Good day, and welcome to the Equity Residential third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Marty McKenna. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for joining us to discuss Equity Residential's third quarter 2022 results. Our featured speakers today are Mark Parrell, our President and CEO, and Michael Manelis, our Chief Operating Officer. Robert Garechana, our Chief Financial Officer, is here with us as well for the Q&A. Our earnings release and accompanying management presentation are posted in the investor section of equityapartments.com. Please be advised that certain matters discussed during this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain economic risks and uncertainties. The company assumes no obligation to update or supplement these statements that become untrue because of subsequent events. Now I'll turn the call over to Mark Parrell.
Thank you, Marty. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our third quarter results. As you can see from our press release, Equity Residential had an outstanding quarter. Our revenue results in the quarter were driven by steady occupancy, continuing strong renewal rate growth, and decelerating but still above trend new lease rate growth. We coupled that with the continuation of modest expense growth, leading to same-store NOI growth for the quarter of an exceptional 16.2%. With continuing positive financial leverage, this led to a 19.5% increase in quarter-over-quarter Normalized Funds From Operations. We are proud to have improved margins and created substantial cash flow growth in a turbulent time in the economy.
I congratulate my colleagues across Equity Residential for their hard work, taking care of our residents and their fellow employees and producing these impressive financial results. We know at this late point in the year, the focus naturally turns to 2023. As usual, we are not giving guidance at this time, but in the management presentation we posted last night, we tried to frame the material factors that will drive next year's revenue results. In a moment, Michael will take you through those factors in some detail. We remind you that the success we've had in 2022 will create a challenging comparable period. We continue to expect a moderation in 2023 annual same-store revenue growth, even if, as we expect, 2023 is a strong above-trend year.
Looking at it from the top of the house, we like our affluent renter customer and what we expect will be their financial and employment resiliency going into uncertain times. Our target resident is high earning and employed in knowledge industries with more durable incomes and employment prospects. The college graduate cohort, which we believe makes up the vast majority of our residents, has an unemployment rate of 1.8% compared to the 3.5% overall unemployment rate. Even if layoffs materialize, we believe that the tighter than average labor market for these knowledge workers will allow them to find replacement jobs quickly. Finally, although high inflation has impacted everyone's real incomes, our affluent renter is relatively more insulated due to their higher incomes and lower rent-to-income ratios.
The average income for the residents who sign new leases with us in the past 12 months is $174,000, or 12% higher than the group who signed with us in the 12 months ending September 2021. These new residents are paying us slightly less than 20% of their income in rent, which is generally consistent with prior rent-to-income levels. On the apartment supply side, we see national apartment deliveries reaching a cycle high point in 2023. However, in the coastal markets where most of our properties are still located, we see supply as being lower and being delivered further away from our properties than in the past, and thus likely less impactful.
The Sun Belt markets, including the Denver, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and Atlanta markets in which we are increasingly investing, will see higher relative supply numbers than our coastal established markets and likely more impact, especially if that's coupled with a job slowdown. For us, this may turn into a nice opportunity to acquire assets in these expansion markets, not necessarily at fire sale prices, but at better values than prevailed in the first half of 2022, when we felt that the market was overheated and chose to stay on the sidelines. We continue to see our strategy of having more balanced portfolio between our established and expansion markets as appropriate as we follow our affluent renters to these new markets and mitigate regulatory and resiliency risks from over-concentration in any market or in any state. In addition, other housing alternatives remain expensive and in low supply.
Though they have been declining of late, current single-family home prices continue to be at record levels, while rising mortgage rates have further stressed affordability, particularly for first-time homebuyers. Single-family housing starts are declining. Existing homeowners are more reluctant to sell due to low locked-in mortgage rates, along with minimal and expensive for-sale replacement options. Competition for homes from investors remains strong. Going against these positive factors for our business is a significant impact of inflation on the economy, where job growth grows in response to the Federal Reserve's actions, as well as volatility in the capital markets, the continuing impact of the war in Ukraine, and a myriad of other uncertainties. We are currently in an excellent spot, but acknowledge that the risks and uncertainties are more elevated than usual. With that, I'll turn the call over to Michael Manelis.
Thanks, Mark, and thanks to everybody for joining us today. I am gonna give some brief comments regarding current market conditions, and then we can turn it over to the operator for question and answers. We just completed one of the best leasing seasons in our history. Strong demand across our markets produced high occupancy as well as continued pricing power. As we think about the trajectory of our pricing for the full year, we clearly benefited from a supercharged spring leasing season with more robust pricing power that started earlier in the spring in many markets than we have traditionally seen. This strength led us to adjust our same-store revenue upward in July and to set our current expectations slightly above the midpoint or at 10.6% for the full year 2022, which is the best same-store revenue growth in our history.
In both the earnings release and in the accompanying management presentation, we have provided some key performance metrics which demonstrate the strength of the leasing season and the fundamentals that position this portfolio well for 2023. This includes updates on the percentage of our residents renewing with us, which remains very healthy and is now consistent with historical levels after some moderation in the summer, which was expected as we were moving residents to current market rents. This performance supports occupancy, which continues to be solid at 96.2% even as we enter the slower part of the leasing season. As you can see on page four of the accompanying management presentation, and as we disclosed in our August 31st press release, our rents peaked in the first week of August and began to moderate, which is typical for this time of year.
Seattle and San Francisco are the two markets that stand out with more recent moderation than anticipated. Concessions are being used more than declines in rental rates in these markets to drive traffic. All other markets are basically in line with normal rent seasonality. Overall, we continue to have good demand for our units in all of our markets, with strong foot traffic, which is generally in line with our historical averages for this time of year. While we see the same headlines as everyone else on tech hiring freezes and some layoffs, our revenue performance is holding up. Although we readily admit that we are a lagging indicator. Right now, New York and Southern California continue to lead in both same-store revenue growth performance and our overall current pricing fundamentals.
Seattle and San Francisco, while producing strong annual same-store revenue growth, are the markets that have struggled through the most of the year to gain meaningful momentum. Longer term, these two markets present growth opportunities as they continue to be under-housed and have the potential to show improvement very quickly with the infusion of more certainty of jobs. As Mark mentioned, we are not providing 2023 guidance this quarter, but we understand that 2023 is top of mind. As a result, we provided a framework of helpful building blocks for same-store revenue and expense growth, which you can find on pages five through eight of the management presentation. We would expect 2023 to produce quite good above historical average revenue growth based on activity already built into the rent roll from excellent rent growth that occurred in 2022.
We call this our forecasted embedded growth, which reflects the contribution to next year's revenue growth, assuming no changes to the rent roll occur. We expect this to be about 4.5% by year-end. For historical context, in a normal year, our forecasted embedded growth would be just above 1%. You can see this on page six of the presentation. In addition to this favorable embedded growth, we are positively positioned for leasing activity in 2023 moving forward. Our loss to lease, which refers to the revenue improvement we can expect from moving leases in place today to current market levels, is significantly larger than historical years, as evident on page seven. Our current loss to lease of approximately 5% will seasonally moderate through year-end, but certainly positions us for growth when leases mature, and we capture this loss in 2023.
For historical context, our loss to lease would be about 50 basis points at the end of a typical non-recessionary year. With that setup in mind, let's not forget about actual market rent growth during 2023 and its contribution to same-store revenue growth. Current visibility here is most opaque. While our business has strong long-term fundamentals, the uncertainty around future economic conditions that Mark just mentioned is high. This 2023 intra-period growth should remain healthy as favorable demographics, continued low employment rates in our target demographic, strong income growth, and less direct supply pressure in many of our markets point to the potential to see a strong spring lease season. That being said, 2023 is unlikely to be as robust as the unprecedented rent growth numbers of 2022.
On the occupancy side, general demand trends, including improving retention, support strong occupancy above 96% for the balance of 2022, and should carry through into 2023, unless there is a substantial loss of jobs in our target renter demographic. Outside of occupancy and the core revenue drivers that I just discussed, bad debt net will likely continue to play a role in revenue growth as we expect the trend of reduced levels of resident delinquency to continue into 2023. The lack of governmental rental assistance in 2023 compared to the $31 million we will receive in 2022 will require continued improvement in resident behavior, payment behaviors in order to return us closer to historical norms and contribute positively to revenue growth.
An improved regulatory environment, coupled with the high quality of our affluent renter, should lead us in this direction, but 2023 may be a bit of a transition year to get all the way there. Switching to same-store expense growth, as you can see in the press release, 2022 benefited from limited growth in property tax expense and great controls of our payroll expenses. As a result, we expect to produce same-store expense growth of 3.3% for the full year of 2022. As we described in the management presentation, if the inflationary environment continues as it is today, we would expect expense growth in 2023 to be elevated from these industry-leading levels in 2022.
While we expect that less controllable areas like real estate tax may come under more pressure, we remain focused on initiatives that can assist in moderating growth in areas that are more controllable, like payroll and repairs and maintenance. We have had great success in creating efficiencies in our sales and office functions, with over half of our portfolio running with shared resources, and we expect that to continue to benefit us in 2023 as we centralize on-site activities such as application processing and our move-out and collection process. On the service side of the business, we continue to leverage our mobile platform to create more opportunities to pod our resources across multiple properties. We also will strategically leverage third parties for outsourcing turns and assisting with after-hours work to reduce overtime pressure in the portfolio.
Overall, we are well-positioned to continue the trend of expanding our fully loaded net operating margin, which currently sits around 69% into 2023. I wanna give a quick shout-out to our amazing teams across our platform for their continued dedication to their residents and focus on delivering these terrific operating results. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We will take our first question from Nick Joseph with Citi.
Thanks. Appreciate all the building blocks on 2023. If we're looking at kind of same-store revenue growth, obviously the market rent will be a big determinant of it, but there's obviously these other building blocks in place already. As you think about the interplay between the ability to push renewals versus that loss to lease going in, how sticky can renewals be, and how are you thinking about pricing those on a forward 30 or 60 days, just given the more macroeconomic uncertainty?
Yeah. Hey, Nick, this is Michael. I think when you're looking at the renewal performance, again, our quotes for the balance of the year have already been issued. We have all of those quotes out there, and right now we're seeing improving retention. We're negotiating a little bit more, but that's clearly typical for the fourth quarter and have a pretty strong degree of confidence that we're gonna continue to achieve about 8%-9% in growth from the renewals. We remain very optimistic about the renewal performance and clearly are seeing the trends of improving stickiness. That is a common trend to see in the fourth quarter, that retention continues to grow.
I guess the question was more on 2023, right? As the loss to lease trends down towards the end of this year, just with market rent growth, as you start to set rents in 2023, you know, if the loss to lease is smaller at that point, how comfortable are you going out earlier in the year with renewals, just given normal seasonality on the market rent side?
Yeah. I mean, I think you're gonna look at what your expectations are. We'll watch what happens to us for the balance of the year, and how we start January off is gonna be the, you know, indicator as to how aggressive we are in March and April. We clearly are gonna layer in intra-period growth into these quotes into the first and second quarter of next year. And then we have a great centralized negotiation team in place that we can always pivot if we need to. Right now we're not seeing anything that tells us not to expect kind of growth in that renewal performance after we kind of start the year off.
Thanks. That's helpful. Just on the pricing sensitivity you talked about in San Francisco and Seattle. I think you've talked about the West Coast maybe being a driver for 2023. Does the sensitivity that you're seeing today change that overall view at all?
Well, I mean, I think, look, if you back this up a few months ago, where our expectations were for 2023, and I think I alluded to it in the comments, I mean, we got two markets right now that are exhibiting a little more price sensitivity than what you thought, you know, that we would be sitting at in October. Most of that sensitivity, it's not necessarily that the rates are coming down, it's the fact that the concessions came kind of a little bit sooner in the year than what we would have thought, right? You're seeing markets even for us in like San Francisco, where we're running 50% of our applications are now receiving about a month. In Seattle, you're at, like, a third of the applications at about three weeks. That's just a little bit more pronounced than what we would have thought.
I think as we think about 2023 for those markets, I said in the prepared remarks, I still believe there's a lot of potential for those markets to deliver strong growth. We just need a little bit of clarity on that job front, a little less ambiguity. You got good momentum with the quality of life coming back in both of those areas. I still feel like we got the potential, but sitting here today versus our view a few months ago, you know, the markets feel a little more price sensitive than what we would have thought.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Mike, I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the Seattle and San Francisco comments. Are those very specific to kind of downtown Seattle and downtown San Francisco? Are you seeing any of that weakness spread to kind of the east side of Seattle or down into the peninsula?
Yeah. We definitely felt a little bit in Redmond, a little bit more softening. A little bit of the concessions are in that marketplace. I think in San Francisco, what you saw is the South Bay really kind of benefited through the year, even though it was delivering all of that supply. Right now, my guess is what we're feeling is a little bit of pressure from that hangover supply in the South Bay. It's not completely isolated to, like, the downtown or the CBD areas, but it is still mostly concentrated there.
Great. Then, I don't know, for maybe Mark or Bob, just as you guys think about deploying new capital into new developments, you know, how has your return hurdle changed just given the change in cost of capital, given the change in the economy and the outlook? You know, how much more conservative are you being on underwriting, and how high have your hurdle rates gone for new developments?
Yeah. Hey, Steve, it's Mark. Thanks for the question. You know, it certainly has gone up. The two deals you saw us start this quarter were really things that were in play much earlier, and we were kind of obligated on. It's just the start that occurred. We have let go of some deals we were pursuing. We have talked a lot with the development team about the higher hurdle. You know, I'm not sure I have a precise number for you, but it was probably a number we were looking more like a 5% return on in-place rents, and now we're looking for something, Steve, probably a lot closer to a 6% return on in-place rents. But you've got deals where there might be a story that's particularly compelling. You like your basis play or some other factor that makes it particularly interesting.
I'll also say the big competitor to development with us is acquisitions. I mean, our sense is that pretty soon might be a few more months, though, the acquisition market will be more available to us. Again, not at free prices, not at fire sale prices, but boy, if we can buy existing streams of income without, you know, having all that development risk, you know, we'll lean in on that. So my sense is that acquisitions of existing assets will be more available to us at more favorable prices than a correction in the development market. So to answer your question, you know, I think the hurdle is higher for us to start new development, both because of cost of capital and because of the ability to deploy that capital instead in acquisitions.
Great. Thanks. That's it for me.
We will take our next question from Nicholas Yulico with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks. I just maybe following up on that, you know, capital markets kind of outlook. Mark, you know, I mean, how are you thinking about, you know, how cap rates maybe have changed for apartment assets, given that, you know, when we look today and even to get GSE debt for multifamily, the rate on that all-in's gonna be, you know, somewhere close to 6%. You know, we're hearing negative leverage is more of a problem for people underwriting assets. I mean, what is your view on how that may affect cap rates?
Yeah. I'm gonna take. Thanks for the question, Nick. I'm gonna take cap rates and sort of make it into values in general. I mean, the system definitely got a shock. We talked about that on the last call. There's a pretty big bid-ask spread out there. Sellers are saying to themselves, "You know, six, nine months ago, I could have gotten a much higher price. I'm still getting good cash flow growth, as Michael Manelis just described. Maybe I'll sit on my hands for a while." Buyers are sitting there going, "Wow, all risk assets have repriced. Apartments should reprice, too." Our sense is that this lack of activity, I mean, transaction volume is just really low now. It's really hard to peg value.
Our sense is that cap rates have moved from maybe 3.5% to something like a 5% cap rate for well-located stuff. To your point, that still requires negative leverage, negative cash flow, for a bit. That is, you know, I think a problem. That's why you don't see a lot transacting. On the flip side, you know, people like the apartment business. I mean, there is a real dearth of these sorts of inflation protective investments. Apartments, we've done a lot of research on this, have typically performed pretty well in inflationary climates. There's also, by our count, $375 billion or so of dry powder available in real estate private equity funds looking for a home, and apartments are a favorite place to invest in.
We think there's a lot of supportive stuff, but right now there's just not a lot of transaction activity. Our sense is that, again, values are down probably 10% +, and some of the reason they're not down more is because of this offset from increasing cash flow.
Okay, great. Thanks, Mark. Just another question on the balance sheet. You guys, you know, I guess, pay down some of 2023 maturities with the sales this quarter. Is it right that, I mean, just from reading this, you know, you have something like $500 million of kind of unhedged exposure to a maturity next year based on the swaps you have in place?
Yeah, slightly less than that. We have about $825 million of debt that is maturing next year that needs to be refinanced. $800 million of it needs to be refinanced as secured, of which we've got $350 million of at this point, very attractively priced swaps against it, managing the Treasury risk.
All right. Thanks, guys.
We'll take our next question from Chandni Luthra with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Mark Parrell, Michael Manelis, I'd like to go back to that acquisitions point. You guys talked about that, you know, there can be potential opportunity and therefore, the grid might look better, you know, in terms of acquisitions versus developments. What sort of opportunities do you think can come from this environment? Like, is there a way to contextualize it? You know, we understand it cannot be as good as 2021 likely, but can it look something like 2020 or maybe even 2019 from a volume standpoint? And then how would you think about funding it given, you know, we are still in that negative leverage territory, and you said that prices might come down, but not at fire sale levels.
Yeah. Hey, Chandni, it's Mark. Thanks for that great question. You know, you really hit on it because you really need to split this into two pieces. What do you feel about the asset price? We'll talk about that in a second. Where are you getting the money from? Talking about asset price, we already like where it's headed, where these assets are being talked about. Again, not a lot of transactions, but a lot of these sales that are being discussed don't have that big premium to replacement cost. At the end of 2021, the beginning of this year, we saw transactions where acquisitions were being done at 25%-30% premiums to replacement cost. You saw us stand down. We just don't see a history of making a lot of money when you pay those kind of premiums.
We see the price change as having evaporated a good amount of that, and we see deals being talked about, at least for sale, much closer to replacement cost. We like that. When we think about asset pricing, replacement cost figures in, the cap rate certainly figures in, the price per pound, all those things matter to us. Where we get the money, because we're going to continue to trade out of some of these existing markets, D.C., the state of California, New York. Where do those assets trade on a relative basis compared to these expansion markets? If they trade in a way that makes sense to us, i.e., in a non-dilutive way, that'll be more interesting to us.
In terms of deploying new capital, which would have to be raised with debt, right now, we think our unsecured debt rate is probably 5.75%, something like that. That's a pretty mighty interest rate to overcome, and cap rates being around 5% aren't going to push that. Again, looking at where the stock's trading, that doesn't make a lot of sense. For us to be net acquirers is going to require, I think, some shift in our capital costs. For us to be swappers of assets like we've been, traders, is going to require that trade to make sense and then for asset values to make sense. They are starting to on a replacement cost basis.
I think your guidepost of a 2018-2019 is a pretty good guidepost, because I think what happened in the pandemic with ultra-low rates, that was the distortion. I also don't think very high rates is a permanent future either.
That's very helpful color. Thank you. Switching gears to the expense side of the equation just a little bit, what are the markets in your portfolio where you think real estate taxes could pose a bigger problem? Then on payroll, you know, is there any more low-hanging fruit as you think about streamlining that line item further just given where compares are going into next year?
Hey, Chandni, it's Rob. I'll start with the property tax side. I think the most prevalent or probably the area that you see the most pressure already is really in some of our expansion markets, particularly Texas, where you're seeing an aggressive amount of kind of reassessment activity and kind of push. I think that's going to be an area in the expansion markets where we don't have a ton of exposure at the moment, but where you will see more real estate tax pressure. The state of Washington is also one that is an area because it's been so negative, right? Real estate tax growth has actually been negative, so you have a really challenging comp.
The final area, I think, where you're going to see it is just we do have some 421-a step-ups in New York State, which will contribute to growth as we go into 2023. It's a little bit of a mixed bag, but those are the three areas I'd call out specifically. I'll pass it over to Michael, who will mention some of the initiatives in the portfolio side.
Yeah. I think on the payroll front, I don't think I'd characterize any of this as like low-hanging fruit left. I think this is really just the strategic execution of these initiatives. You know, if I sit here today, I would tell you we're probably about two-thirds of the way from many of these centralized initiatives, and that usually yields kind of that efficiency in the on-site payroll team as we start sharing and leveraging resources across assets. I'm pretty optimistic that, you know, as we work our way through 2023, you know, there's probably a third of the work left to be done with centralization, and it's going to continue to yield kind of the benefits that will help mitigate some of the pressures that we're feeling.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. So a couple questions here. I guess the first is a follow-up to an earlier question on to the capital allocation. I'm curious, what is the best use of your capital today? You did take $500 million of disposition proceeds to prepay some of the bond maturity. So perhaps some color on as you think about uses for capital today, thoughts on further debt reduction, stock buyback. Maybe also what is the plan for the remaining $900 million of the unsecured bond maturities for next spring? Thanks.
All right. You had like a four-part question, Haendel. Thank you. I'm gonna take parts of it, all the way up to stock buybacks, and I'll ask Bob to speak to the refinancing plan for next year. When you talk about immediate capital allocation, our hope is that we can accelerate our renovations a little more. We've got a lot of great, super well-located properties, where, you know, with touch-ups in the kitchen and bath and stuff, especially if rent growth is gonna moderate for a bit. You know, our experience has been that that's a good time to do these renovations. When things start to accelerate again, you got some better product to sell. We're hopeful that that also means that some of these labor pressures that we've alluded to and others have too, start to abate next year.
You've got less action in single family. Maybe there's an opportunity because we're really having trouble getting contractors and sometimes getting things like appliances for renovations. Renovations is a good use of capital. You should expect us to try and accelerate that. Again, these are all near-term things. Innovation expenditures. This relates both to, we had a terrific presentation inside the company this week about all we wanna do relating to sustainability and whether it's solar panels and EV charging and all that. A lot of that stuff is pretty capital intensive. A good part of it has some returns, which is great, and some doesn't. I think we're gonna, you're gonna see us lean in there both as part of our thought process on ESG in general and because of the return and the demands of our residents. Finally, just the innovation part.
You know, we've kicked off a big data analytics push inside the company. That is expensive, both in terms of talent and outside help. In the long run, we think it'll help us drive revenue, manage expenses better, run the business better in general, but those are all areas where we're expending money. You know, on the share buyback, and you and I have had this conversation publicly and privately in the past, it's really hard, though, in this case to even think about it in a market where things are this uncertain. We just talked about how hard it is to peg underlying asset values. To really understand the relationship of your stock to underlying asset values and sort of do that arbitrage you're referring to is a very challenging thing right now.
Doesn't mean that we don't think the stock has room to go up, certainly. Just at the moment, taking more risk, which would mean either issuing debt or selling assets into an uncertain asset sale environment, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. I wouldn't say share buybacks are top of mind at the moment.
Following up, big picture on the balance sheet. We feel very good about where the balance sheet is. We expect to actually end the balance sheet at, you know, record low net debt to EBITDA. You know, by the end of the year, we'll probably be in the mid-fours. We're already at five as it is. The balance sheet's in great shape. It's very long duration, has limited kind of interest rate exposure, and we have almost no floating rates, so we feel really well positioned.
As we think about moving into 2023, the component of debt or the piece of debt that is due or the majority of it is actually a piece of secured debt, that is $800 million that was done originally in context with the Archstone transaction and has some structural requirements that will require us to refinance it. What we're anticipating is that we'll refinance it in the secured market, and then we put on some hedges, some attractively priced hedges to manage the interest rate risk. Thereafter in 2024, we have no maturities at all, which is an anomaly, right? When you look at the $800 million or so we need to do over the next two years, it's very manageable.
On the cost of the new potential debt, the arrangement you just mentioned, where are you pegging that cost broadly for new debt?
Yeah. This would be secured pricing, which is actually inside of unsecured right now. If you looked at the GSEs and relatively low leverage, 'cause this is a very well-supported kind of pool. You're probably, without regard to the hedges we have in place, in the 5.5 range, so about 25 basis points below what Mark had mentioned on the unsecured side. When you factor in the swaps that we already have in place that hedge a portion of it at kind of Treasury rates that are effective around a three, we should be able to execute, you know, closer to five or maybe even sub five, depending on what happens. This loan matures very late in 2023, so we have a long runway before we actually need to refinance.
Ray, just to give you some more color, Haendel. The existing rate isn't just the listed rate there. There are hedges that went with that portfolio, so the actual rate running through the P&L is.
4.25
4.25. When you think about your modeling exercise, as Bob said, for really what will amount to the last month or two of 2023 and then going forward, it's really the difference between 4.25 and wherever Bob ends up financing this. We've got the luxury of another year to see if we can pick a spot to do that in.
That's really helpful. Mark, one more follow-up, and I promise this one's a lot shorter, only maybe two parts.
Good.
Cap rates you mentioned moving from about 3.5 to around five for well-located assets. I'm curious if you're seeing any distinction between coastal and Sun Belt and how, if so, how that might play into your plans of rotating more of your NOI into Sun Belt markets maybe a bit sooner or any thoughts on that? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Haendel St. Juste. I don't have any thoughts on that just because the transaction pool is so light. There's so little going on in any market. Just sharing anecdotally, a large national broker told us that a large Southeastern apartment market, they didn't have a single listing at this time. That's unprecedented. I just got to tell you, the markets are just not very liquid. For me to be able to peg Coastal or Sunbelt, I wish I could peg anything right now. I think right now it's just a little bit of everyone feeling each other out. What's the Fed gonna do? How's that gonna feel? You know, do operating results hold up? All of those things, Haendel St. Juste, I think are a little bit in flux.
as I said in my prior remarks, we're really interested in the relationship between those two. if we can continue to non-dilutively trade, we will.
Wonderful. Thanks for the color, guys. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Richard Anderson with SMBC. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Back to that kind of Sunbelt question. You know, people think of EQR as an urban platform at this point, understanding you're diversifying and looking into the Sunbelt and your expansion markets. But the big fear there is supply, and that now is becoming a reality, and that doesn't just suddenly start and then stop. It becomes a thing to deal with for some period of time.
Is there a scenario, despite what you just said, that this trade idea into expansion markets where opportunities present themselves because of some of those supply pressures, does not materialize, and you start to look at these expansion markets and say, "Nah, maybe this isn't exactly where we wanna go because do we really wanna get in bed with, you know, an extended period of supply growth?" You know, which is again, the big fear of getting into those markets, if there are any.
Yeah. Great question, Rich. It's Mark. It would require us to think about another risk differently, too, and that's political risk. Because one of the things that our coastal markets have, I think more of, though, maybe not quite as much of as we may have thought, is risk of rent control, risk of activity by politicians that's job destroying and growth destroying. From our perspective, we'd have to be balancing that differently as well. There is no risk-free apartment market. If you're in a Texas market, you probably have less political risk, but you may have more resiliency risk, and you certainly have a lot more supply risk than a lot of our markets.
Our experience with supply in the locations we're trying to buy in and build in, like Frisco, Texas, is you'll have a year or two of that, and then demand will meet that supply. Again, if you're telling me that prices get out of whack, that somehow the Sun Belt trades tight, even with all that supply, that's probably not stuff we're gonna be acquiring or building much of. If the pricing relationship makes sense, then we're trying to manage this political risk versus this supply risk, and I think balancing that out makes sense to us. That's kind of where we end up on that.
Okay. Second question for me, one parter, by the way. The embedded growth math, you know, you define it as last month annualized, and you get to 4.5% for 2023. Is there another mathematical equation where you think further back into 2022, a lease that was signed in July at 20% higher rent would compare favorably in January. My question is the 4.5%, you know, one number, but is there another quote-unquote embedded growth calculation that might be substantially higher than that, giving voice to leases that were signed, you know, late second quarter, third quarter, and so on?
Hey, Rich. It's Mark. I'm gonna start, and I think Bob and Michael may end up correcting me, but I think that's the embedded growth and loss. You're talking about more of a loss to lease a little bit in there, and we split those two up. If you think about embedded is, you know, the rearview mirror. Those are already contracts that have been written, leases that exist. In your example, that loss to lease is us writing up to market. If January rents are, say, relatively low, and then as we would expect seasonally, they're higher in June, and the lease you just referred to in June is written higher. That additional increment we were referring to as that loss to lease and as the intra-period growth. It's we're talking about the same thing.
We just kind of compartmentalized it a little differently because it was a little easier to think about in three pieces.
Okay, that's fair. You know, maybe my definition of embedded is loss to lease plus your definition of embedded. Maybe that's the way to think of it.
You had a one-part question, and we split it into three parts, right? We're just chop-chopping it up a little different because it seems to us those are different variables and easier to explain, but I think you're on it.
Yep, fair enough. Thanks very much, guys.
Our next question comes from Robin Lu with Green Street. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask, across the portfolio, as eviction processes begin to normalize in some of your markets, are you seeing an erosion in pricing power as market-level vacancies tick up?
Hi, Robin Lu, this is Michael Manelis. Maybe, let me just give you a little context overall around the eviction moratorium and kind of what we're seeing today relative to that activity. For the most part, the moratoriums have generally expired. You know, we still have a couple of these local areas in California, where, you know, there's various proof of hardships and restrictions. Most of these exceptions are set to expire in the beginning of early 2023. I'm gonna tell you right now that the teams today are all over this process of continuing to work with these residents who've experienced hardship. Once we've exhausted all those options, we're ensuring that we have everything filed properly.
We are still in the very early stages of this eviction court process, and we are starting to see some traction, you know, where the courts are actually moving through and following through kind of with lockouts. Overall, this level of eviction activity in the portfolio is just. It's not that material, and we typically average less than, like, 1% of our move-outs from, you know, for this reason. I would tell you, even if everything was accelerated through the court system today, you know, the volume would be more than manageable and would actually be a huge positive to us, given the strength and the demand and the confidence we have in being able to fill those units with paying residents.
You know, short term, I think, too, going specific to your question, sure, we're gonna feel a little bit of this occupancy pressure or loss of occupancy pockets of Southern California. But again, the demand is so strong that we're gonna quickly recover from that. I don't really see it playing into kind of the pricing. I think our view right now is that the expectation, you're just gonna see us gradually fall back into this pre-pandemic level of eviction activity as we work our way through 2023.
Robin, it's Bob, just to add real quick. If you think about those residents that are residing and not paying, they're fully reserved from a financial standpoint. That occupancy, that physical occupancy coming back into the market and us kind of capturing it, like Michael just mentioned, is a dollar for dollar, 100% upside to financial results. Because whether it's, you know, $0.50 less a month or before, it's a full rental payment more than what's going through the financial statement, so it's a big net benefit.
Got it. That makes sense. I wanted to touch on the San Francisco and Seattle a little bit more. Can you give a sense of the retention and foot traffic trends that you're seeing in both of those markets, and how those have really compared to, like, the 2019 levels?
Yeah. This is Michael again, Robin. The Seattle market today is renewing a little bit less than what we would say our historical averages would be. San Francisco is again, it's more in line, but it's also a little bit lighter. From a foot traffic and application volume standpoint, both markets demonstrate demand. I think as I said in my prepared remarks, it's just at a little bit lower, more price sensitive level than what we would have expected. When we're looking at this volume and comparing it to, like, 19, you know, week after week, we are seeing the foot traffic, we are seeing the conversions to applications. It's just at a little bit less of a price point.
You know, our hope right now as we get through this fourth quarter and turn the corner into the year, we will see this retention start to improve, and take a little bit of the pressure off of the front door. We are seeing slight trends of that right now, but we need a little bit more momentum and time to kind of clarify on that.
Thanks for that.
Our next question comes from Joshua Dennerlein with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, guys. I just wanted to touch on supply. Kinda what are you seeing for 2023? Then, for Seattle and San Francisco, how much of the supply dynamic was playing into that price sensitivity that you guys were referring to?
Yeah. This is Michael. Let me start with the Seattle and San Francisco. I think clearly in downtown Seattle, we're feeling some of the pressure from the new supply in that market. San Francisco, like I said, I think earlier in one of the responses to a question, maybe a little bit in South Bay that they had a lot of supply. You know, these markets are set to deliver less supply next year, so taking a little bit of the pressure off. Maybe with that, I'll just transition to kind of an overarching view of supply for 2023, which is, you know, for us, we're very focused on this concentration, the proximity of the new supply. From an operations standpoint, when are the first units gonna actually start hitting the market to be leasing?
When we look forward, these expected starts in 2023 relative to the proximity within, like, one or two miles of our location is lower than previous years, which is a really good indicator that we should continue to feel less pressure from the new supply being right on top of us. Specific to 2023 deliveries, I would say that the overall direct pressure will be less. Clearly, like, the D.C. market stands out as needing to see marked improvement in absorption 'cause it has, like, another 15,000 units coming online with slightly more of an impact from a competitive standpoint to our portfolio. Outside of D.C., look, we're gonna have some pockets in L.A. like Wilshire, Koreatown, Hollywood, where we expect to have some pressure next year.
In addition to that, I think the downtown sub-market of Denver, we're gonna face some direct kinda head to head. You know, besides those pockets, every year we have these small isolated pockets, you know, of supply. You know, as we look into 2023, we just see that we're gonna have fewer of those concentrated pockets, and we're just not gonna have as much kinda direct pressure on us. You know, I think when we stand back and look at this portfolio with these amazing locations are clearly in places where affluent renters wanna live and still have these good demand drivers, and that definitely insulates us from some of this direct pressure from the supply.
Our next question comes from John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I wanted to ask about your forecasted earn-in of 4.5%. You know, based on leases you signed this year, I would have thought it would have been maybe 50 - 100 basis points higher than that. I was wondering if you could talk about the factors that drove this, whether it's, you know, purely, you know, Q4 rents declining or if there are other factors like occupancy and bad debt that are in this number. Is there a chance that the earn-in could come in higher than your current estimate?
Hey, John, it's Bob. Just level setting real quick on earn-in/embedded growth, which we do think of them as pretty interchangeable. They don't have any regard to bad debt, no regard to vacancy loss. No any of that. My guess is, and I'm not, and maybe you can help me a little bit on how you're getting to your number, that you're maybe taking blended rates and kind of averaging blended rates over the year and coming up with that number. That's my guess on how you're coming up with your 50 basis points higher than what our embedded number is. Is that how you're approaching it?
Yeah, pretty much adjusting for timing of leases signed, but.
Yeah. I guess what I would tell you is that the difference is really weighting. The way that we're calculating it really has actual weighting day by day as to when leases are in place. If I took my blended lease rates over the year and just kind of extrapolated and did a mid-quarter convention, et cetera, I'd probably come up with a number that's around 5%. But if you actually do the pinpoint math, which we provided you, that's the 4.5%. That number shouldn't move almost at all. It's our forecasted number for the end of the year. That number really shouldn't move much at all as we finish out the year based on our guidance. Does that help?
Yeah, it does. Bob, while I have you, the loss to lease, I know it's come down from 12.5 to a little bit over 5%, and a lot of it was the leases you signed during the quarter, to realize the market rents. Can you also talk about how much market rents have declined as part of that loss to lease number since your last update?
Yeah, I'll pass it over to Michael. I think if you look, a good visual as I pass it over to him is that pricing trend page, which is a couple pages before maybe page five in the management presentation, and you can kind of see that sequential trend, but that'll help you directly. Michael, you probably have that.
Yeah. No, John, I was just gonna point you right to that page. If you look at kind of the month-end rent numbers down below in that chart, you can kind of get yourself a proxy to understand, depending on which month you pick of the peak, you know, lease, it's, you know, 4% or 5% off of kind of that August number, you know, and just work your way through that. I'll tell you, when you think about that loss to lease and you think about the shifts that have occurred, with the deceleration in that number, it's really important to understand like that comparative period. If you're looking back to that summer period and saying, boy, you guys were 11% or 12%, and now you're sitting down closer to 5%.
You need to remember that the majority of this decline is this seasonality that you can kind of see evident on page four. Also every lease and every renewal that we have done since that point, we are capturing that loss to lease that we shared from a while ago. You know, overall, you know, the loss to lease, it may be a little bit lighter than where we thought it was gonna be a few months ago. I'll tell you know, just it is directionally and definitely right in the ballpark of where we modeled this thing for a few months ago. We're just not seeing it, and I think that page 4 really kind of highlights as to how you can think about that trend.
That's great. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Ami Probandt with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hey, it's Michael Goldsmith. Over the last couple of years, you saw residents desiring more space and decoupling. Have you seen any of that reverse as we've moved past Covid? Related to that, have move-outs due to high rents, due to rents being too high increased? Presumably people aren't moving out to purchase a new home anymore, so where are they now moving to?
Hey, Michael, this is Michael. On a decoupling or even a recoupling basis, we're just not seeing a material change. You know, I think during this pandemic recovery period we've alluded to on the last call, we saw a slight decline in like the average adults per household. You know, we ran about 1.65, and we were down at, like, 1.57. That was really more prevalent in our one-bedroom unit types, where we used to have two adults and they moved into a two-bedroom or did something different. We looked at this even for the third quarter of these move-ins, which, you know, there's some seasonality of that. When do the three bedrooms fill up and stuff like that. We're right on par with where we were in the third quarter of last year.
We haven't really observed any of these material changes. I'll tell you, we got great insight into it. We're watching the transfer behaviors. We're watching roommate activity. We're looking at unit type preferences on our website from prospects. You know, we'll be on it if we see anything shifting. We just haven't seen anything shift yet. Then in terms of kind of the reasons for move-out, I mean, you alluded to the home buying. You're absolutely correct. That number is materially down. You know, during the third quarter, we're at, like, 8% of our move-out cited. You know, home buying is the reason for move-out. That's compared to, like, a 12% norm. We did see a tick up in that rent is too expensive as a reason. We were up at, like, 25%.
Part of that was by design. We said this at the end of the second quarter, you know, that we were gonna be fairly aggressive in July and August, kind of pushing these renewals and holding the line and getting people up to market. We knew we were gonna take a little bit of that hit, and we expected that number to go up. As we work our way through the, you know, fourth quarter and first quarter, my guess is we're gonna continue to kind of see that number moderate down. I don't anticipate seeing, you know, reasons for move out to buy a home materially change at all. My guess is it's gonna stay very low.
As a quick follow-up to that, was, like, those that indicated that rent was too high, did you see any variations by region? Presumably certain areas of the country are used to kind of elevated rents and rents moving higher, over time, whereas maybe this phenomenon is relatively new. Did you see any difference by market or region?
You know, not a huge difference. I'll tell you, in California, where you had AB 1482 and you had some of the CPI + five caps, you know, maybe a little bit less were citing that because they were going out, you know, at 9% or 10% increases against a market, you know, that was up 19% or 20%. Those folks typically stuck around because they didn't have a lot of options. I look at, like, overall, I will tell you, when you just look, and Mark alluded to this in his prepared remarks, just the health of the new residents moving into this portfolio from an income standpoint, you know, our income.
Rent as a percent of income is right in line at 19%, which to me kind of points to this fact that, you know, these new residents moving in, you know, are clearly gonna be able to absorb kind of future increases that we push through into the portfolio.
Got it. As a follow-up question, you know, suburban properties have been generally outperforming kind of in following kind of the initial COVID period. We've been seeing a shift back to urban. Like, what does the current demand picture look like for suburban versus urban? Does that kinda look different in different markets where some markets are favoring urban more than suburban and the reverse is true?
Yeah. I mean, overall, we're not seeing a significant shift of like urban and suburban. We look at migration patterns, where are people coming to us, where are people leaving, and, you know, what is the renewal patterns look like, and there's nothing that really pops out. You know, I think clearly when you look at like a Seattle, a San Francisco, and some of these urban markets, we continue to see this trend where we are drawing in new residents from a wider area, from outside of the states, from outside of the MSAs, which we view as a positive. Meaning that these markets are continuing to draw people from all over kind of the country and even the foreign markets. Nothing that's really like a delineation that I can point to between urban and suburban that says they're acting materially different.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Connor Mitchell with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions. First, I do just wanna revisit the San Francisco and Seattle price sensitivity, once more. I guess my question is: What do you guys see as being the largest reason for the price sensitivity? I know we talked about the supply pressure compared to other markets. It's also more concentrated in the urban areas. Does it seem that the supply pressure is the primary cause, or is there the pushback to return to office is a large reason or perhaps another reason, for the sensitivity and the concessions in these markets?
Yeah. This is Michael. I mean, clearly I think you cited a lot of those reasons in San Francisco and Seattle. You know, early on there was an ambiguity around return to office. There's still a little bit of a kinda sense of, okay, what does hybrid work really look and feel like across the techs? Clearly you've seen the press releases out or the articles being written on all the recent announcements, you know, which just creates a pause in people's minds around jobs and, you know, what are these folks doing with layoffs and growth. When I look at it right now, again, I think this is like a material immaterial kind of change that we're seeing. It's the markets that didn't really recover as much.
I think what you're seeing is a market trying to hold on to rates where they are and use concessions more than let that rate kind of moderate down.
Okay, that's helpful. My second question is regarding the Toll Brothers JV. In the current environment with the rapid rise in mortgage rates, has it impacted their willingness to do JVs with you guys? It doesn't mean more or less demand for the products, and then whether they're more or less eager for a JV.
It's Mark. Thanks for that question. We were just with them last week and they remain very committed to the joint venture, as do we. Like us, they realize the market's moved and the new deals have to hurdle over a higher number and have to make sense in this new environment. You know, they're adjusting, but we sense no lack of commitment either on the personnel or capital side from Toll, and there's none from us as long as the deals make sense. I think that's the challenge right now, is we're just not seeing deals that make sense because they're kind of priced in the old scheme. You know, as I said earlier in my remarks, the price system has changed and development yields need to be higher.
Okay, that's helpful. That's all for me. Thanks.
Take our next question from Adam Kramer with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the time. I'll keep it quick here with just one. We're just looking at kind of the drivers of the same-store revenue growth for 2023. Look, I think the embedded growth, you know, appreciate the color earlier. I think that's, you know, hopefully should be kind of well understood. But wondering though on kind of the occupancy and then the bad debt sides. You know, occupancy, you know, looked like it was just a very moderate kind of step down in October versus September. Wondering kind of what the view is, you know, as we kind of get into next year and any kind of the view on occupancy. I think you called it healthy physical occupancy.
Can you just kind of elaborate on that. I guess similarly on bad debt, right? Currently 225 basis points versus historical norms of 50. You know, does some of these kinds of improvements in the regulatory environment, you know, where could that potentially take bad debt next year? You know, and again, kind of just thinking about potential impacts on same-store revenue growth in those building blocks.
Hey, Adam, this is Michael. Maybe I'll start and just hit on the occupancy, and I'll turn it over to Bob to hit, talk about the bad debt. You know, for us, when I'm describing healthy occupancy, to me, that's running in a range of 96%-96.5%. I think right now it's too early for us to say, we'll expect, you know, in the fourth quarter, occupancy does tail off a little bit. You're seeing it in this portfolio. It's not unusual what we're seeing. The health of when you turn the corner into January and how we're looking and feeling about that intra-period job growth is really gonna be how we kind of put into our model as to what the expectations are.
Right now I will tell you, we still feel very comfortable saying that we expect next year to be in that range of what we would define as a healthy occupancy.
Yeah. From a bad debt standpoint, we do think over time that we should see a return back to kind of our normalized levels, which were pre-pandemic, the 50 basis points you highlighted, just given the nature of our resident base and their rent-to-income ratios and all the positive things that we've talked about on this call. The challenge from a financial standpoint, or financial statement standpoint or something to keep in mind is that in 2022, we had about $31 million worth of rental assistance, and that's not gonna repeat itself in 2023, right? In order for you to break even from a growth perspective on same-store revenue, you know, organic kind of bad debt has to improve by at least $31 million. From there is when you would then see it start be a contributor to growth.
All that being said, we have seen improvement in just the actual payment from our residents every month, kind of sequentially since June or so, and would expect that trend to continue. It's a little bit of a race between that trend and this bad debt or this rental assistance that we won't have in 2023. We're optimistic that we will return over time to normalized levels.
That's all really helpful, guys. Appreciate it.
Our next question comes from Linda Tsai with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just one. I know you're indicating that expenses go up for next year, but can you remind us why you've had greater success than competitors in capping expense growth and whether these competitive advantages are intact on a relative basis for 2023?
Yeah, I'll start and Michael can add in if you like. I think in the areas that are most controllable, our innovation focus has really been on eliminating or reducing the amount of labor cost exposure, which has been something very prevalent in the inflationary environment. I think that we've done an excellent job of rethinking where we can use technology, where we can mitigate labor exposure, ours or contract labor. It doesn't really matter what labor there is, just by being more efficient, by using technology, by increasing visibility.
A lot of the initiatives we've had have really helped us deliver what has really been record kind of payroll growth, and has kept the R&M line on the contract side a little bit more in check, even though there are other pressures there. That's certainly been a big help and something that we are going to continue to focus on as we go through generation, I'll call it 3.0 of innovation. The other area that in all candor has also helped us is real estate taxes, right? We have benefited from in our jurisdictions having lower real estate taxes overall, and that was, I think, very prevalent in 2022.
is not as likely to repeat itself as we go into 2023 because I think as assessors look back, they typically look back at historical performance, and we've had record performance in our markets in 2022, and so that's gonna put pressure on the real estate tax side, that is a little less controllable. I guess the final part on real estate tax side is in California, of course, you do benefit from Proposition 13, so you've got kind of 2% baked in there, but in the other jurisdictions, we'll have some pressure.
Thanks.
This concludes today's question and answer session. I will turn the call back to Mark Parrell.
Thank you all for your time on the call and your interest in Equity Residential, and we look forward to seeing everyone during the conference season. Thank you. Bye.
This concludes.
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