Good morning. Welcome to Bank of America 's 2025 Global Real Estate Conference. I'm Yana Gallen, and I cover the residential REITs at BofA Securities. We're very excited to have with us Camden 's President and CEO, Alex Jessett, and Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Kim Callahan. I'll turn it over to them to start with a few opening remarks, and then happy to take Q&A from the room, or I can go through a list I've got prepared.
Thanks, Yana. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Since we only have about 30 minutes for our discussion, I'll keep my prepared remarks brief to allow as much time as possible for Q&A. An updated investor presentation is available on our website, and it includes much of the information we'll cover today. For those of you not familiar with Camden, we are a multifamily REIT with nearly 60,000 apartment homes located in 15 major markets across the U.S. We are an S&P 500 company with a total market cap of $16 billion and have been operating as a public company for over 30 years. Approximately 75% of our portfolio is located in Sun Belt markets, with the remainder in Washington, D.C. Metro, Southern California, and Denver.
Within our markets, roughly 60% of our assets are located in suburban submarkets, and just over 60% would be considered Class B versus Class A in price point. Our markets lead the nation in job growth, population growth, in migration, and overall demand for apartment homes, which has supported record levels of absorption across our portfolio. After hitting a 50-year peak in new supply last year, deliveries of new apartment units are now steadily declining, and home buying remains unaffordable, with an approximate 60% premium to own versus rent across the U.S. All of these factors clearly set the stage for improved revenue and NOI growth in 2026 and beyond. Camden's strategy is to focus on high-growth markets, measured by projected employment, population, and migration growth. Operate a diverse portfolio of assets, geographical, A versus B, and urban versus suburban.
Recycle capital and create value through acquisitions, dispositions, development and redevelopment, repositioning, and repurposed projects. Maintain a strong balance sheet with low leverage, ample liquidity, and broad access to capital, and deliver consistent earnings and dividend growth for our shareholders. Our markets are performing as expected, and our third-quarter operating trends to date are in line with our most recent guidance. We continue to balance occupancy levels with new lease and renewal rates in order to maximize revenue, and we are monitoring bad debt and delinquencies, which have been trending lower than anticipated this year. Resident retention remains high, turnover remains low, and move-outs for home purchases have averaged just 10% since 2023. Our 2025 guidance calls for core FFO per share of $6.81, and same-property growth rates of 1% for revenues, 2.5% for expenses, and 25 basis points for NOI at the midpoint of our range.
To date, this year, we have completed $338 million of acquisitions, adding newly built communities in Austin, Nashville, and Tampa to our portfolio, and we are actively looking at additional opportunities. We've also completed $174 million of dispositions so far this year, and we are currently marketing additional properties for sale, with expected closings in the fourth quarter of 2025. Camden has one of the best balance sheets and lowest leverage ratios in the multifamily sector, and we are one of only 10 U.S. REITs with an A credit rating. Our liquidity is strong, with approximately $700 million available under our unsecured line of credit and commercial paper program, and no significant future debt maturities until the fourth quarter of next year.
Regarding that debt maturity in the fourth quarter of next year, we expect to have the ability to refinance that $500 million maturity accretively, in a future lower interest rate environment, given the current interest rate on that debt tranche is running in the mid-5% range. At this point, we'll open up to questions from the BofA team and our audience today. Thank you.
Thanks, Alex. Maybe if we could just start with this spring-summer leasing season. It just seemed a little bit weaker, and I guess when the revised job report came out, that kind of explained what was going on. I guess if you can help us with what your on-the-ground teams were communicating back to you, and how it trended in your different markets.
Yeah, I'll get to the spring-summer leasing trend, but first I do want to hit the point about the revised job number. If you think about what we experienced last year, we had a 50-year high in terms of new supply. The last time we saw new supply at that level was 1974. We also had a 50-year high in terms of absorption. Think for a minute that we did a 50-year high of absorption anticipating that we had 1.7 million new jobs. The reality was we only had 900,000 jobs. I think that bodes really well for the demand equation in the Sun Belt, if you think that we were able to absorb that level of new supply with a much lower level of job creation.
I think that's actually fantastic news, and it really does get me more optimistic about what 2026 and 2027 can look like, because we realize that we don't need such a high level of jobs in order to absorb the existing supply. That's point number one. If you look at what happened in the spring and summer leasing season, I will tell you that the second quarter behaved as we expected. We had 0.7% on blends, with new leases down around 2% and renewals up about 3.5%. When I look at the third quarter, the guidance that I gave for the third quarter was for blends to be slightly under 1%. By the way, 0.7%, which is what we saw in the second quarter, is slightly below 1%. Anticipating that the third quarter new lease and renewals will look very similar to the second quarter.
I will tell you that we certainly did see increased price sensitivity across the board in the end of the second quarter and going into the third quarter. A lot of that, I believe, is related to new supply and supply that came on board last year. If you think about it, across the board, we peaked in supply in the third quarter of 2024. If you deliver your units, it typically takes 12 to 18 months to stabilize that real estate after you deliver the units. A lot of the units that were delivered at the end of last year are reaching the point in time where they're trying to get their stabilization complete. When you're trying to complete your stabilization, it's very similar to if you're a retailer and you're trying to sell the last few products that you have, what do you want to do?
You want to accelerate the movement of that product. We did see increases in concessions, as I said, at the latter part of the second quarter and the beginning part of the third quarter. That, of course, did create price sensitivity a little bit on the new lease side. The good news is, we had anticipated it. It is in our guidance. We certainly did not see the price sensitivity on the renewal side. Keep in mind that we're having record levels of retention, so renewals are becoming a larger and larger component of our overall blend.
Thank you. Maybe just touching on, you had mentioned the move-outs for home purchases around 10%. How has that kind of moved around?
Yeah, I mean, move-outs to home purchase has been about 10% really since 2023. The one thing I like to tell you, because I get asked lots of times about whether we're concerned that there will be some change that will cause a lot of folks to all of a sudden leave our communities and move to single family. The first thing you have to know is that the historical level of move-outs to purchase homes in our portfolio is 14%. Keep in mind, that's 14% of our move-outs. Our move-outs are only about 50%. Effectively, 50% times 14% tells you that about 7% of our humans every single year want to move out to purchase a home. That number is now down to 10%.
Take the same math, do 50% of 10%, and that tells you that there's 5% of our humans who are moving out to buy a home. We're talking about 2% of our folks that typically would move out to purchase a home aren't moving out today. 2% is not really a significant number. The other thing I will tell you is, if you look at the markets in which we operate, the discount to rent versus buy in our markets is between 50%- 60%. That is a significant discount. It's really unlikely that that discount is going to be abated in any significant way anytime soon. I think all of this sets up really well for us to continue maintaining reasonable 10% move-outs to purchase homes for quite some time. As I said, even if it does increase to 14%, that's really not a significant issue for us.
Thank you. That discount rent versus buy, you know, I'm sure like Southern California is at the biggest discount. If you can kind of walk us through some of the other markets.
I'll tell you, interestingly, Houston, Texas is a 60% discount. If you look at Dallas, it's a 50% discount. It is really across the board. The only market that we operate in that doesn't have that extreme of a discount is Miami. By the way, Miami is a 20%+ discount. This really is across the board. The other thing I'll tell you is, if you think about the way our markets behave, typically in our markets, if somebody moves out of multifamily and they move into single family, it's generally because they've had a lifestyle change. That's typically they got married and had their first child, and they start to think about school districts, et cetera. If you look at our resident base, 75% of our renters are single. They have a long way to go before they, you know, they have to get married first and then have their child.
They've got a ways to go before that lifestyle change kicks in. I think I feel very comfortable that we're going to continue to have really high levels of retention.
Thank you. Maybe if I can ask a few kind of market-specific questions. Coming out of earnings, there were a few markets where your commentary was a little bit of an outlier relative to peers. I think that's when we're looking at very broad markets. I guess one area was commentary on Los Angeles. You have a Southern California portfolio, more Orange County. If you could maybe kind of talk to what you're seeing in the Southern California portfolio.
I will tell you, there are certainly other multifamily REITs here who are better suited to answer questions about Southern California than I am, because it's not a huge part of our portfolio. I will tell you, though, that Los Angeles is actually one of our best-performing markets right now. Keep in mind, though, we actually only have three assets that are in L.A. County. One is in Hollywood, one's in Glendale, and one is in Long Beach. Long Beach certainly behaves differently than the rest of L.A. County. I'll tell you, those assets did well for us. I recognize that some of our peers have a much larger portfolio, and they may have different experiences. I will tell you that occupancy is high at all three of our communities. Bad debt, which was certainly problematic for us for quite some time in those communities, has abated significantly.
On a long-term basis, we think those communities should do just fine.
Thank you. Maybe kind of same question on D.C.
Yeah, so when we talk about D.C., we're talking about the DMV. We're talking about the District, Maryland, and Virginia. Keep in mind that 50% of our portfolio is actually in Northern Virginia. We've operated in the DMV for 20 years. For 20 years, Northern Virginia has outperformed. Northern Virginia is just a really strong market. Obviously, one of the questions that we get asked the most about is DOGE and the impact of DOGE on the DMV in general. I will tell you that when we talk to our folks on the field, they say that DOGE is absolutely not a factor whatsoever. We're not hearing about anybody coming into the leasing centers and saying that they've lost their jobs because of DOGE. We're not hearing anybody come in and say they're worried about their jobs because of DOGE. The obvious question should be, why is that the case?
Because obviously, DOGE is something. I will freely admit that I'm one of those people who had no idea that federal workers were not going into the office every single day. I don't know, I just assumed government workers went into the office. It turns out they were actually all living in Boise. What I think has happened is that the governmental workers being called back to the office in D.C. has more than offset any job losses that are associated with DOGE. The other thing that you have to realize is the typical governmental worker is a 40-year-old. That's just not really our demographic. We're more in the sort of 25 to 34-year-olds. Keep in mind that our average resident is 31. I think a lot of the governmental workers are not our renters.
Obviously, I think there's that incremental demand that has come from the governmental workers returning back to the District. By the way, realizing that that many workers were not actually showing up in the office in the District, and you recognize how well on a relative basis that the DMV did over the past three years, I think is really a good thing, because it shows the overall strength, this inherent strength of that market.
Thank you. Maybe just digging into some of the higher supply markets, you've still got some that are going to see peak deliveries and then those facing kind of the renewal cycles. I guess, you know, where would you kind of characterize your major markets in that?
Yeah, I mean, first of all, every time somebody says high supply to me, I mean to correct them and say high demand. All of our markets are incredibly high demand, but a few of our markets are still experiencing high levels of supply. Two markets that jump out to me are Austin and Nashville. I'll sort of hit each of them individually. I'll do Nashville first and tell you that Nashville is really a story of downtown Nashville versus the rest of Nashville. Downtown Nashville certainly does have a lot of supply that is trying to work through. If you go into the suburbs, it's a very different story. The good news is that every 25 to 34-year-old in America wants to live in Nashville, and if they don't want to live in Nashville, they want to live in Austin, Texas . We'll jump over to Austin.
The thing I will tell you about Austin is, if you go to 2024 and you look at our portfolio in general and recognize that the supply was about 4% of the stock in 2024, that was a really, really high number. By the way, just as a point of reference, that number drops down to 2% in 2026 and 1.5% in 2027. That's why we feel so optimistic about 2026 and 2027. If you go back to Austin, that number, instead of being 4% in Austin, was 10%. One out of every 10 multifamily assets that you see in Austin was delivered in the last year. That certainly creates a challenge in terms of lease-ups. The good news, once again, is that every 25 to 34-year-old wants to live there, so you have incredibly high demand. We have to just get through this supply.
The good news is that the supply spigot has been turned off. We think supply will peak in that market latter part of this year, and then you've really got sort of a 12 to 18-month timeframe for us to get all of that real estate leased up. Obviously, the demand is there, so it will be leased up. You're not going to see a lot of pricing power. In fact, you won't see any pricing power in Austin for quite some time. Once we get past that, I think Austin is going to be one of the absolute best markets in America, because you have to recognize when we keep talking about all this supply, the reason why this supply was so high, why it was a 50-year high of supply, was that you had effectively free money.
You had a scenario where somebody could go borrow a 75% loan to cost at 2%. That made a lot of deals penciled that the reality was should have never been done. I am very confident to say that in the rest of my professional career, we will never again see an environment where you have that type of free money. Because of that, you will never again have that excess level of supply.
Maybe Austin and Nashville is more of a rent recovery 2027, but the rest of the Sun Belt, we'll see that earlier?
Yes.
Great. Maybe just kind of touching on the transaction market.
Yeah, I mean, the transaction market remains fairly muted. We'll talk about acquisitions first, and then we'll talk about development. On the acquisition side, the reality is there's just not a lot of real estate that's hitting the market. The reason is because there is such volatility on interest rates. If you think about it, if you are a private group and you're looking to sell real estate, and we saw this happen quite often, they would take their real estate out, they'd begin a marketing process when the 10-year was at 4%, and then within a couple of weeks, the 10-year is at 4.4%, right? You've got a 10% spike in interest rates. A 10% spike in interest rates absolutely changes the underwriting.
The last thing you want to do if you are somebody trying to sell real estate is to take a transaction out and then have that transaction fail, have that transaction not close. The reality is, all of a sudden that particular deal becomes tainted, right? Everybody assumes that there's something inherently wrong with that deal, and that's why that deal did not close, even though there may be nothing wrong with it. It's just a fact, just a result of the volatility of interest rates. Because of that, you've seen very few deals actually hit the market. One of the interesting things that we're starting to see a lot of is folks who don't want to risk having a transaction not work.
They're doing sort of quasi-off-market deals where they'll tell a broker, call five or 10 specific buyers, don't market this, just talk to them and see whether or not they're interested. The good news is that Camden gets that look. Camden gets that look because people recognize that we have the ability to transact. We're seeing some deals there, but nowhere near the level of deals we'd like to see. My gut is interest rates, obviously, I think we all can assume get cut next week. I think when sellers start to recognize that interest rates are likely not to go back up, but likely to hold steady or go down, I think you'll start to see more deals hit the market. This is really not the right time for deals to hit the market because you're starting to hit the slow period.
I think where you'll start to see the larger pickup will be the beginning of next year when funds have new capital allocations, et cetera, and sellers recognize that. I think you'll start to see deals pick up at the beginning part of next year. When it comes to development, because I think development is one of the really important things to talk about, you have to recognize that almost all deals that are built in America today are built by merchant builders. Remember that a merchant builder is nothing more than a manufacturer hired by an equity provider to build a product and to sell that product at a profit. Today, across the board, you can buy multifamily assets at a discount to replacement cost. If you can buy multifamily assets at a discount to replacement cost, that means inherently there is no profit in that transaction.
That is why equity providers are not giving money to merchant builders today. Equity providers instead are giving money to acquisition funds. I will tell you that that's not going to last forever. There will be a point in time when multifamily assets start to trade again at a premium to replacement cost, which is what should happen. There are three factors that are going to drive that. Factor number one is that you have to start seeing rental rate growth increase. I think most of us anticipate that that's going to happen, call it 2026 and 2027. Factor number two is you're going to have to see construction costs start to come down. We're starting to see construction costs come down. We've got costs coming down about 3%- 5% today.
To give you an idea of how much could construction costs come down, during the GFC, they came down 10%. We sort of assume that's your outer band. The third thing that needs to happen is you need to see interest rates start to come down. I think we all sort of assume that that's going to happen starting next week. When the combination of those three things occur, all of a sudden you will start to see deals trade at a premium to replacement cost. When that happens, all of a sudden you will start to see developments make more sense. The thing you have to realize is that let's assume all of that occurs mid-2026. It will then take a year from that point in time for people to get their plans and their permits and all that done.
Once all that's done, let's say they start in a year's time from that, that gets you to mid-2027, then you're talking about two and a half to three years to deliver the product. You're talking about supply increasing around 2030. It looks like we should have a fairly long run rate. The other thing that makes me feel pretty good about that is I track the ABI, which is the Architectural Billing Index. The Architectural Billing Index shows what our architects are actually working on. I will tell you that index has been down 27 of the past 30 months. That tells you that architects aren't even working on deals, right? You have to get all the economics to start working. Then you have to get the plans done, drawings done, permits done, et cetera.
I think we've got a fairly long runway before you see any type of increase of supply. By the way, as I said earlier, I don't think you're ever going to get back to the point in time where supply is the level that we saw in 2024, because I don't think we're ever going to see free money again to that level.
Thank you. Maybe jumping back to that broker phone call, can you let us in on what's the bid-ask spread for those types of acquisitions?
Yeah, I mean, what I will tell you is it is interesting because brokers, typically when a deal hits the market, the first thing you do is you go to your broker and you get what's called a BOV, a broker opinion of value. The challenge becomes that there's not a lot of deals that are actually transacting, so broker opinions of value have a tendency to not always be the most accurate currently. We certainly are hearing cases of folks who are going out and saying, "Listen, I want to market this very tightly, call a couple of folks," it's based upon a BOV. Oftentimes, they are not getting to their BOV number. Part of that is because, once again, you're not broadly marketing it, right? You're just going to a select group of deals, a select group of humans. Some of these transactions are working.
If you look, we bought three deals this year, and two of the three came that way.
Thank you. On the development side, maybe talk to development yields, kind of what you're realizing on this crop of assets, and as you underwrite future deals.
Yeah, I mean, what I will tell you is the developments we have, and we don't have a lot right now, we're sort of in the 5.5% to 6% yields. The thing that you have to remember, and let's go back to the point that I made about most multifamily assets today are trading at a discount to replacement cost.
It's always sort of amusing to me because I talk to a lot of merchant builders and I say, "What are you guys building to?" They say, "I'm building to a 6.5%." I say, "That's interesting." I said, "OK, do you recognize that you can buy assets at a discount to replacement cost?" They say, "Yes, I do." I said, "OK, what do you think new deals trade at?" They say, "High 4s." I said, "OK, this is simple math then." Based upon that simple math, there's no way you're building at a 6.5%. That's just not how this works. Presumably, if you can buy at a discount to replacement cost, then your yield is something less than a high 4s. I will tell you that we've had several land parcels that have been brought to us for us to take a look at.
When we do the math, that's exactly what we discover. We look at the math and somebody says, "OK, you can build that for $100." I say, "Well, can you buy it for?" They say, "You can buy it for $95." Go buy the asset, don't build the asset. By the way, that math, once again, will change. When that math changes, Camden is going to have a competitive advantage, number one, because we're very good developers, and that's very important. Number two, because of the strength of our balance sheet, we can fund new developments using 100% debt. Using 100% debt obviously gives us a cost of capital advantage. You will see us pick up again in terms of new development. Today, it's very hard to make a new development pencil.
Thank you. Anything from...
Just a question. I mean, on demographic, you're more exposed to 25, 35 until I guess unemployment rate that is growing faster for those demographics. Kind of risk you see.
Yeah, I mean, the first thing, and I'll make sure everybody heard the question, the question was talking about our demographic as 25 to 34-year-olds. You know, that particular group, there's a lot of sort of narrative around them having a harder time finding jobs, et cetera. I will tell you that that is another thing that bodes very well for the Sun Belt, based upon that. The reality is that the young folks are going to go where the jobs are, and the jobs are in the Sun Belt. Of course, sitting here in New York City, which is a great city, I'm going to tell you that a lot of young folks that typically would move to New York City to try and start their career are going to look at those types of stats, and they're going to say, "You know what?
If it's harder to find a job, I'm going to go where the jobs are far more plentiful," and that's going to drive them right down to our market. I think that is an absolute plus. The other thing I will tell you is, you know, there's certainly a lot of discussions around AI and the impacts that AI is having on young folks getting jobs. I'm going to go on the record and tell you that I am an incredibly optimistic person about what AI will actually end up doing. Every single time there is a major technological innovation, it ends up creating more jobs. It ends up creating jobs that none of us here have even thought of, none of us here have even pictured.
My gut is, in a year's time, we're going to be talking about brand new industries, brand new jobs, and those will likely go to the young folks, because the young folks are the ones who embrace change the best. The young folks are the ones who are learning about these innovations, and the young folks are the ones that older people like myself are going to go to and ask for help. I think this is an incredibly exciting time for them.
Maybe just one follow-up on the revised jobs. You said that you take that as a positive. I'm sure that there are some in the room maybe thinking opposite, right? Is this an issue that, you know, can you talk about the most recent demand you're seeing? How would you characterize that customer? Why isn't it an issue that it could be a growing issue as we head into the fall, winter, next year?
Yeah, so the question is about the jobs revision and my optimism from it. Here's the math that I look at. In 2024, you had 4% of the stock delivered. That 4% of the stock was absorbed originally, we thought, with 1.7 million jobs. That 4% now, it appears, was actually absorbed with 800,000 jobs. When you go out to 2026 and you say that you're going to have 2% of the stock delivered, based upon the math that we all thought yesterday at 8:00 A.M., before yesterday at 9:00 A.M., based upon that, we would have made the assumption that you needed half of 1.7 million jobs or 850,000 jobs to absorb the 2%.
Now, based upon the math that came around at 9:00 A.M., all of a sudden you say, "OK, maybe you only need half of 800,000 jobs." Now you're talking about 400,000 jobs in order to absorb 2% stock. If that's the case, you start to say, "What if we actually have 800,000 jobs? What if it's consistent?" All of a sudden you start to say, "Now you actually have excess demand." It's a really interesting sort of thought process. I will tell you, are we seeing anything that's a leading indicator to us that there are folks losing their jobs, that there are folks worried about their jobs, that there are folks not getting jobs? The answer is we're not, right? I come back to the fact that we're having a 50-year high in terms of absorption, record level absorption.
You look at our renter base, our average renter pays about 19% of their income to rent. Our average renter is financially very strong. We're not seeing any issues with them having trouble keeping their jobs, et cetera. By the way, when jobs become harder to find, once again, people move to where it's a lower cost of living and where jobs are more plentiful, and that is the Sun Belt.
Maybe if we could talk a little bit about your expansion into single-family homes and BTR communities.
Yeah, I want to be really clear, we're not expanding into single-family homes. We're expanding into build-to-rent. We have two build-to-rent communities that we're doing as a test case. They're both located in suburban Houston. We did that on purpose because obviously this is where we are. Every time we do a test case, we want to make sure we can watch it really closely. One of them is in far north Houston, in the Woodlands suburbs, if you guys are familiar with Houston. The other one is in far southwest Houston. I've made this comment, I think, on every earnings call for the past two years. There's an incredibly slow lease-up. This particular demographic is much different than our demographic. I'll just sort of paint you a picture really quick to tell you this is not our typical demographic.
If you look at our move-outs reasons from our traditional multifamily, 2% of our move-outs move out to rent a single-family home. Once again, that's 2% of 50%. That's 1%, right? Only 1% of our humans typically move out to rent a single-family home. This is a brand new demographic for us. What we've learned about this demographic is it takes them a very long time to make a decision to rent. I think about our typical 31-year-old that leases multifamily. We give them a fantastic tour. Our real estate looks great. They say, "I'm ready to sign." They sign a lease, and it's fantastic. This particular demographic, they show up on a Saturday. We're talking about the BTR now. They show up on a Saturday. They take a look around.
We say, "Do you want to sign?" They say, "Let us think about it." They come back the next Saturday, and they bring a buddy. I'm thinking, "This is great. They're bringing a buddy who's also going to rent." No, that's not the case. They're trying to get their buddy's opinion. They look around, and we think they're going to lease, and no, they don't. They come back the next weekend with tape measures. They start measuring rooms. It's like, "God, please, just lease." It's a very slow lease-up. The good news, though, is if it takes you that long to make a decision to move out, we think it's going to take you much longer to make a decision to move out. We think it's going to be really sticky. Obviously, we need to make sure that, in fact, is the case.
That is the thesis that we have, which is that this opens us up to a new demographic, that they are going to be a lot stickier. Obviously, there is, as everybody knows, inherent costs with turnover. If we can eliminate a lot of that inherent cost, we think that makes a lot of sense for us. As we continue to operate these assets, if we believe that we can do it in an efficient manner, if we believe that we can use our existing expertise and do this well, you'll see us do more of them. If ultimately it ends up not working, you won't see us do more.
Do you think eventually kind of stabilized yields are in line with the apartment product or potentially higher?
I think ultimately they're going to be in line. When I think about the factors that are positive, as I said, I think it's going to be a much lower turnover. I think the offset to that might be whether they're more price sensitive.
Anyone else in the room want to touch on any topic?
Any other new markets that you're looking at to expand?
The question was any new markets that we're looking at. As I always tell everybody, our business is really simple. Just follow the population growth and follow the employment growth, and that's where you should be. If you look at the top 25 markets across the country in terms of population growth and employment growth, we're really in all those markets. At this point in time, there's not any new market that screens for us. I will tell you that we've got teams that are constantly evaluating new markets and taking a look at them to see if they make sense for us. As of right now, there's no new adds.
Anything to update maybe on the regulatory front? Talk about this housing emergency or the ROADS Act.
On the regulatory front, I will tell you that part of the reason why the states that we're in do so well is because they're very pro-business. Part of being pro-business is that you're low on regulations. I'm not worried about anything changing on the regulatory front. When it comes to governmental incentives or initiatives to solve the housing affordability issue, listen, I'm all in favor of what can work. I will tell you that a robust single-family housing market tends to create jobs. Remember, as what I just said, job creation is really good for our business. If something creates jobs, I think at the end of the day, that's a plus.
Back to the other math that I walked you through, it's not going to really take our residents away because our residents are very happy being in the multifamily world because they are single individuals that like the idea of 900 sq ft and no maintenance and all the flexibility that comes with that. I think if somebody can make these things work, I think that's fantastic. I think there's a whole lot of work to go. If you recognize that there's a 60% discount to rent versus own, that's a huge bridge to gap.
Thank you. I'm going to close with three rapid-fire questions.
OK.
When the Fed starts to cut, do you expect borrowing rates for long-term debt to decline, stay flat, or potentially rise?
Decline.
Last year, the majority of companies stated they're ramping up spending on AI initiatives. How would you characterize your plans over the next year? Higher, flat, or lower?
Higher.
Do you believe same-store NOI growth for your sector will be higher, lower, or the same next year?
Higher.
Great. Thank you.
Fantastic. Thank you, everybody.