Good day and welcome to the Centerspace Q3 2022 earnings call. My name is Lauren, and I will be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Joe McComish, Vice President of Finance, to begin. Joe, please go ahead.
Centerspace's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2022 was filed with the SEC yesterday after the market closed. Additionally, our earnings release and supplemental disclosure package have been posted to our website at centerspacehomes.com and filed on Form 8-K. It's important to note that today's remarks will include statements about our business outlook and other forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties discussed in our Form 10-K filed for the year ended December 31, 2021 under the section titled Risk Factors and in our other filings with the SEC. We cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our earnings release for reconciliations of any non-GAAP information which may be discussed on today's call.
I'll now turn it over to Mark Decker for the company's prepared remarks.
Thanks, Joe, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. With me this morning is Anne Olson, our Chief Operating Officer, and Bhairav Patel, our Chief Financial Officer. Strong fundamentals continue in the rental housing business, and 2022 will likely go down as one of the best years on record. Against that backdrop, Centerspace has performed well, and I'm delighted to report that Core FFO per share is up 17% quarter-over-quarter and 11% year-to-date. I'm also happy to share that our guidance for the full year is for at least 10% Core FFO growth, and the top-line story remains encouraging. The capital markets have been volatile, with the ten-year up over 130 basis points since we last got together, or almost 50%, from mid-2s to over 4%.
The speed of this move, paired with the continued inflation in materials and labor, as well as a return to pre-COVID seasonality, have caused us to trim our guidance from August. Finding ways to contain costs and improve processes while maintaining strong customer service is the top focus for us today. All that said, if we zoom out a little, Centerspace has an outstanding business, and the housing we provide meets a basic need. Our business is remarkably consistent, as represented by 2022 being our fourth straight year of same-store NOI and per-share Core FFO growth. We do believe profitability and efficiency remain an opportunity to improve and drive value, and it's one of our key strategic pillars to do so. I know we can. Turning to investments, we've been more active over the last few months than we were for most of the year.
We invested $95 million in a brand-new community in Denver called Lyra, adding 215 homes in the Denver Tech Center submarket. Through the end of October, we've purchased around $29 million of our common stock. Lyra is a community we've tracked since pre-development, and we ended up with the opportunity to get a community that just opened in April and experienced a strong lease up at a price we believe is below replacement cost. Similarly, the shares we purchased in late September and October were made at historically wide NAV discounts and low multiples. The market is in turmoil, and we don't believe the fundamentals embedded in the business are reflected in the current price of our shares. We feel great about both investments, which were executed through the lens of how do we improve the portfolio, earnings quality, and per-share results.
Going forward, we expect to be in an opportunistic environment and will continue to be aggressive while carefully minding our liquidity position. None of these results would be possible without a strong team, and I want to thank everyone at Centerspace for their hard work. With that, Anne, would you please provide a quick operations update?
Thank you, Mark, and good morning. Revenues continue to drive growth, with third quarter revenues increasing 11.1% over the same period in 2021. During the third quarter, our same-store new lease rates increased 7.5% on average over the prior leases, and same-store renewals achieved average increases of 8.7%. On a blended basis, this is third quarter rental rate growth of 8.2%. While we are starting to see seasonality in leasing velocity, our Mountain West same-store portfolios remain strong, with double-digit new lease rates in Denver, Billings, and Rapid City during the quarter. Our non-same-store portfolio achieved increases of 7.7% on average over prior leases, with renewals up 9% while retaining over 60% of our residents. As we move into the fourth quarter and have lower expirations, occupancy is trending positively.
Our expense guidance for the remainder of 2022 reflects the volatility we are experiencing in areas such as utilities and uninsured losses, as well as our experience year to date on labor and materials. Maintaining our communities remains a top priority for us, and inflationary pressures have driven costs of repair and maintenance significantly this year. We particularly see the impacts in plumbing, flooring, and painting. Internally, salary and benefits costs have increased year to date 6.7% over the prior year, which is in line with CPI increases for wages and salaries through June. Expense trends vary widely by market, but across the board we need to advance efficiencies and contain expense growth as we head into 2023. It remains a great year for us. Year to date, net operating income has increased 10.3% over 2021.
As we manage to optimize revenue during the last 18 months of historic rent increases, we're up to the challenge of providing great homes during times of expense pressure. Now I'll turn it over to Bhairav to discuss our overall financial results.
Thanks, Anne, and good morning, everyone. Last night we reported core FFO for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 of $1.15 per diluted share, an increase of $0.17 or 17.5% from the same period last year. The growth in earnings was fueled by another strong quarter of same-store NOI growth, which increased by 11.4% versus the same period last year. G&A and property management expenses for the quarter were $4.5 million and $2.6 million, respectively, for a combined total of $7.1 million. That included $234,000 related to software implementation, which was excluded from core FFO as the implementation is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Excluding the implementation costs on a combined basis, G&A and property management expenses increased by $1 million or 16%, which was mainly a result of scaling our support functions to service a larger portfolio, mainly due to our significant acquisition of the KMS portfolio. The KMS acquisition and other acquisitions since the third quarter of last year have increased our revenues by approximately 25% on an annualized basis. At the end of the third quarter, we acquired Lyra Apartments for $95 million. We funded the acquisition by drawing down on our line of credit, increasing the balance on the line to $171.5 million at the end of the quarter. As of the end of the quarter, the weighted average maturity of our debt was 6.3 years, and weighted average interest rate was 3.45%.
As of October 31, we had repurchased a total of 427,000 shares or approximately 2.3% of our diluted shares at an average price of $67.25 per share for net consideration of approximately $29 million. Turning to guidance, which is presented on page S17 of the supplemental. We are updating our guidance for both same-store NOI growth and Core FFO per share, mainly driven by continued expense pressures across the portfolio. Despite increasing our same-store revenue growth guidance by 25 basis points at the midpoint, our same-store NOI guidance is now lower by 75 basis points, driving a $0.03 reduction in the midpoint of our Core FFO guidance. We saw similar expense increases in our non-same-store portfolio, which was our larger contributor to the reduction of our Core FFO guidance.
A large portion of the increase, however, was driven by larger than projected unreimbursable losses of $450,000 in turn costs, which were significantly higher as some of these units turned for the first time under our ownership. The acquisition of Lyra contributed another $0.02 worth of reduction to the midpoint of our core FFO guidance. Offsetting these reductions were lower than projected G&A expenses, driven by reduced incentive-based compensation and lower interest expense. In summation, the changes I discussed resulted in a reduction of $0.07 to the midpoint of our core FFO guidance to $4.46 per share. As I complete my first year at Centerspace, I'm continually impressed with the commitment to constant improvement across the organization. I'm confident in our team's ability to navigate the challenges of the coming months and look forward to the years ahead.
With that, I will turn it over to the operator to open it up for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure that your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Bradley Heffern from RBC Capital Markets. Brad, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. On the Lyra acquisition, what is the expected stabilized cap rate there? I think you mentioned it's a discount to replacement value, so any sort of quantification you can give there, and then when's it expected to stabilize?
We bought that at a going in ±4.25 on our underwriting, which has some pretty conservative rent growth rates. It is stabilized. It's over 90% occupied.
Okay. I guess why is there the $0.02 of dilution there in the fourth quarter if it's stabilized already?
Hey, Brad, this is Bhairav. With respect to the two pennies, that's driven by the rate of interest on the line of credit, which we drew down to fund the acquisition. That rate of interest is higher than the stabilized cap rate that Mark mentioned. That's what's driving the dilution.
Okay. Do you have an expectation that, you know, there's gonna be, you know, really strong rent growth at that particular property, you know, as kind of the lease-up leases roll-off? Or I guess, how does that transition from being dilutive to accretive?
Yeah, we do believe it will have strong growth. Again, we didn't underwrite particularly strong growth, but that is what we're seeing in Denver broadly. We do believe this asset's well positioned in the sub-market. You know, when we look at it on a more than 90-day basis and we think about driving margin, portfolio quality, long-term earnings growth, we're quite confident this asset will run faster than many of our other assets. We may sell some of those assets to fund this over time. We also think we bought it at less than it would cost to build it. I am mindful. I think your question is spot on with earnings as a consideration, but you know, long-term earnings growth is also a consideration.
Okay. Got it. You mentioned the non-controllable, unreimbursable expenses. I guess, can you walk through exactly what that is?
Is there any quantification you can give as to how much that's affecting overall expense growth?
Yeah, this is Bhairav. So the non-reimbursable losses, the reference to that was particularly in regard to the non-same-store portfolio where we've seen more incidents, you know, in the third quarter as well as at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Overall, I think just the impact of those incidents would be about $400,000 or a couple of pennies that would impact the Core FFO guidance as you kind of think about it on a whole year basis.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Brad.
Thanks, Brad.
Thank you. Our next question comes from John Kim from BMO Capital Markets. John, please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Robin Handel here with BMO Capital Markets. Just wanted to recap your building blocks for 2023. What's the current loss to lease and earn-in, and could you perhaps walk me through how you calculate earn-in?
Yeah, go ahead. Could you say the last part of the question again so that what's earn-in and what was the last part of the question?
Yeah. I know, I know that other peers do it differently. Just wanted to ask if you can walk me through how you calculate it, how you get to earn-in?
Yeah, I mean, I can take that part first. I mean, overall, we look at the loss to lease, and we're modeling all our leases as they kind of come up for expiration. Depending on whether it's being renewed or we're kind of rolling into a new lease, you know, we would just assign the market rent at that point, depending on whether we believe that's being renewed or it's a new lease. We roughly use about a 50% renewal rate, and that's how we kind of run that through the model. With respect to the loss to lease, I mean, as of September, it was at about 6.5%-7%. We've captured a lot of that loss to lease, as we kind of went through the summer months.
You know, the market rent kind of keeps changing, so as we kind of try to project out 2023, we run a curve based on seasonality, and that would be expected to increase as we kind of enter the summer months.
This is Anne. You know, given that we do have a pretty significant non-same-store portfolio, if we look at the whole portfolio, the loss to lease is closer to 8%. That 6.5%-7% is on same-store only.
Okay. Looking at repairs and maintenance, what were some of the major drivers for the increased cost? Did perhaps turnover have an impact?
Anne, you wanna take that?
Yeah, sure. Thanks. Yeah, turnover was one of the main drivers of our overall expense increase. R&M separate than turnover is also a big driver. What we're seeing there is really, you know, increased costs related to skilled trades and specialized services like pool servicing, HVAC, plumbing. We operate in very tight labor markets and this is a lot of demand. We have over 40% of our leases turning. When we look to our vendors, it's a lot of work for them and they're having trouble finding staff and costs are increasing really pretty significantly. On the repairs and maintenance side, another driver that we're seeing is security costs.
Particularly in our urban assets, we've increased security as a way to enhance the resident experience and really make sure that we can keep our lease rates rising and retain our residents. We are seeing some increased costs on the security side and repairs and maintenance.
Okay. Just given the higher turnover there, was there anything that stood out as far as move-outs, move-out reasons?
Yeah. The largest reason that we see for move-outs is relocation. You know, that's really outpaced buying a home, particularly in the third quarter. We did have a pretty significant amount of move-outs. A little bit over 5% of our move-outs were eviction related. If you recall, particularly in Minnesota, we have now, you know, this year was the year the eviction moratorium came off, and also all rental assistance has now dwindled and tapered off. You know, we have seen a pretty significant amount of eviction-related move-outs. Those typically do drive turnover costs as well because those units are usually not in very good condition. We have a lot of damage write-offs related to those. Also, we saw a pretty big spike in legal fees connected to those evictions in the third quarter in particular.
Okay. Thank you for the color.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Rob Stevenson from Janney Montgomery Scott. Rob, please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, guys. Anne, can you talk about your ability to contain utility costs as the weather gets colder? How successful have you guys been in, you know, submetering RUBS, et cetera? Have you guys hedged on gas prices and stuff like that?
Yeah. I can and then, maybe Bhairav can talk a little bit about, how we're looking at utility costs and potential to hedge. You know, we have RUBS across our portfolio. However, that is water, sewer, gas, and common area electric. We had not included in RUBS heat costs, gas costs. Historically. However, that is being rolled out across the portfolio now. You know, there's always a trade-off there. We operate in a lot of markets where it's not common to have RUBS at all, much less, not include heat in the rent. You know, we are rolling that out right now on new leases starting in November. We'll see the renewal leases come on.
As we work through 2023, we think that there's gonna be you know a much less impact on increased utility costs and also an enhancement to our other revenue as we offset those. But for this year, you know, that takes time as we go through the lease roll, and given that we ramped that up this year and are starting it now, we really won't see those full impacts until 2024. But we are planning on doing everything we can to bring those down into 2023. Rob, do you wanna comment on the hedge?
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, as we kind of think about controlling utilities costs, I mean, the most effective strategy is what Anne laid out in terms of being able to pass some of these along. In certain markets, you know, we are not able to hedge it just based on the regulations in place in those markets. Mostly, you know, as we kind of think about, you know, utilities, you know, offsetting it with, you know, passing it down would be the most effective strategy.
Hedging in this environment with volatility being where it is, you know, even if we were able to hedge, the cost of doing so would be extremely high in this environment, so it's something that, you know, we can evaluate, but it's unlikely that it's something that we will be able to implement in the near future.
Okay. Then are you guys seeing any, you know, absent the eviction stuff, which probably have been on your radar screen for a while, but are you seeing any uptick in normal delinquencies and bad debt throughout the portfolio or in certain markets?
Generally, no. I mean, Anne, do you wanna give some detail on that?
Yeah. I would say generally no. In fact, I think we're fairly pleased with the way that our delinquency has come down post-COVID, and really feel like we're returning to kind of pre-COVID levels. Our incomes, you know, continue to be very high on our new applications across the portfolio, and so those rent to income numbers are good. We feel really good about the credit quality of our tenants.
Okay. Last one from me, any changes on returns or, volume of redevelopment that you're planning on doing here, given some of the cost pressures that you've talked about on the repairs and maintenance? I assume that's flowing through redevelopment as well. Are you getting the returns that you need to get there or want to get there, or is it, you know, a situation where you put a pause on that? How are you guys thinking about the redevelopment process?
Anne, do you wanna take that one?
Yes, I can. I think our thought on redevelopment is we wanna remain nimble, so we are constantly looking at as costs rise, as, you know, unforeseen circumstances happen during those projects, what the rental rates are, how it's impacting vacancy, how, you know, how long it's taking to renew those units. Our goal is to be able to kind of turn it on and off as the market will bear it. I do think that going into next year, we're going to really have heightened scrutiny on whether or not we can continue to get the premiums. We feel very good about the projects we've undertaken year to date, and what has been completed this year.
In fact, during 2022, we did kind of accelerate a couple of our projects and with non-renewals and, you know, really took back a lot of units, which had about a 60 basis points impact on our overall occupancy in the third quarter. Right now we feel really good about it, but with the cost of capital where it is and also, you know, the potential for some moderation of overall market rent growth, I think we're gonna have to be very careful headed into next year. We have very good plans and great underwriting that we feel good about, but that underwriting can change quickly, and we wanna be able to change with it.
( crosstalk ) Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time.
I'd just add on top.
Oh.
Rob, I'd just add on top of that, you know, if you think about work from home and folks can't buy a house that maybe they were planning and rent's going up everywhere, so perception of value, you know, the value add tends to still work. But, it is something we're looking at carefully across the board as Anne outlined.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Rob.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Connor Mitchell from Piper Sandler. Connor, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one relates to the repairs and maintenance. You guys mentioned that it's pretty tight labor market, so are there any additional steps you could take, maybe bring in, outside teams other than or outside of your markets to maybe help with the labor pressure and, help fight the cost a little bit, or any other steps you could take to lower the repair and maintenance costs?
Yeah. I'll start and Anne, maybe you can tack on. I'd say generally, you know, and in particular in the Mountain West, you just have more, you know, I'd call them, islands for labor. So if you think about, you know, let's say Dallas versus Denver, I mean, one, Dallas has 10 million people in it, and two, you know, if you draw a circle of a 4-hour drive around Dallas, you're into several other large metros. If you do that same thing in Denver
You know, you can't find another similar sized city, and that would get worse if you went to, say, Rapid City or Billings, which are our other two Mountain West markets. I think the difficulty in labor there is. I mean, those are super tight markets on a absolute and relative basis, and it's exacerbated by, you know, some of those kinds of factors. I'd just ask you to consider that. With that, Anne, why don't you elaborate, please?
Yeah. We actually have used labor from other markets to travel into, excuse me, into markets where we're having difficulty. Particularly on the value add side, we might use a contractor from one of our larger markets and team from one of our larger markets and send them to a smaller market simply given the cost pressure that that's less expensive to do than hire in market. That is something that we look at. It is a way that we have been able to either get large projects accomplished, which otherwise may not have gone forward, and/or reduce costs across that. You know, our vendors and contractors are having the same issue with labor that I think everyone is, which is very hard to find skilled workers.
You know, a lot of the R&M costs are related to things like, you know, we talked about plumbing, pool maintenance, HVAC. You know, specialized services, there's a really high demand on those, and we've seen costs in those areas, you know, really skyrocket.
Okay. Appreciate the color. My second question is on the current use of capital. I know you guys mentioned that some acquisitions now may be tougher to pencil with the rising rates. Should we expect any further acquisitions or maybe turn to additional stuff, buybacks or other use of the capital?
Yeah. I guess a couple of thoughts on that, Connor. You know, first, we're clearly headed. I mean, every. Price discovery is a very real and evolving thing, and that's driven by really a pretty significant lack of volume. You know, if you think about how assets are sold in the apartment space, I mean, a lot of them are kind of flow-oriented. Funds have timelines, what have you. Most of that flow-oriented business is gone, and it's really about situational, you know, deals where there's some sort of circumstance or situation that would cause someone to sell right now. Because while there's a lot of capital on the sideline, it's all kind of waiting and seeing.
I think what that means is there will be some interesting situations where someone's, you know, inclined to do this, inclined to go to market, and those might be good opportunities to take advantage. There's not going to be, I don't think, a lot of volume, at least not in the next little while. What is coming out for sale, I mean, we're seeing what we think are pretty good prices. Now, if you went into, like, Rumpelstiltskin mode and just fell asleep in 2017 and I told you those prices, they would feel great. They would probably feel high. You know, relative to where we've been the last few years, they're off quite a bit, 75-100 basis points probably.
I don't think it's the case that multifamily is gonna start trading at 7 caps 'cause long-term capital is currently trading or fetching 6s, because there's just too much capital out there, and this is a relatively good asset when you're considering alternatives and if you are a believer in inflation, which I am, and I think you know our numbers would evidence that it's real. To answer your question, we're gonna be as opportunistic as we possibly can be, and we're going to really mind our balance sheet, which was in great shape coming into this, and we hope to exit in great shape as well.
Okay. That's helpful. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Wes Golladay from Baird. Wes, please go ahead.
Hey. Good morning, everyone. Do you have any plans for dispositions to lock in this arbitrage? I know you said the market's not quite as robust as it is now, but the public equity versus private is probably still a pretty wide gap. The second part of the question is, with that mindset that inflation is high and likely to remain higher, are you gonna look to permanently finance, term out that line of credit?
The simple answer to the question is yes to both. To elaborate a little bit, I mean, You know, we look every quarter at our assets, and we really try to discern what we think long-term capital expenditures are gonna be and kind of look at an after everything cash flow. It is often the case that a newer asset like Lyra might look quite attractive, and that was just completed in April, versus some of our older properties, which might have a much higher stated cap rate, but a much lower kind of after everything cash flow. It's also the case that some of those assets might trade at cap rates that are pretty high and can get neutral or positive leverage.
When we consider some of our older assets, you know, it might be the case that that works well for us. Yes, we're evaluating that. We'll continue to evaluate that. I would also expect us to put on some longer-term financing for Lyra. Candidly, it won't be as exciting as I thought it would be, 'cause when we agreed to price on that asset, you know, we were looking at 10-12 year money in the high fours, call it 4.75 range. Today, that money from the agencies is probably mid fives plus, mid-5 to 6, and it changes every day because Treasury is moving around.
The unsecured market, which would be our favorite market, is kind of priced in a way that would discourage you from going. I think for us, unsecured capital today would be mid-6s. That's if you look at the investment-grade rated multifamily bonds, they're in the mid-6s, the SFRs are low- to mid-6s if you look at kind of UDR to the SFRs. We would be off of those. All of that would probably drive us to the secured market. I would expect-
Got it. Yes.
You to see us fix some debt there.
Got it. Okay. Yeah. I think this move caught a lot of us off guard. Let's go back to the non-controllable, unreimversible expenses this quarter. Do you have them typically every year? I guess, what's the delta that is truly abnormal when we look to model next year? We should probably look to take out some of that $400,000. Then, on the other revenue, once again, it's a little bit outsized this quarter. Can you elaborate what's going on there and what should we not pull forward to the next year's model?
Sure. I'll take that. On the unreimbursable losses, again, you know, as I said, you know, those were on the non-same store portfolio, the $400,000 number that I quoted. That truly seems to be, you know, over than what we had expected. Truly, you know, unexpected, unreimbursable losses driven by incidents in that non-same store portfolio. Coming back to your question on revenue, this quarter, in addition to the scheduled rent growth, you know, we've seen growth across all the categories. Collections are much better and alluded to a much more normalized collections rate that we have hit upon in the third quarter and overall year to date. That contributed, you know, a bit to the revenue increase year-over-year.
you know, last year in the same quarter, we actually had lower collections, so that's driving the year-over-year increase. Concessions have been lower. That's also driven some of the year-over-year increase. Other revenue is higher. Some of it's driven by RUBS, some of it's driven by some door fees and revenue sharing agreements that we've signed. you know, we've had higher application fees and administrative fees and all those things that are driving other revenue as well in the third quarter.
Got it. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, Wes.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Buck Horne from Raymond James. Buck, please go ahead.
Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good morning. I guess, Mark, I'm still struck on the acquisition timing a little bit, and I guess my question is really kind of why now on Lyra and kind of also why now on stock repurchases when there's, you know, a lot of signs out there that rent growth is decelerating pretty rapidly at a market level, maybe more than just normal seasonality this year. Got a lot of recessionary type indicators flashing warning lights out there. As you said, there's just a huge amount of kind of price discovery that's still evolving right now. What gave you the confidence to kind of go ahead and go forward with Lyra, and also to kind of lever up to do stock repurchases?
Yeah, I'm just kind of you know, wondering why now and was there something specific to the deal?
Good question. I guess, you know, the truth of it is we'll know the bottom in hindsight, and we certainly weren't trying to call the bottom, but it is our goal to be an active participant kind of throughout the cycle. This was a sub-market we really like in Denver and asset quality that we feel confident in. We know this group who built this well and looked at financing it on the front end. So we liked the asset and felt like we understood it very well and felt like we understood that there wouldn't be a lot of surprises. Who knows the risk when you buy something is you learn after you close, but so far so good on that score.
We were quite confident that pricing had really moved from kind of earlier in the year. Now it may continue to move. I don't actually know. I mean, there's a whole lot of equity out there kind of in wait and see mode, and my guess is they'll. You know, if you have lots of negative leverage, you'll use less leverage, and there's lots of buyers out there that can do that. So, you know, why now was we like the asset, we like the sub-market, we felt great about it. Candidly, we would have locked the price, the pricing of our debt better, and it wouldn't have been, you know, diluted as it currently is. You know, we're not really playing a 90-day game. We're playing a multi-year game. And on that basis, this made a lot of sense.
I'd say similar on the stock. I mean, you know, we have a view of what our NAV is. We update that quarterly. We talk about it nearly daily. We have confidence in the business and believe that over the long term these assets are worth more than we're currently paying for them.
Okay. I appreciate that.
That was the sort of why now.
I appreciate that very much. Just a couple of quick follows. Kind of on as the portfolio stands today and, you know, with some newer assets, how do you think about the recurring CapEx run rate of the portfolio now? It looks like, you know, same-store CapEx was still elevated even with R&M and turn costs also going up. You know, is there a higher level of CapEx to expect out of the portfolio, or do the newer assets kinda bring down that run rate?
Yes and no. I mean, you know, as you know, we added that older portfolio, the KMS portfolio. Which has been has worked very well relative to how we expected from a cash flow perspective. Those are very old assets that have real CapEx needs, and they'll be in the same-store next year. You know, when you think about what we've talked about over time, in particular with respect to NOI margin, with shrinking that CapEx and lowering the age of portfolio, I mean, just mathematically, the reality is KMS is a bit of a step back there. Now, our other goals are distributable cash and, you know, efficiency of the enterprise from a G&A and property management perspective. You know, we're serving a lot of masters there.
I think, and Bhairav can probably comment in detail, but the CapEx affiliated with KMS coming into the same-store pool will certainly overwhelm. I mean, the other assets we've bought, the Minneapolis Portfolio, Noko, and obviously, Lyra, are all, you know, built in the last five years, so they should have relatively low CapEx in the near term. The KMS, you know, that's 2,700 units or homes.
Yeah. Plus we've budgeted some acquisition capital.
Yeah
on the KMS portfolio. As you look at, you know, same-store CapEx year-over-year as we enter into next year with KMS in the portfolio, some of it will be covered as part of acquisition capital, so the run rate shouldn't go up materially as we kinda start spending some of this acquisition capital.
Yeah. That number was $40 million, so which we've gotten, you know, less of it out this year than we planned because it's been hard to get work scheduled.
Got it. Very helpful, guys. Okay, thank you very much.
Thanks, Buck.
Thank you. We now have a follow-up question from Brad Heffern from RBC Capital Markets. Brad, please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up. I was just curious, Anne, if you had any leasing stats and occupancy numbers that you could give for October.
Yeah. Not quite yet. I mean, we did see I will say what I'm seeing so far as we close out October and get the final documentation into the system is, you know, still really strong renewals. We have seen a, you know, seasonal drop-off in traffic. We were down from August to September, you know, close to 20% in traffic. Again into October, down about 15% in traffic. That is absolutely completely normal for us and, you know, what we're seeing is just routine seasonality there. What we're expecting, given some of the preliminary October numbers is, you know, that the new lease rates are gonna come down, they always do in the fourth quarter, and that the renewals will remain strong for the first couple of months.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Brad.
We currently have no further questions, so I'll now hand you back over to Mark Decker for closing remarks.
Super. Thanks. Well, we appreciate everyone's continued interest in the company, and I'll be at Nareit in San Francisco in a few weeks and hope to see some of you there. Thanks very much everyone and have a good week.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.