incentive program. The unit option plan, the long-term incentive plan, and the deferred unit plan, collectively referred to as equity incentive plans.
The terms of these equity incentive plans were meant to complement each other and provide the board with flexibility to appropriately compensate, motivate, and reward the REIT's management and employees. The granting of awards under these equity incentive plans were meant to align the interests of the trustees, management, and employees with the interests of unitholders over the short term, midterm, and long term. Options have not been granted since 2017, and awards under the LTIP have not been granted since 2018. To reflect the current industry compensation trends and feedback from unitholders, the board, in consultation with its external compensation advisors, has reviewed and approved the termination from future use, the unit option plan, and the LTIP.
Reviewed and is recommending to keep the current deferred unit plan with certain amendments as more fully described in the circular, and developed and approved a new Performance and Restricted Unit Plan. That's now referred to as the PRU plan. The purpose of the PRU plan is to advance the interest of the REIT by providing employees and officers with additional incentives, encouraging long-term unit ownership, increasing the proprietary interest of employees and officers in the success of the REIT, encouraging employees and officers to remain with the REIT, and attracting new employees and officers to the REIT.
At the May 21, 2019 annual and special meeting of unitholders approved the amendment of each of the unit option plan, LTIP, and deferred unit plan to permit the maximum aggregate number of units that may be issued under all of those equity incentive plans to be set at 7% of the issued and outstanding units of the REIT. If unitholders approve the amendment to the deferred unit plan and the new PRU plan as proposed in the circular, the total number of units reserved for issuance under the deferred unit plan and PRU plan combined will be reduced from 7% to 6% of the currently issued and outstanding units. If approved, the board will be able to allocate the units available for issuance amongst the two plans.
This change would reduce the number of units issuable under the two plans by 1,400,769 units as of May 11, 2022. The amendment to the deferred unit plan and approval of the unallocated units must be approved by a majority of the votes cast in person or by proxy at the meeting. I now call for a re-resolution approving the amendment of the deferred unit plan to permit the maximum number of units that may be issued under all such equity incentive plans to be set at 6% of the issued and outstanding units from time to time, and approving the deferred unit plan as amended for two years. The full text regarding this resolution is set out on page 27 of the circular. Will someone so move?
I so move.
Thank you. Will someone please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? If there is no discussion, voting will be conducted by a ballot on this resolution. As indicated previously, upon registration, the scrutineer provided ballots to those security holders eligible to vote on the ballot, being registered unitholders who have not previously voted and proxy appointees. If you are a registered unitholder who hasn't voted or a proxy appointee and did not receive a ballot, please raise your hand, and the scrutineer will provide you with one. If you've already filed a proxy, it is not necessary to complete a ballot. Based on the proxies deposited with the scrutineer, I can confirm that the majority of the votes were cast in favor of the resolution. I can therefore declare that the resolution is passed.
The next item of business is the adoption of the performance and restricted unit plan and approval of the unallocated units, which must be approved by a majority of the votes cast in person or by proxy at the meeting. I now call for a resolution approving the adoption of the PRU plan to permit the maximum number of units to be issued under all such equity incentive compensation plans to be set at 6% of the issued and outstanding units from time to time, and approving the PRU plan for two years. Full text regarding this resolution is set out on page 28 of the circular. Will someone so move?
I so move.
Will someone please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Is there any discussion on the motion? If there is no discussion, voting will be conducted by way of a ballot on this resolution. Based on the proxies deposited with the scrutineer, I can confirm that the majority of votes cast were cast in favor of the resolution. I can therefore declare that the resolution is passed. Based on the preliminary report received from the scrutineer, I declare all resolutions carried. Thank you. This concludes the formal business of the meeting. May I have a motion for termination of the business portion of this meeting?
I move.
Thank you. Will someone please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. Any against, contrary, if any? None. Good. I declare the motion carried, and the meeting is terminated. Since the formal business part of the meeting is over, I would ask Mr. Cutsey, and Mr. Millar for a brief presentation.
Actually, it's just me and Mr. Cutsey.
Oh.
I don't know why I said that.
Okay. Thank you.
Hey, it is two of them.
Okay.
I'll just read this. I'm sure everyone knows that it's only you.
Pardon me?
It's only you.
Yeah.
Okay, great. Thank you very much, Paul. I'm gonna start off with the presentation. I'm gonna turn to slide two. That's just the forward-looking statements. I'm not going to spare you the agony of me reading through that text, but I'll let you read it for yourselves. We'll start on slide four, Curt. Thanks. Yeah. I'd just like to start off by thanking Mike and thanking the board for this new appointment.
Really, it's an honor to be here, and you can believe I'll do everything in my power to make sure to continue the legacy that Mike has built with his team. In InterRent, it's been a great success story so far, and it's really up to this new team or the existing team really to make sure that we preserve this wonderful story and what we're all about, creating communities. Also, it truly is a reflection of the amazing team that was surrounded by me. I think this appointment is really not about me, but it's about the team that we've built over the years, and a lot of that credit has to go to Mike, who's been able to attract some amazing individuals that have become amazing team members.
I think we're all confident that we've got a great bench strength to really take this forward. Like we've always said, we're all in this together, so we're looking forward to what 2022 and beyond brings. I'd also really like to welcome Judy and Jean-Louis to the team. It's funny, for the last couple of years, we've always heard this team talk about what's really important about the InterRent story. A lot of times we talk about InterRent's listed real estate security company. At the end of the day, we really like to think of ourselves as retailers. We really are providing one of the most precious services you can provide, and that's somebody's home.
To bring on somebody with experience in the retail industry such as yourself, Jean-Louis, we're looking really forward to have you help us continue to focus our ways of thinking more of a retailer than actually real estate operating company. With Judy, if anybody has heard her speak too, I think the special sauce that makes our story a lot different than maybe what is out there currently, it really comes down to our operating platform. I've always said, to me, an operating platform is really a fancy word for your people. We have an amazing team of individuals that come together as team members. Really, our biggest assets are our people. It's not a cliché. We right from Mike to the rest of the senior management team, we wholeheartedly believe in that.
Judy, with somebody with your experience and whatnot, I think we're only positioned to really kind of leverage off what I think we're already strong at and just continuing to get better. We really are happy with the additions to the board. I think we missed, if I didn't mention Paul. Mike mentioned Paul Bazanis in the beginning. He's instrumental part in helping create InterRent to where it is today. He remains a very good friend of the REIT, and I know he'll be around for any counsel and whatnot going forward. Thank you to Paul Bazanis, and we look forward to working with you closely and still getting your guidance as we go forward. Corey, if you can move to. Oh, one back, Curt, to slide four. Who we are.
InterRent's really, we focus on the rental apartment industry as you know, but like I said, we really do think of ourselves as providers of homes. The one thing I just wanted to mention on this slide is really about in today's time, you hear a lot about inflation and maybe some talks that maybe the economy is going in a soft or hard landing. I'm really happy and glad and fortunate that we're dealing in an asset class that is an extremely defensive asset class. It's proven itself as historically over time, everybody needs a place to live. It's up to us to provide that safe place to live, but not only a safe and secure place to live, but also a place you're proud to call home. That's really what we're about.
We're about building communities and re-innovating communities that have lost their luster and really bring them back to a vibrant and bold community. I'd also say, too, as far as real estate as an asset class, it's a great inflationary hedge. Multifamily within that asset class acts as a great inflation hedge given the shorter duration of the leases. I think from a larger kind of top-down approach, I think we'll be well-served in an environment where we are starting to see inflationary pressure that we haven't seen since the '70s. This asset class is defensive through the full cycle of an economic cycle, but also through inflationary times. Just to the next slide, go ahead, Curt. Kind of a map.
A lot of you know where we do operate, but over 80% of our NOI is focused in four key regions, obviously GTA, the National Capital Region, Montreal, and just recently, Vancouver. We're fortunate of being four of the top five tech markets. Our core markets really are markets that attract the majority of international foreign students, which tends to be a great demand pool to draw from. Next slide, just on the distribution growth. We are a REIT. While REIT's job is to pay out its distribution and give it back to your investors, we do take a total return philosophy to how we approach our business.
That said, with that in mind, we still have been able to increase our distributions at a take rate of over 8%, and we're quite happy with that. Especially in times of inflation, we're beating inflation right now or at inflation. Typically, in real estate, if you can grow your NOI at a clip higher than inflation, most institutional real estate investors would say you're winning. Next slide, Curt. 2021 was a banner year for us, with more than 1,800 suites being added to our portfolio. We entered the Greater Vancouver market with scale, with a partnership through a joint venture with Crestpoint, which has been going extremely well and a great partner to have.
We're very fortunate to be partnered with Crestpoint. In this difficult times of the volatility with the cost of capital, both the debt increasing and seeing some fluctuation in the unit price, cost of capital has escalated, and I think it has to stabilize before you see back to a level of activity that we saw in 2021. 2022, while we are still underwriting opportunities, and we remain disciplined to those underwritings, it'll probably will likely not be as robust of a year as you saw in 2021. I would just add, there's a lot of product still in the market coming into the market right now from an acquisition standpoint, but there's also less buyers. This is a slide we're really proud of.
We are committed to building new, bold and vibrant communities. We have four development projects underway right now. One of them that's quite a ways along is at 473 Albert. It's. I believe we're one of the very limited organizations that has the capability and the know-how to take an office conversion and convert it into apartments. I think this is really great from a couple of points. It's great from a risk management perspective in the sense that the shell is already built, so you're not facing the same kind of escalation cost. Maybe even more importantly, we're reinvesting and delivering more new homes to Ottawa while not increasing the carbon footprint.
We're working with an existing concrete shell and taking it to better use and turning them into homes. I look really forward to being able to stand up here and be able to showcase this project. We'll be in full swing in 2023. If anybody's familiar with Ottawa right now, Albert Street is going through a little revamp. I think that's only gonna add to the overall desirability of this community. In the meantime, like anything, it's somewhat of a construction site, so it could have a little bit of an impact on the lease-up through. We're quite confident in this community and what it's gonna be able to produce.
I'd also mention just a fact on the new communities that we have over, call it, close to 1,600 units to add to our portfolio of 13,000 at our interest. That's some significant growth. We'll be able to leverage that growth when an opportunity is fit. But what's behind there, we haven't talked too much about it, disclosed too much about it, but there's a lot of sites within our portfolio that have intensification opportunities. Organically, we sit on a lot of potential to be able to be part of the solution to the current housing affordability crisis that we're currently experiencing. That's a nationwide problem. InterRent will be a big part of that solution. Investing in our communities, this is our bread and butter.
This is what we do. We take communities that would otherwise likely become obsolete and pulled out of the rental stock. We come in, and we bring our experience, our team, our know-how, our vision, our creativity, and we bring our capital, which, who I'm speaking with today. All those different relationships with those different stakeholders allow us to do what we do. That's really taking that know-how, taking that capital, reinvest it into communities that maybe have been neglected and reinvigorate and bring them back to what the original developers saw. I think it's something that we should be quite proud of. It's not an easy feat. It takes anywhere between three-five years to really take a community and try to reposition it back in the marketplace. It's definitely a feel-good story, especially for our team members.
Working with our team members and they see what we buy, and they look at us and go, "We're gonna do what?" When they see what we actually end up creating after four years, it's a pretty rewarding experience. Not only is it rewarding from the attributes of giving back to the community, it also can be financially rewarding when done right. Next slide, sure. Sustainability, this is not a fad. It's here to stay. It originated in Europe. It's really just good business. It's something that CLV and InterRent has done since its beginning. We've been investing in energy conservation from day one. We've been giving back to the communities through charitable works from day one.
It's the DNA of the fabric of who we are. We believe in building communities and giving back to them. Really, ESG is not a big thing for us. We believe in best-in-class corporate governance. For us, this is just further disclosure coming down for a lot of other companies where maybe they haven't shared the same values as our company has shared since its genesis. Really for us, it's just adapting and making sure that we are disclosing it to the public in a format in which it's a little more comparable out there. We brought on Sandy Rose, who's our Director of Investor Relations and Sustainability, and I really give her credit.
She's done a great job of helping us tell our story because I think in the past, we're a pretty humble team, and we really didn't wanna really be out there pumping it up. Rather just be doers than promoting. At the end of the day now, I think it's time for us to tell our story in this regard. As you can see, we've been making great headway or great progress on our ESG front, and we remain committed. The compensation package that we just voted on today, and it was approved. I'm very happy to say part of that long-term performance, part of that will be to keep management aligned and make sure that we do meet our objective of continuing to progress the sustainability front forward.
I believe we're probably one of the few on that front. I'm pretty proud that the board and this group has stepped up and paying attention. On the operating improvements, we all know 2020 and 2021 were tough years. They were good years in the sense I think we learned a lot. I think it reinforced us on how we go about doing our business, and it's always been about the residents, you know, stakeholders first, making sure that they're in the right state of mind, and that we're here to provide them with the kind of service to get them through the good and the bad times. We did that. It meant additional costs in the early years from increased manpower and whatnot. Proud of them. We came through it.
That said, our top line did take a hit because we weren't willing to buy occupancy. I gotta admit, it was hard to face the financial community following the last 18 months, continuing to keep elevated vacancy when people around us were leasing up. We believe it was the right thing to do because we didn't wanna trap the value in giving away our rents 'cause we know that the timing of the pandemic was more a timing blip on the rent over demand pool, not that it wasn't there. It was just timing. We did the biopsy. It's starting to show up in the numbers. 2.4, I think we did same store organic NOI growth of 9%. Last quarter, we did 12% double-digit.
That's a great number in the best of times. It is moving in the right direction. We do have inflationary pressures that we are dealing with, both through the wages and through the utilities. Back to our energy conservation programs, and just keeping a close eye on the business and reinvesting in our people through training, we're able to kind of constrain the operating expenses. Sure. Maybe the strong balance sheet here, Curt and his team. A lot of credit ever since this group got involved with the REIT, we've been slowly de-levering the balance sheet while trying to produce pretty unique growth. We've been able to do that, but I think this group really realizes how sacred a balance sheet is in real estate and especially in difficult times.
We've been constantly kind of delevering, and we're down probably one of the strongest balance sheets amongst our peer group. Next. Really come back to the team. We've really been over the last year and a half focused, and really it's been driven by the board to create some redundancy and make sure that we're creating the next leaders to take this forward. It all kind of links back to that sustainability. There's been a real push on making sure that at each level of the senior management team and the next level down, we're finding the next two, three potential people that could slot into the role. I think part of the announcement with my appointment and Mike McGahan is actually a nice way to say to the market, not a lot's changing. Mike's not going anywhere.
Mike still calls me 10 times a day. Hopefully, that might go to 8 times a day. At the end of the day, it's really about trying to show the marketplace we are thinking about the next level. We are thinking about sustainability. We've done a great job of adding to the bench strength of our team. We brought on a gentleman by the name of Sav Meef to be the VP of Acquisitions, brought on a Chief Talent Officer, Catherine Haber. We also brought on a Director of IR Sustainability, as I mentioned earlier, Sandy Rose. Two Directors of Finance joining Curt's team, Musa Sahela and Ryan Kelly. On the marketing side, we brought on a Director of Brand, Liz Ogden, and then a Customer Experience Manager with Felicia Joseph.
I just mentioned a couple people. We've obviously brought on other team members throughout the year, extremely important. Within our organization, everybody counts. We're a very flat organization. As we grow, that'll be one of the challenges, is to keep that culture. It really, it's that special culture I think that makes us different. It is our people. It is the ability for a cleaning technician to come right up to the director or the chair, have a healthy conversation, being heard, listened to, and moving forward with those discussions, continuing to make sure that we provide the ultimate customer experience. Then just the last slide on the market outlook. We're obviously facing a number of headwinds in our sector right now, regulatory, inflation, and interest rates. On the regulatory front, I think we're well served.
Not to get political, but for our organization, I think a PC government in Ontario is beneficial. They understand that the problem with the current housing affordability is we need to deliver supply. Hopefully, that government is able to accelerate the way in which we can deliver that supply. I think some of the regulatory clouds that are hanging around are stormy. Some of it has dissipated. There is still a little out there, and then obviously the inflation and interest rates. On the regulatory front, we are collaborating with our industry and the government partners to ensure that the policymaking understands the role we play in that supply solution. We will be a part of that supply solution. That current supply demand and balance is tightening, and the fundamentals in our sector are driving rental growth.
We believe this top line trend will outpace any inflationary pressures while we continue managing our expenses closely. We're also actively managing our debt ladder. Historically, we've been very much of a barbell, just by the very nature of reinvesting in communities and bringing them back to life. When doing that, we typically those first three-five years we're investing in the community, we typically use conventional short-term money. Then once we kind of reposition and got the asset to where we believe it should be from a competitive standpoint, we'll go out and we'll take out that with long-term CMHC financing. That's created a little bit of a gap in our laddered mortgage.
I think over the next little bit, you're gonna see us just try to fill in a little of those gaps in 2023, 2024, 2025. Because I think at the rate of pace of how fast interest rates have gone, I think there's a pretty persistent view that they may go higher, but they're likely not to go higher at the same rate. So I think we'd be better served to let some of that debt expire in closer to the next couple of years. It's a way of just smoothing out any bet on any one year on those interest rates. Overall, we're very optimistic on the path to creating new housing supply in Canada. It's not a quick fix, but we are gonna be a part of that solution.
We've got a standing team in place to service our existing and new residents. I think I'll leave it there and turn over to questions in the audience. Sure. I'll give you a fast recap. Just for people on the phone, the question was, what the markets are like, currently, and especially in Ottawa, as there is some new supply being delivered in downtown or close to Sandy Hill. Regionally, as you kind of go west to east, are our strongest markets. Vancouver is extremely strong, almost to the point where I say it's on fire. It's very hard to keep up with the traffic, so that's the good news. Relative to our original underwriting when we went in and bought that portfolio in 2021, we're doing quite well.
We're really happy with what we're seeing in Vancouver. Quite honestly, given some of the geopolitical risks that we're seeing in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I don't think that's gonna let up anytime soon. The GTHA is doing extremely strong, as is Southwestern Ontario, really picking up. I think as we believe in the trend of de-globalization, I think places like London and Niagara region will continue to do really well from a real estate perspective as manufacturing in Canada kind of picks up. Those two regions are showing really strong rental growth. Ottawa is showing good rental growth and definitely continues its upward momentum on this recovery. Probably just not as strong as Vancouver and Southwestern Ontario. There are pockets where there is some new supply being delivered and we've got to compete with.
We are managing that and going through it. There's no real reasons to be concerned in the Ottawa portfolio. Like I said, still showing some pretty good growth. Montreal is also still showing year-over-year improvement. It's probably just not as far along at the rate of pace of that improvement, where I think we would have thought it would be, crossing kind of 2.4% when 2.3% last year looked to move in. I think a lot of that's to do with when we looked at how long it took Montreal to really open up. They're just really trying to get back to the new normal just literally a couple of weeks ago. I mean, we were just recently in Montreal, and Montreal was gearing up for F1, so that felt really good that coming back.
Even when you look at study permits, Ontario study permits for foreigners are way up. Montreal is stable. I really think that's a function of you're a foreigner and you're trying to go, "Am I going to Concordia or am I going to McMaster?" Ontario has been open now, ready to do business for call it two months. Montreal is just coming out of it. I think if you're on the fence, you're swinging over. All in all, things are steadily improving. It just seems to be a little stronger as we go west to east. Agencies are where we've been budgeting. As you're well aware with our story, we've never wanted to be operating at 98%-99% occupancy.
We like to be on that, call it 96%-97% range because it allows us the flexibility for true price discovery. We wanna make sure that we're actually seeing where the right level of rent should be. I think if you take a 98% occupancy, sometimes the focus becomes on the lease up and the time to lease up versus really trying to find out where that right rent price is. Thank you for the questions, and I think that concludes the presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.