All right, we've got the thumbs up. Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Anthony Paolone. I'm an Equity Analyst at J.P. Morgan, covering Real Estate Stocks, and it's my pleasure to moderate this company presentation with American Homes 4 Rent, AMH. It's my pleasure to introduce management first here from the company. We've got Chief Executive Officer David Singelyn. We've got Chief Operating Officer Bryan Smith, and for those of you that aren't familiar, Bryan will be taking the helm upon Dave's retirement here, and so that's an exciting shift that's occurring. We've got Christopher Lau, Chief Financial Officer of the company.
As you've seen probably in a lot of these presentations, I'm gonna kick it over to management, let them say a few things about the business and get things teed up, and then I'll moderate some Q&A. I've got a list of topics to cover, but we'll also let all of you chime in with any questions as we do that. With that, let me turn it over to management.
Well, thank you, Tony. And, as you indicated, I guess this is my last Annual REIT . It's, it's bittersweet. It's a company that I founded back in 2011, and we went public a year later, so it's a bittersweet time for me. But as we go through the transition, and I'll talk about that a little bit more, I'm sure, a little bit later, we're well-positioned. Bryan has been with us for more than 10 years and knows this industry as well as anybody in the industry. But here we are today, and it's, it's a chance to really talk about the position of AMH in the SFR industry and contrast it to other real estate opportunities.
Our differentiated platform today, 10, 11, 12 years after we started, now is on full display, and where we are realizing our efficiencies from our investments in technology and infrastructure, and we combine that with tremendous demand tailwinds. We start with the fact that we're in an industry that provides a commodity or a product, a rental home, that's a non-discretionary need. Everybody needs a home, so it's a little different than all other real estate. Let's couple that with the fact that this country is significantly undersupplied in housing. The most conservative estimates are 2 million homes that were undersupplied, but that's not equally distributed.
In the markets where people are moving to, where job growth is, where population growth is occurring, those numbers are much more exaggerated and much more pronounced, and those are the markets that we're in. We have a very distributed asset base across many markets, more than 30 markets, and all of them but one are greater than the median population growth and job growth. So we're well-positioned. We also see strong demand, continued strong demand from the 30-year-olds, the millennials. Their view of asset accumulation is different than their parents, and they are providing a very, very strong demand for rental housing.
I'm gonna couple that with just two more things, and that's, the value proposition of what an SFR home, single-family rental home, is today is much better understood. It's actually very different than it was when we started 10, 11, 12 years ago. At that time, it was all in the hands of individuals like, myself and others that would have bought a second house and kept the first one as a rental and really didn't want to deal with the maintenance and other issues. Today, professional management has come in and changed that value proposition. Today, single-family rentals are in high demand. Affordability has also, changed over really the last couple of years.
We have seen our demand grow for a decade from our inception to date, while the cost to rent a home was pretty much in parity and equal to what it would cost to buy a home and service a mortgage and pay property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Then interest rates have gone up, and today, in our top 20 markets, it's 28% cheaper to rent one of our homes than it is to buy that same home. On a national average, that's closer to 31%. So what does that mean? That means we're well set up for long-term rental rate growth for many, many years into the future that will exceed inflation. Let's turn, and let me turn just for a second to external growth.
Not only do we have growth in our rental rates of what we own, but we continue to grow, and we have a development program where we are developing one-of-a-kind purpose-built homes for rentals. I say they're one of a kind, and I define the differentiators here three ways: location, the quality of the home, because we are building it for long-term durability, for renting, and the yields that we get. We're building it. We're a top 40 home builder in the United States. We get the discounts that the large home builders get, but we're not paying a development profit to buy the home from a national home builder, so our yields, by definition, are better. Just...
A short note to one of the highlights or milestones that we just had is we just delivered our 10,000th home that we built. So today, more than 15% of our homes are homes that we built in communities that we created for the purpose of single-family rental living. In close, I'll finish where I started. I'm gonna be around till December 31st for the balance of the year, but I'm very, very pleased with where American Homes is. A very talented and experienced team. It's gonna be led by Bryan. Chris is gonna be staying on, so I know American Homes will be in good hands in 2025.
With that, I'm gonna turn it over for one or two minutes to Chris, so he can give a little bit of context and numbers around some of the things I just talked about.
Yep. So as you may have seen, in our updated investor deck that's on the website, the business is feeling good. With the real punchline and takeaway from the deck, that spring is shaping up real nicely. You know, just as we were hoping for, April and May occupancy held strong at 96.6%. Renewals held steady in the low fives. And then, importantly, we saw a nice acceleration in new leases, moving from 5.1% in April, up to 5.7% in May. So nice acceleration there. In terms of other updates, I can update on the collections front. You know, things into the second quarter are feeling kind of, as we've been characterizing, healthy from a collections standpoint.
As you can probably appreciate, we need to get through the quarter and the accounting close before we can actually start speaking to numbers, but collections are feeling good, heading into the second quarter. And I'd characterize things as you know, look, collections are still... They're still not totally back to normal yet. But you know, year to date, we're optimistic that things are running a touch better than same time last year, which we think is a nice positive. And then finally, just a general update around development. Things are feeling good there, too, right? Deliveries are running right on track with guidance expectations, providing us with a consistent pathway for growth, just as that program was designed to do.
Which is especially important in times like now, where MLS and national builder acquisitions continue to be on pause. So in terms of operating update, you know, I'd say the right couple of key takeaways: demand and fundamentals continue to be solid, spring is shaping up nicely, and the development program is running right on track.
Thank you. That's a great update from both of you. So maybe let's dig a little bit into some of these things. I mean, one of the items that clearly stands out is the strength that you all have had in being able to continue to push these rents. Can you talk a little bit about where, like, these 5%+ increase on both renewals and new leases, where are renewals being sent out, you know, I guess for perhaps August at this point, and with these kinds of increases, is there much left in terms of a loss to lease, so to speak, in the portfolio? Where does that sit?
Yeah, thanks, Tony. The demand's fantastic. It's driving these outstanding in-rental increases while maintaining very solid occupancy into the spring leasing season. And as we've talked about before, there's some seasonality return to the business last year, a little bit different than the prior few years during the COVID period. And we're getting into the heavy spring leasing season, a lot of activity. Saw a nice acceleration into May on the re-leasing side. We're seeing continued strength into June. On the renewal side, the plan it's really playing out according to plan for the year so far. Low fives, the renewal offers that we're mailing, are gonna be kind of consistent with what we've seen the last couple of months.
Part of that is due to the fact that this is a real busy season for expirations and turns, and that the healthy renewal increases will help maintain our, really our objective of maximizing revenue.
Is there much loss to lease in the portfolio?
Loss to lease remains somewhere in the 3% range. We did a really good job of recapturing a lot of that over the past couple of years. And this is the type of the time of the year where re-leasing rate growth tends to outpace renewal rent growth, just due to the timing and the dynamics of the different offers. So that loss to lease should expand a little bit during the spring leasing season and set us up nicely for the back half of the year.
Yeah, let me add one thing. When we talk about loss to lease, what we're typically referring to is that built-in rental rate growth that's kind of embedded in the portfolio. I look at a different loss to lease, and that is today, it is 28% more, or it's 28% cheaper to rent one of our homes than buy one of our homes. So we have a lot of pricing power going into the future. You can't capture it in one year, but the pricing power for many, many years is built in structurally today into the portfolio.
What is move-out to homeownership in your portfolio right now, and how do you think about what normal should be?
Yeah, we can look at it in the context of what it was pre-pandemic, and at that point, the move-out survey showed that approximately low 30-35% of our residents were moving out to buy. As we've gotten into more recent time with the rise in interest rates and really the lack of supply, that number is down into the high 20s, 28-29%, as a move-out reason. It didn't drop as dramatically as we might have thought, which I think is a little bit of a testament to, you know, just kind of the attractiveness of our homes and our portfolio to people to live long term, not necessarily as just a stepping stone to buy.
But yeah, we're seeing a little bit of a reaction to the market with that kind of historically low, high 20% move-out reasons.
With these increases you've pushed through, can you spend a minute talking about just the underlying tenant credit and ability to pay these levels of rents and what you're seeing at the, you know, resident income level, really?
Yeah, that's a great question. We're really pleased with the way that incomes have not only tracked, but slightly outpaced the changes in rent over the past three or four years. Our household income, we look at it a couple of different ways. There's a stated income and then a verified income for the underwriting process. And the stated income for our incoming residents is in excess of $140,000 of late, which implies over a 5%, or I'm sorry, 5 times income to rent ratio. So the health of the incoming residents, the approved applicants, is really strong. And again, it shows that a lot of these incoming residents would have the ability to buy and are choosing to rent.
On the credit side, the credit scores, it's an important indicator, it's an important metric for the approval process. Again, those are very strong, have maintained similar strength over the past five years and would also indicate that they would have the flexibility to buy if they so chose.
You know, the other helpful data point on this front, Tony, is a little bit about around what we were talking about on collections, right? If we all kind of rewind to what we were talking about at the beginning of this year, we were expecting collections this year to still be modestly headwinded by the fact that we have a number of municipalities and court systems that are still processing on a slower timeline than normal. And that really hasn't changed as we look at things at the local level. But yet, collections overall, as I mentioned, are looking healthy, and I think that's a testament to two things. One, the teams are doing a really good job executing.
But two, I think directionally, that speaks to the health of the consumer, in, in particular, our resident base, as we think about ability to pay, how collections are tracking, despite the fact that things from a municipal and court system perspective are still moving slower.
Is there anything just either from a demand point of view or even, you know, as you're seeing on the collection side, that you could talk about geographically? You're in a lot of markets through the country. Is there any differentiation you're seeing that's worthy to note here?
Yeah. Demand is very strong across all of our markets. What's happened is the bar, our expectations have risen to the point where, you know, the 96, mid-96 occupancy level is really the benchmark. And there are a couple of markets that have seen a little bit of pressure that we've talked about in the past, a couple of the Texas markets, and Phoenix is another example. The demand is there. There's a little bit of supply. In Phoenix, things have turned the corner, and that supply is beginning to get absorbed. And a couple of the other markets, we expect it to happen in the short term. On the other side, we're seeing fantastic demand that's translating into really high levels of occupancy and great rate growth in our Midwestern markets.
We're really pleased with the performance there. Florida as well, has recovered very nicely. So, the entire portfolio is characterized with a really strong backdrop of demand, but there are a couple of outperformers that may be new to that discussion this year.
Great. And I just have one more question on the operating side before moving to your investments. You know, I think we've all been aware of just the pressure on property taxes, insurance, and some of the bigger line items in OpEx. Can you maybe update us on what you're seeing on that front?
Sure. Yeah, I would say the right takeaway from an expense standpoint this year is that things overall are feeling better. And I would really kind of break the expense discussion down into non-controllables and then controllables. On the non-controllable side, you know, maybe zooming out a little bit more than just property taxes, insurance is feeling better. Insurance renewal is done. Insurance renewal was done actually in February, so we knew about it at the time of initiating the guide. This year, insurance renewal was plus high single digits, which is nice moderation off of last year.
And then property taxes, you know, similarly, as we were expecting, have been moderating off of, you know, really the high water mark that we saw in 2022 and 2023, which was running kind of ± 9% growth in each of those years. As home price appreciation has come off of, again, kind of peak, you know, in 2022 or so, this year, we're expecting property taxes to moderate into the low sevens. You know, general expectation is that we'll probably see more moderation in property taxes beyond this year as well. Just a reminder, long-term property tax growth for us is, you know, call it 4%-5% or so, and so we think that there's more moderation to come.
With, you know, general takeaway that non-controllables are moving in the right direction. Then on the controllable side. You know, I would say, what we're seeing there is nice benefit from all of the investments that we've been making over the years. Investments into technology, our in-house and internal maintenance and technician teams, and then a lot of our investments last year that we were talking about around the Resident 360 program, which we know are now contributing nicely. They were even contributing nicely last year, right? If we think about kind of performance of last year and performance against the guide, a lot of the upside against our guide in the back half of last year was coming from Resident 360 benefit, and we're beginning to see that into this year as well.
You can use the first quarter as, as a good example. When you look at R&M and turn and property management combined as a, as a reflection of controllable expenses, those are running in the low single digits, right? So between Resident 360 and our team's doing a great job, you know, we're really executing on what we call controlling the controllables, and I think that's gonna be a key theme to this year.
That's great. So I wanna pivot over to the investment side, but just in doing so, I wanna also just invite the audience. If there are any questions, feel free to raise your hand, and we'll try to get those answered as we go along here. I'm happy to just keep going, but wanna make this valuable to you also. If you have a question, go ahead and just raise your hand, and we'll call on you. And oh, and we got one.
The question is, what's going on on the regulatory and, legislative front? Some people are looking at you as like a cause for shortage of housing and, you know, part of the housing crisis problem. What, what effect is that on your business, and what are you doing from, like, a PR perspective to, you know, educate these people about the reality?
Yeah, uh-
Do you wanna repeat the question so people can hear it online, too?
Yeah. So the question was around the regulatory front, how is it being perceived, and how is it impacting our business, and what actions are we taking to educate individuals? Is that a fair summary? So the regulatory area is definitely an area where there's a lot of rhetoric. And I use the word rhetoric as a chosen word because some of that is really messaging. Remember, we're in a campaign year. The reality is this country is undersupplied in housing, and everybody recognizes that. And you can't have economic growth in a city or in a state unless you can house those individuals that are going to provide that economic growth, in other words, the workers and other people that will migrate there.
So in order to have economic growth in a, in a market, you need to have housing growth, and that means all housing needs to come together. Today, there's a lot of misperceptions out there. Today, one of the facts is that if you look at all the single-family homes in this country, and you look at what percentage of those are owned and what percentage of those are single-family rentals, today, more single-family homes as a percentage of the total are owned than any time in the last 10 years, except one year. More than the last 10 years ago, more than five years ago. So it's not that there has been more homes that have been moving over to single-family rentals.
The professionally managed single-family rentals, those by American Homes and our large peers, represent less than 0.5% of all the single-family homes in this country. So those are the facts. So we're not changing the pricing, we're not taking away the opportunities, but if you read the newspapers, and you listen, which really listens to some of the rhetoric out of politicians, you would believe that. What is happening this year is the following: we have seen strengthened laws in a number of states that have empowered landlords to fight trespassing on the eviction front, et cetera. One of the things that we get recognized at American Homes for is being part of the solution.
That solution is because we are building 22,000, 2,200-2,300 homes each year, adding to the housing stock, solving part of the housing problem, and we do get acknowledged for that. And if you look at articles that are written, you listen to the individuals in the various state houses or up on the Hill, you won't hear about American Homes other than the fact that we're also a single-family rental provider. But the articles aren't about us, they're about others, and even the articles that are written aren't always factually correct. It is the one thing that single-family rentals or housing, in general, has: it is something that is important to every single American, every single voter in this country. It's non-discretionary.
You've got that, and you've got food, shelter and food, and those are the pillars. Those are the pillars, and you're gonna hear a lot of messaging around them, regardless of what's going on. We do have a campaign, to your last question, we do have a campaign with our peers that is in motion right now. It's not geared to investors, it's not geared to residents. It's geared to policymakers, and that is in motion today, so.
That's great. We have another question here.
... manufactured housing or utilizing manufactured housing practices, processes?
Yeah, so the question, and I think I got 80% of it, so I hope we'll fill it in right. The question is, in our building process, where we are delivering 2,200-2,300 homes, can we utilize the manufactured housing process, I assume, to become more efficient, et cetera? We have looked at that, and the thing is, the answer is generally not. So there is a lot of efficiencies in manufactured housing. It gets taken away in transportation costs. So you've got to have the production plant within about 300 miles, 200-300 miles, for the whole thing to make sense. Or you have to build a plant closer, and we're not at that scale.
All right. Yeah, congrats on the 10,000 home delivery, and also your, your 10 years inside the AMH, wonderful achievements. You've, you've done a heavy lift creating the build-to-rent model over the last seven years now, and it seems to really be working. You're starting to see the benefits of it. In your estimation, you've done this, what would it take a competitor to get to the same business at your scale?
Yeah. So the question is, a little bit about, build-to-rent and utilizing that, to create a company such as ours that has adequate scale. We started the company at a very unique time, in a time that we were able to acquire scale, and in those early years, we called really those years the land rush. It was important to create scale. This business is not. It's, it's dissimilar from all other real estate companies, in that the average asset is $200,000-$400,000, not $10-$30 million. And so you have to have scale in order to cover the basic foundational cost, the G&A, et cetera, in this business. The development program is a program that is a very slow program, especially to establish.
From the time you buy land to the time you deliver the first home and have revenue on it, it's anywhere from four to six years. You have to improve the land, but you also have to be working through all of the regulatory process and getting permits, et cetera. We have been doing this for now seven years. We have better access to capital than most, and we are now up to 2,200-2,300 homes per year being delivered. We have a pipeline of 12,000 homes, and it took us seven years to build it.
We've had to build a very experienced team, and so it's a heavy lift to start a company and have enough that you can sustain yourself out of rental income if you're only gonna do it from build-to-rent .
Just, Dave, Dave, on that front, right, because development is a key component of the story, what are the yields you're achieving on these home deliveries right now? And, you know, you mentioned carrying a land bank, you know, to go from nuts to bolts, four to six years. How do you think about accumulating a return on that during that process? Because I think a lot of us just focus on, like, what that initial yield is, but, you know, how do you carry it?
Yeah. Well, let's start, and it'll answer some of your questions on just giving a couple definitions, and that is: How do you measure yield? And the way we at American Homes measure yield, it is the revenue, it is the rental rate that we can obtain on the first year that that home is in service with a normalized vacancy factor and normalized expenses. And you divide that by the entire cost invested in that asset, and that entire cost includes the carry cost of holding land for the period of time that it is in the development process.
So the carry cost includes the implied interest of what it is to hold that land, the property taxes, the insurance, and even a little bit of administrative cost is embedded in there as well for the number of years that you are carrying the land. So it is a fully burdened denominator, fully burdened cost, and we look at the cash that is going to be generated on an economic basis. So it's an economic yield. Accounting yields are a little bit higher. Where we are today on development is in the high fives; we're 5.7-6 is the range that we are seeing. This is on land that we bought a number of years ago.
I just will contrast that for you, Tony, to the opportunities that we have from acquisitions are 100 basis points less than that, and we see lots of opportunities. We had offered to us 30,000 homes from national home builders and local home builders in the first quarter. 15,000 of those were in our market, so those were the ones that got attention. Half of those we had seen before, and the other half, you know, the yields were typically in the high fours, some in the low fives. We went back and negotiated, but today we're not finding acceptable yields either in the acquisition of existing homes or national, local home builders.
All right. This is great. Well, this has been pretty informative. I want to thank you guys for doing this. We're up on time here, and appreciate you all attending the session. So thank you.