Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Nick Joseph here with Eric Wolfe with Citi Research. Pleased to have with us Invitation Homes and CEO Dallas Tanner. This session is for Citi clients only. Disclosures have been made available at the corporate access desk. To ask a question, you can raise your hand or go to liveqa.com and enter code GPC26 to submit questions. Dallas, we'll turn it over to you to introduce the company and team, provide any opening remarks, tell the audience the top reasons an investor should buy your stock today. Then we'll get into Q&A.
Hey, Nick, thank you and your team for hosting us today. We're grateful to be here. We appreciate all the support we've had in the level of investor meetings. To my right is Scott Eisen, our Chief Investment Officer. To my left is Jon Olsen, our Chief Financial Officer, and Tim Lobner, our Chief Operating Officer. I'll start today with just a high level, kind of hitting three points. First, that our business continues to remain healthy, performing in line with our expectations as we enter our peak leasing season, which is typically from now to, I call it, the middle part of summer. We continue to see actually pretty healthy demand. I would say really strong resident retention, and I would call it, you know, solid traffic as it comes into the business.
I think naturally there's a little bit of some stagnation between sorta home buying and selling activity, which probably is what you see impacted in the new lease numbers, as well as some of the additional supply that we're still working through, we've talked about for the last several quarters. The platform's been continuously, I would say, executing at a pretty high level. Expense controls are totally in check. We feel like we have pretty good tailwinds with property taxes and the like. I think the second point that we wanna talk about is that the political overhang is creating, you know, real opportunities as an entry point for long-term investors. You know, while the headlines have put some temporary pressure on valuation, we feel encouraged by the discussions that we're having with both sides of the aisle in Washington.
I've spent a lot of time there over the last month. I'm encouraged by what I would call the productive conversations we're having with both sides of the aisle and the administration as well as a whole. While there's no guarantees, my expectation is that this will work itself through over the coming months. We continue to reinforce, and I think what's been a net benefit of the moment has been that there's been really healthy dialogue about the industry, and I think people have a better understanding of who we are, who we serve, and what the businesses actually do. That moment has created real clarity. I think the third point, and we can talk more about this, is our acquisition of ResiBuilt will continue to strengthen our growth engine.
It'll give us another level of optionality as we think about the balance of how we wanna grow in the future. We would, you know, add to that we think about these things side by side, obviously, with share repurchase and additional investments or things that we would do. We look at all things, sort of in a view of what is our highest and best use of capital in the moment. With that, Nick, I think I turn it over to the room for questions.
Great. so you mentioned that, you've been spending a lot of time in Washington. I guess, what are you hoping to see? what are you, what are you pushing for? you know, maybe we'll start there. I guess, I guess again, on the other side of that, what don't you wanna see from this legislation? I guess last, I'll add on to it 'cause you'd love three-parters, is where is the industry right now? Is it things just sort of, like, frozen? Are people just holding on to what they have? Are things still transacting business as usual? Are people just sort of said, "You know, until we see some clarity here, we're just not gonna do much"?
Let me start with the last part of what you said, there, is that, you know, it definitely feels like since the tweet and the corresponding executive order, capital flow has been stymied, to say the least. I think you see it in our public valuation. You see it in the private conversations we're having, with private operators, that there are a lot of deals sitting on an investment committee desk that aren't sure what to do. Part of the argument that we've had as we've spent time with policymakers and with the administration and their teams has been, "Guys, you want capital flow to come into housing?" We get the head nod in the affirmative. This has had the opposite effect in the near term, which is to be expected.
There's sort of, you know, three or four major areas we want to focus on. One is you need to understand fundamentally what it is that single-family rental is in the overall housing ecosystem. Guys, we're starting in a lot of these conversations with very basic points, that if you go back to LBJ in 1962 or 1963, homeownership has been between basically 62% and, at the lowest, and 69% at the highest, and that basically a third of the country is leased for the last 40 or 50 years, and that's okay. We talk about upward mobility and social contract and things that different housing providers provide at different times in that housing continuum. We are able to clearly identify where we fit and what our customer profile looks like in that category.
I'd add, guys, I'm not up there by myself. I'm with, you know, the four or five CEOs of the bigger companies. We're represented by the National Rural Housing Coalition, and we have the right consultants and lobbyists helping us through this process. I would just say that everybody gets it. I think they understand that we're a valued part of the upward mobility side. They love the fact that we have 150,000 people enrolled in positive credit reporting and that we've seen those credit scores go up by almost 50 points over the last 18 months. Those kind of facts are very helpful as we describe the industry as a whole and what we are. What we've helped them understand is also what we aren't. We aren't home flippers. We're not in and out of a market.
We're not calling your uncle 30x in a week to say, "Sell us your home, so we can put a can of paint on it and flip it." Like, that's who we aren't. That process is painful as sort of, you know, the last six weeks have been from a perspective and an outsider's view of the industry. It's actually been really good 'cause it's forced conversation, and the conversation, I would say, has been very fair and very objective. I've been encouraged actually by the process. I think what we're hoping for is that potential policy could land in a place that's reasonable, that it solves sort of the issues around affordability that the administration's currently focused on.
Look, we by and large agree with them that there's an affordability challenge in the country and that we fit into a very specific segment of that. As we walk people through, you know, the basic sort of rubric that when people come into our business, probably ± 10% of them could afford to own a home, real time. When they leave, we know this by our surveys, about 20%-30% end up owning a home along the way, and that is natural. There's a lot of different versions of right for families in this country, but they shouldn't be excluded, and being a renter isn't necessarily a bad word, of which they all agree with, right? The key thing is helping them understand who we aren't.
You know, our company's bought less than 200 homes, one-off on the MLS in the last three years, okay? We've been growing through our partnerships with builders, the extension of what we're gonna do with ResiBuilt, and obviously occasionally on opportunities, there's some M&A in terms of existing portfolios. I think creating those lines of clarification have been very helpful in the conversation. I go back to what I'd say, like, I can't tell you with any certainty that the discussions and the part of the process that we've been with is guaranteed to land in X or Y. I would tell you that I'm growing increasingly confident that this will land in a reasonable place for the industry, and I think for the administration in terms of their focus on affordability.
Oh, man, my voice here. Sorry about that. Let's say that, you know, there's a ban on forward purchases. Whatever your, you know, your portfolio's at today, you're sort of at that level. The only way to sort of grow it is through development or some kind of agreement on development. Do you think capital withdraws from the industry in that case? Do you think so much more capital then goes towards the supply side? I, you know, I'd add on to that, is there a risk that if you're taking all this capital that was focused on acquiring and putting it now towards supply and development, that there's an overbuild, especially in certain areas like Atlanta, Phoenix, and other places that have tended to see some of those problems?
Well, I think on the latter point, just remember, you guys, everyone in this room is really smart. Developers are generally really smart. If they don't think the bid is there right from the demand side, especially in a softer environment like right now, just because, say, BTR in all its forms were to end up being excluded and that that is viewed as a good thing, which I think is where it will land, personally, I don't think that there's a flush run of capital into an environment where the absorption has been a little bit slower over the last year or two. I think it takes a minute to, you know, people are gonna have the same lines of defenses and thinking around their returns on their own capital that we would.
If you see that new lease growth is a little bit slower, or you see that absorption in the BTR space has been, you know, a little bit slower over the last year or two, my guess is there'll be measured expectations around returns. I would expect normal market dynamics to sort of step in there. What I would also add is that as you think about sort of what are the exclusions, at least in the discussions we've been having, it feels really rational. I think they wanna protect this concept of boxing out home buyers, which we'd be fully for, 100% full stop. I think there's a lot of ways that you can protect homeowners, or potential homeowners in a resale environment, which they all understand the numbers too, right?
There's 1 million more resales on the market today than there was last year. We're not seeing home buying pickup. We have more of a mortgage affordability issue at the moment. The spreads between existing mortgages of homeowners and where kind of the market is today is probably lending to the dislocation more than anything. I think that view might be commonly shared, sort of generally speaking. At the same time, I think you wanna create lanes that sort of protect those that are an FHA 3% down buyer, right? Or something like that, which we, again, the industry would be fully supportive of. I think that, there is sort of a common ground there.
I think probably a focus on how much CapEx is going into these homes is something they might care about, in our conversations, so that seems pretty rational and something that we've generally always supported. I think pathways to ownership are things that probably can incentivize capital to come in in a way where if you have an off-ramp for folks that they can get into homeownership should they choose, I bet that would be viewed favorably.
Got it. You mentioned in your opening remarks, that you've seen, I think, fairly consistent demand. I think, you know, what people are trying to figure out is, you know, at this time last year, you're sort of really kinda off to the races in terms of occupancy, and blended rate. I know, you know, we probably make way too much out of every single month of data. You know, when we hear that things have softened, it's usually because of sort of supply. I guess my question is, you know, is there a demand component, right? I mean, clearly in apartments and other areas, you're seeing, you know, lower demand. It doesn't sound like you feel like that's the case, but maybe tell us why.
Like, how are you measuring demand, and is it truly not lower? If not, why not, given the fact that you've seen such a degradation in job growth over the last, you know, nine months?
I'll take the demand question. It's a good one. We get a lot of questions about supply. Good to hear questions about demand. You know, we look at the demand funnel in two parts. There's kind of the digital external part of demand. That starts with people that are looking online on a Google, you know, searching on Google, people looking on Zillow. That translates into access to our website. People go. A number of times people land on our website. That transitions over to the second bucket, which is actual lead generation, followed by showings, followed by gross applications that get submitted. Net applications that get approved ultimately move in. What we're seeing is really strong numbers there. We're seeing that there's an ongoing demand for single-family housing.
We're seeing a healthy customer profile, and what we look at for customer financial health is first the credit score. That's still sticking right around 700. That hasn't changed for us. That's a good sign. The other sign is our application approval rate. I talked about going from gross apps to net apps, sticking around 65%-70%. People that are applying for our houses, their financial health is strong.
The same is true of our customers that are in our houses. We're seeing really strong rent collection. Saw in our numbers from 2024 to 2025, bad debt improved. We're back in a territory that we saw pre-pandemic, we expect that to stay the same. We are watching, you know, you know, nothing's certain for long. We are watching 30- and 90-day credit card delinquencies. We're watching mortgage rate delinquencies. We're also watching student housing debt delinquencies, all as kind of canaries in the coal mine for what could impact financial health of our customer in the future. Demand side looks good. Supply side, you've heard, you know, we talked about it on the earnings call. Supply side is a little bit higher than what we've seen in the past.
Look, the reality is, there's a big gap between where the multifamily space ends, right? You've got two-bedroom units. You've got a very small percentage of three-bedroom-plus units. It's a single-digit number. Then the next step over here is homeownership. So there's, you know, 35%, as Dallas mentioned, since the formation of HUD in 1965, homeownership has not gone more than 400 basis points either direction. There's clearly demand for single-family housing, for professionally well-maintained single-family homes. There's a lot of people we continue to see more people choosing to rent. We don't anticipate, especially with the wave of people turning 35 every single year, that number, depending on which report you look at, it's 10,000-12,000, somewhere in there, every single day turning 35.
They haven't even hit our sweet spot yet, average age of 38, 39 of people moving into, to our homes. We feel pretty strongly about, the long-term demand for the product.
You mentioned on the call that the inventory of homes on your books was a bit high. Is that only in sort of markets where you have that supply impact? I guess if not, you know, why is that the case in other markets where you know, so you see this good demand, why is it taking people longer to make a decision to move into a home?
Yeah. The pronounced areas where we're seeing higher supply are areas that were focal points for builders, right? You've got North Florida, not so much where we are right now in South Florida. The Texas markets, Houston and Dallas, as well as Phoenix. Look, in terms of the amount of time you talked about people taking longer to lease, you know, when there is more supply, just like when you go to the grocery store, any sort of retailer, when there's more product to look at, people generally take a little bit longer. They're a bit more discerning.
You know, that's where I believe, and we believe collectively as a management team, that the quality of our product, the quality of our experience, it will stand up to that test really well as people look at what the offering is. Yeah, a little bit elongated timelines for the Days to be resident, and that's kind of normal with more supply.
Got it. You said earlier that, you know, you're really kind of kicking off your big peak leasing season sort of after the Super Bowl. You know, I think as part of your revenue management system, you do have a pretty good understanding of sort of what's gonna happen over the next 30 to 60 days. Obviously, we got the update in terms of what happened in February and in January, so we see that. Maybe just help us understand how the forward indicators are looking. You know, what are you seeing in terms of retention, your ability to send out renewals, and sort of transact without much negotiation? Just sort of any type of commentary around the strength of the early part of the peak leasing season.
Yeah, you know, we don't have a crystal ball in terms of how many leads we're gonna get tomorrow or the next day. Everything we're seeing in the pipeline is strong. On the renewal side of the business, which I'm glad you brought up, 75% of our book, that continues to be really healthy. We do not see degradation right now in the decision-making of the consumer to stay in place. Obviously, we do use lease negotiations to make sure that we're landing the plane, you know, in terms of renewals. Generally, that's such a healthy part of our business. Runs between 3.5%-4.5% in terms of the renewal growth rate. We anticipate continuing to see 75%, up to 80% renewal rates going forward.
Remember, like, you know, people move into single-family houses. They need more space. They have more stuff. They're generally stickier. The average family or the average household is, you know, two incomes. They have a child. They have a pet. They're coming from a single-family home, so they know what they're looking for. They know what, you know, kind of what they leased, the product. It's not like it's something different, and they're not accustomed to it. Feel pretty good about the renewal side of the business. It's healthy right now.
That should stay in, like, the low 4% range for the next couple months?
You know, generally, 3.5% to 4.5%, kind of mid-3s to mid-4s is typically what we see.
Got it. occupancies should just trend higher as you kind of get into the, you know, more peak, you know, March, April strength timing, you know?
Typically, that's right. You see it go till kind of mid-year, and then, in the fall season, you see it come down a little bit. That's pretty much the normal curve that we see for occupancy.
We have some questions here. You know, we can switch over to capital allocation. You know, I guess with regard to capital allocation, you haven't done as much buybacks, despite trading at, you know, a very large discount, relative to, you know, where your homes trade. You know, why? Why haven't you bought back more, I guess, is the question.
Well, I think, you know, at a high level, we shared what we shared on the earnings call. I think we did $100 million between the call that we did in.
The fall or the late fall into the end of the year. We have certain windows, and we also have certain sources and uses with cash. I think we're pretty clear about it on our guide this year that we expect probably share re purchase to be a bigger part of our programming. That'll be, you know, relative to where we sit with, you know, capital allocation decisions. We think we have, you know, a pretty good line of sight for most of the year. I'll let Jon add any commentary that he'd like on this, on this topic.
Sure. I think, you know, on Dallas's point about open windows, you know, we had our Investor day in November. You know, we were planning to talk about that value creation roadmap, you know, deemed that to be the type of non-public information that we wanted to be sensitive to. Look, I think we were pleased that we were able to do $100 million of repurchases between the tail end of the 4th quarter and early in the 1st quarter. I think looking at our capital deployment guide, it is, I hope, clear that we anticipate being a net seller this year.
I would say that, you know, looking at where the shares are trading today, pick your metric that you wanna use to measure, you know, give or take $275,000-$280,000 implied valuation per wholly owned home. I would contrast that with the fact that in 2025, we sold around 1,400 homes at an average disposition price of around $400,000. You know, where the shares are trading today is an implied cap rate that starts with a seven handle. We haven't been able to buy assets at a 7%+ yield since 2014. That is a mid 6% AFFO yield and a mid 4% dividend yield.
I think by any metric you choose to look at, it's hard to argue that the highest and best use of surplus capital isn't buying back shares. I will say that, you know, if we had the opportunity to deploy capital acquiring assets at a 7%+ yield, we would be backing up the truck right now. We are keenly aware that this is a compelling valuation. You know, I'm biased, but I think we have the most attractive single-family rental portfolio in the U.S. I think we have the most concentrated, the most scaled, the most infill, the most defensive portfolio there is. If you tell me I have an opportunity to reinvest in that portfolio at some of the metrics that I just outlined, clearly that is compelling.
I guess we get the question all the time. Obviously, the single-family market is the largest and most liquid there is. At the same time, you know, it's very granular. There's transaction costs. There's other considerations, liquidity costs in terms of selling a bunch of homes in an individual market to end users. You know, how do you think about the ability to actually sell in size, you know, particularly if maybe the institutional side is maybe paused with some of the regulatory uncertainty?
I think you're right on the last point. Like, I don't think it's the time to go out and market a billion-dollar sale. I don't think you get the price you want, first and foremost. Second, I don't know that you want the scrutiny until you have clear, you know, visibility as to what's going on. Look, we run a business where we're in the business of housing families, and we have a lot of families, as you know, that have been with us four or five years.
It's also not our intention to go to these families and say, "It's time to get out but, you know, we definitely have, you know, 25% of our book that revolves every year. But you know, there are markets where the spread, for example, in California, it is incredibly efficient as we sell California homes and then either reinvest in new assets or share a purchase to Jon Olsen's point. We've been more of a net seller in California for years. Could we be more of a seller in California? Perhaps. I think it sort of depends on how the business sort of works and flows. Then again, in the back of our minds too, we wanna be a great capital allocator. We wanna make decisions when we can, where things make sense. At the same time, we're also building a business for the long haul.
What happens with dispositions in California isn't exactly how it works in Charlotte, right? That market could be softer, and so you may not get the exact same sort of cap rate. It's all a balancing act. We have a really strong asset management group that looks at this under Scott's leadership, and we're constantly evaluating what on the term we should be selling versus what should we be keeping.
That's a good point. Something that people ask us frequently as well is just selling to the existing renter. I know you've piloted and tried these different programs. Is there just not the uptake for it?
You'd be surprised. I mean, it's about a 5%-10% hit rate when you go out and scale with, like, a big tape. Again, it goes back to our earliest points. Like, we're meeting families where they wanna be met for the most part. Many of them aren't in a position from a down payment perspective to just lean in, nor should they. The cost of property taxes, insurance and the like, and, you know, we handle pretty much everything, right? I think people get sort of used to the fact that it's plug and play with a professional operator.
You mentioned selling assets to fund buybacks. I guess, what's the limit on that from a tax perspective? How should we think about the cap rate on, say, the $550 million of dispositions you're doing this year?
Look, I don't think we're gonna guide to the cap rate, but my expectation would be that it should probably align with what our most recent historical experience has been. From a tax perspective, you know, we are comfortable with the level of dispositions we've guided to. We have a variety of tools in the toolkit to manage through that, whether it be, some NOLs that we continue to have, 1031 exchanges and the like. I don't view tax to be a governor on our ability to sell assets near term.
Got it. Could you talk a little bit about ResiBuilt? Obviously, you said on the call it's gonna be a fee builder for the near term. How are you thinking long term about the ability to develop on balance sheet, and then as you transition to something like that, will it involve, you know, increased G&A, increased costs, or are the costs that are there in place today fairly scalable?
Now look, we're really excited about the ResiBuilt acquisition. We've always said that we're location-specific and channel-agnostic. Over the last three or four years, I think we bought our first new construction sort of forward purchase communities in 2022, as we talked about on our Investor Day in November. We've been looking for ways to build up our new construction capabilities. We did our forward purchases. We built out our operating model, now obviously we have the ResiBuilt platform as part of Invitation Homes. We've known this team a long time, Jay Bice and his team. Jay's been around since the beginning in terms of the space. He started the ResiBuilt platform in the 2018 timeframe. I think it's a management team and a platform we're very comfortable with.
I think one of the, you know, most interesting parts of the acquisition is not only do they have a team in place that's experienced with the general contracting work, but they have an existing book of business of doing fee build on behalf of third-party customers. In the near run, as we think about where we want to take the platform over the medium and long term, we've got the benefit of other customer relationships that we're working with in terms of acting as their general contractor in the markets where they have a presence. The main presence for ResiBuilt is in the Georgia market, the Carolinas market, and North Florida. Those are markets where they, you know, have their boots on the ground and continue to operate.
I think over time, as we think about the platform and where we'll take it, we'll continue to build on behalf of others. We intend to build on behalf of existing and future joint venture partners. At some point, we'll also do it, you know, for the benefit of the balance sheet as well. I think in the near term, we've got a business that's cash flow positive, from an expense and revenue perspective. Over time, you know, we'll incorporate that into our overall plan.
Real quick. It's a really important point you made around G&A creep. We wouldn't anticipate any G&A creep. In fact, we'd probably appreciate at some point some synergies between the size of his team and the size of our investment and asset management group. I think the more important part that's sort of the follow-up question is what other markets would you be in? We would expect that over the coming years, we'll add a handful of markets, right? To where we want deeper concentration or have an ability to also perform within our JVs or our third-party partners.
What is the current G&A? What are you expecting to spend on that this year?
I think, you know, implicit in the $0.02 of contribution that was included in our bridge is the G&A load. I think that's something that we're still evaluating as we sort of integrate, and we'll have more to say about that on our next earnings call.
Okay. I mean, what would be the part that needs to be figured out from here?
Well, I think the blend of activity in terms of on behalf of third parties versus on behalf of something that's gonna go on our balance sheet or the balance sheet of a joint venture. I mean, that's gonna be a significant determinant. I think we've had some questions in our one-on-ones about the way we might scale that platform and expand that platform into new markets over time. I think above all, you know, we are going to remain laser-focused on making sure that this is accretive and creating value for our shareholders. We're gonna, I think, take a fair measured approach, continuing to focus for the immediate term on the third-party fee build business, and then over the intermediate and longer term, that focus will likely shift to our joint ventures and the balance sheet.
I guess what are the most attractive markets for you going forward? I mean, it seems like there's so much development in Atlanta, Phoenix, parts of Florida. I don't know. Maybe you can tell me whether that's sort of lightening up, if we're sort of at the tail end of that. Are there certain markets that you think are more interesting from a development perspective that aren't seeing that sort of same level of supply?
We can both take some of this. I would just say, look, at a high level, we've seen some green shoots in North Florida and some things that appear a little bit more compelling. I'm not saying that necessarily with a development-minded lens, but I think as we think about the total equation, we're seeing demand is pretty healthy right now in Orlando. We'd like to see Tampa get a little bit stronger, so maybe it takes a little bit longer there. I would say, look, by and large, could you see us, you know, going into markets like Nashville or some of these markets as we work our way west?
Could we be at a place where we had, you know, three to five years from now, six or seven markets that we wanna belong in, where we'd like additional scale, we'd like the opportunity to build, we see compelling fundamentals? Like, I think that's how we think about this.
The only thing I would add is, you know, we closed on this acquisition six weeks ago. We are working closely with the team on evaluating opportunities in markets where they have, you know, experience over the last seven or eight years of building, you know, historically 4,000 homes in those markets. We're focused in the markets where they have the boots on the ground and the experience. We are now having discussions about future markets and where we might go over the next couple years, I think it's too soon to identify, you know, market number 4, 5, and 6.
Dallas, I feel like the single-family rental business probably was built on technology, right? Being able to manage all these disparate homes at the time. I guess as we think about the ability to deploy AI internally at Invitation Homes, you know, where are you seeing the opportunity, I guess, maybe near, medium, longer term? How are you thinking about actually doing that? Is it, you know, building yourself, partnering, buying?
I would say, like, we're taking a very measured approach, and we've done a little bit around leasing and sort of the funnel and kind of customer interface. That will continue to get better and expand. I think we see some areas around centralization. You know, as tech-forward as we like to say we were when we started the business in 2012, 'cause we did have to solve problems with technology that hadn't existed, we still have a long way to go. You know, Tim and the team have a number of centralization efforts going on right now where we've gotten smarter just in the last five years about where we should operate certain parts of our business from a centralized perspective.
You know, there's a cost of sort of labor and things like that too, where you can be pretty wise about how you do this. I mean, we were still running multiple call centers last year. We're still figuring out ways to consolidate and do things in a much more efficient, robust way. I think you're gonna see, and again, we're not an early adopter yet, but in data and analytics and how you sort of back cast and look at your performance over, you know, history and time, a lot of these cloud bots and things that are starting to work on different things as an idea, take a lot of the work out of some of the consulting structures you have as you think through some of these ideas as well. I think it can go a variety of ways.
Look, the one thing that I love about our business, this is sort of a hot, like, buzzword right now, this HALO companies, right? Like, Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence. We are a HALO company, and there's gonna be a reversion to the mean in terms of sticking with businesses and profiles that aren't gonna become obsolete overnight. Obviously, the asset side of our business isn't gonna change all that dramatically. How we integrate with customers, how we digest the data, what that leads us to do strategically as a company and to create a better merchandising experience for our customer are all things that we're super focused on at the moment. Look, the cool thing about AI is I feel like real time for startups and new companies that are evaluating kind of areas of opportunity, they can use AI quickly.
Bolting that into a bigger ecosystem and our data lake and into our architecture, a little trickier, right? You gotta be careful about when you make these decisions and why. I think we'll be measured in our approach, but we're certainly excited about adding some of these tools into our business plan on a year-by-year basis.
I guess for your third-party management platform, what are your partners telling you right now? I mean, they're sort of not of the same size that you are. They're sort of mid-size. Like, if they are prevented from, you know, growing going forward, do they stay, you know, at their current size? Do they decide to exit? What is the sort of the message they're sending you?
I think our third-party customers, they are, you know, looking to operate their portfolios with us and continue to earn cash flow and, you know, grow the value of their platforms. I think a lot of our partners have been in kind of a status quo mode of, you know, it's an investment, they're getting a nice return for their LPs. I don't think I've seen any sort of positive or negative change in terms of the direction there, and I think there's just a little bit of a wait and see to see where we end up with the current government relations environment.
On the-- I guess, kind of for lack of better word, like the lending, bridge lending, you know, side, does this, you know, potentially make that a, maybe even a bigger business for you? Because if there's certain capital that, you know, is not gonna be involved in this space, that allows you to sort of fill that void, or TBD on that?
I'd say we've definitely gotten an uptick in some of the inbound phone calls we've gotten since the tweet in terms of just, you know, potential developers out there that are interested in engaging with us on the construction lending business. I think we're evaluating, you know, the right opportunities and the right markets where we have boots on the ground. We have our own view on, you know, rents and expenses relative to what any developer has when we underwrite a new construction loan. We closed our third loan last month. I think we're up to about $115 million of balance with, you know, a couple more signed term sheets in the backlog.
I think we're being measured in our approach, but we've seen some interesting opportunities and, you know, we're continuing to try to grow this segment of our business.
Just on the rapid fire questions, what will same store NOI growth be for the single-family rental sector overall next year in 2027?
I always have a hard time... Sorry, I always have a hard time with this one 'cause there's just two of us. Look, we think the setup this year is more or less like last year to some degree, right? We obviously have some noise in our business with the policy stuff, and we talked about that on our earnings call. I think that's the only part of our budget that's a little TBD. We wanna see how many dollars have to go into that kind of work.
Excluding those dollars, what is it?
Yeah. Low single digits.
Low single digits.
I'd just call it.
Perfect. Then more, fewer, the same number of public companies in single-family next year?
I think it's probably a very easy bet to say the same.
Great. Thank you very much.