All right. Good morning, everyone. Appreciate everybody joining us this morning. My name is Brad Hill. I'm the President and CEO of MAA. To my left, we have Tim Argo, who's our Chief Strategy Officer. To my right, I have Clay Holder, who's our CFO. What I thought I would do is just go through some high-level highlights this morning for the company, turn it over to the team members to talk about some specific items, and then open it up for any questions that you guys may have. Just as a way of reminder, in terms of MAA, we're an S&P 500 multifamily-focused REIT. We have a 31-year history of operating exclusively in high-demand markets. Generally, those markets overlap with what's known as the Sun Belt in the U.S. We also have focus in other high-demand markets across the U.S. as well.
Our focus is on delivering total shareholder return by growing earnings and dividend. If you look at our history, we have some slides in the deck. You can see we have a strong, long history of performing in both of those areas and outperforming the sector average. You know, I think as we look forward and what the opportunities are for us, I think there are really two areas of opportunity. One, I think, is bridging the gap between the current gap in valuation between the public and private markets. If you look at the private market and what is transacting in our region of the country, we continue to see good, strong pricing on transactions that are occurring. We have seen a few portfolios trade in our market, assets very similar to what we have.
Generally, we're seeing cap rates in the 4.5%-4.75% range consistently across our market. Today, we're trading in the mid to high 5% cap rate range. We do think that there's an opportunity for us to continue to be priced similar to what we're seeing transactions occur at in our market. We've seen that cap rates remain in that range for some time now. The second focus for us is on growing earnings. We've got a number of ways that we're looking to do that that we'll walk through this morning. Clearly, for the past 18 months, you know, we've faced a lot of pressure from supply coming into our market. I think we've really weathered the 50-year high level of supply coming into our market very well.
If you would have told us years ago that we were going to face the highest level of supply we've ever seen in our markets, but our NOI was going to go down 1.4%, we wouldn't have believed that. But that's what we've seen. And we've performed quite well in the midst of that. So, you know, as we continue to see high levels of supply this year, especially the first half of the year, we continue to see good trends. The market's demand remains strong. Supply continues to come down from where we are at this point. And we do think that we are on the path to continue to deliver strong earnings growth the back half of this year and heading into the next few years where the supply-demand dynamics will be materially different than what they are today. Our packet, we did include an update.
I do want to point out that the update that we have in the packet is May year-to-date. We include first-quarter information. We also include May year-to-date. I think from conversations we had yesterday, there's a little bit of confusion about whether that information was quarter-to-date or year-to-date. And it's year-to-date. I do want to point that out. You know, we're not providing monthly information at this point. We do think that that can be a little bit distracting to the real trends of what we're seeing in the business. There seems to be a lot of focus on monthly trends, which can be volatile, especially as you have different lease terms month over month, and especially as you're heading into a different seasonal pattern as we get into the busier summer leasing season. We're focused on, clearly, on year-to-date numbers performing in line with our expectations.
As we sit here today, the results that we're seeing and the trends that we're seeing, we believe we're still in a good spot to deliver on the earnings, the revenue, NOI performance that we laid out for the year. The trends continue to track positively as we do see demand holding up very, very well and the supply picture improving. In terms of demand, we've talked about this for some time. I think that's one of the things that surprises a lot of folks from the Sun Belt is the demand continues to be very, very strong, very resilient in our region of the country. If you look at absorption the last three quarters in our region of the country, it's exceeded supply despite the very high levels of supply that we are seeing. The units that are being delivered are being absorbed.
The market is not building up an inventory of unoccupied units. We are absorbing. We think the recovery as we get into a better demand-supply picture will be very constructive for us to be able to push on rent growth. You know, migration trends continue to be positive. They are definitely not in line with COVID highs, but they are in line with where we were pre-COVID, where we are seeing net migration into our region of the country is about positive 7% or so versus what is moving out. We continue to see very good migration trends. The Sun Belt job growth machine just continues to produce jobs. The job growth in our region of the country is double what we see in other areas of the country. We really do not see that slowing down at the moment.
Wage growth continues to be strong, again, significantly outperforming other areas of the country. The other component of demand that we're really seeing is the single-family affordability and availability is very challenged in our region of the country. That's a phenomenon that's newer to our region of the country, really, over the last five, six, seven years. You know, it's a phenomenon that has always existed on the coastal markets, where the single-family market was relatively unaffordable versus multifamily. That phenomenon is newer in our region, and I think it's here to stay. Over the last five years, we've seen housing prices go up over 50% in our region of the country and really no indication that that will decline.
You know, as we retain more and folks stay with us longer, that is clearly a demand factor that we think supports our strong renewals and our strong retention rates. On the supply side, clearly, we are seeing declining deliveries occur in our market. The numbers that we show for this year, supply will be down about 40%-50% versus what we saw last year. That is predominantly a second half of the year drop. We are still in elevated supply now. As I mentioned a moment ago, we are still seeing very good trends in our performance. The other point I would make is that if you look at the trailing 12-month starts in our region of the country, they are down significantly. They are close to where we saw in 2010 and 2011 in terms of starts.
Again, the picture for supply and demand improving in our region of the country is very, very positive. We feel very good with that, with our ability to continue to deliver robust same-store NOI growth associated with that. The other thing I would mention is that as, you know, the supply and demand picture becomes more in our favor and we're able to push on rent growth a little bit more, our residents are really in a good spot. They're very healthy. If you look at our collections, they're very strong. Rent-to-income is consistent with what we've seen historically. As I mentioned a moment ago, the wage growth in our region of the country continues to be very, very strong. We feel good about where our residents stand and their ability to continue to absorb rent increases as the supply-demand improves.
We have an increased focus on growth, both internally and externally. We have talked for a number of quarters now about increasing our development focus. We continue to do that. Today, our pipeline is about $850 million. We are on track to start another three to four projects this year, which is well on our path to expanding that development pipeline to $1 billion-$1.2 billion. The yields we are able to get on those developments are very accretive, given where our cost of capital is, and especially a very good use of capital, given the cap rates that we are seeing in our markets. The yields we are getting are in the 6%-6.5% range.
We feel very good about our ability to continue to drive future earnings, especially when anything we start today will be delivering two years out, where the supply pipeline's going to be less than half what the long-term average is in our region of the country. We feel good about that. We're also increasing our investment in our internal portfolio. We're increasing our renovations, interior renovations and redevelopment program. That program does best as the new supply begins to lease up. As we're getting to the point where that is occurring and the rent gap between our average rent and the new supply that's coming is over $300, it really supports our ability to push that program. We'll certainly be increasing that.
The last point I'll make before I turn it over to these guys is, you know, we are increasing investments in various innovation and technology initiatives, really with the goal there to drive some efficiencies, improve customer service, increase our centralization and specialization. We have got some information in the packet about what that looks like. We have achieved to date, in terms of incremental NOI from initiatives, about $50 million is in our run rate today. Over the next five years, we think we will add another $50million-$55 million through other initiatives, predominantly property-wide Wi-Fi. We have about another $20million-$25 million that we will look to add over the next few years as we continue to increase our use of various technology initiatives, increase our shared services, centralization, and specialization across the portfolio.
You know, as we sit here today, you know, we feel good about the trends that we're seeing and the recovery that we're seeing in this transition year. We also feel really, really good about the supply-demand fundamentals and dynamics over the next few years. These other initiatives that we have to drive incremental earnings going forward, we feel really, really good about. With that, I'll turn it over to Tim first just to hit on a couple of other areas.
Yeah, I thought I'd follow on a little bit to the supply-demand points that Brad was making.
You know, one of the questions we get in a lot of our meetings, and as we've had different meetings over the last several weeks, is, you know, what gives us confidence that the supply is moderating and the supply-demand balance gets better from here and continues to get better over the next couple of years? It's really a few different reasons. One, and Brad touched on a couple of these, but, you know, we look at construction starts, and we've done a lot of work over the last couple of years to figure out, you know, when does peak supply pressure occur? You know, when? The way we define that is when are the most units in lease-up in a given market?
What we have seen, and even as some of the lease-up times have sort of gapped out a little bit over the last, you know, call it four to five quarters, what we see is peak pressure is about two years out from construction start. There is a chart on page 11 that goes through peak starts in our markets. You can see, you know, it really peaked in mid to late 2022. You move on two years where we are in the, call it, two quarters after that period that we are in now. We really saw construction starts really drop off after that. In fact, the starts in Q1 of 2025 in our markets is about 80% less than it was at that peak and even well below when we saw, you know, low development occurring right in the middle of the COVID.
We're about half of where we are there. If you play out over the next four quarters what supply would look like, or over the next two years what supply would look like based on starts, well below the 3.5% of inventory that is typically normal for our markets. We know the supply picture is getting better. You think about on the demand side, all the factors Brad mentioned: job growth, immigration, household formation, still, you know, greatest in our region of the country and much better than the broader country. I think, you know, one of the points that goes a little bit underappreciated is the continuing drop in turnover. We've seen turnover drop every quarter, every year for the last several years. What that effectively does is that's creating more demand.
Even though we're having a lot of supply coming to the market, there's 2%-3% lower turnover across the markets as well. That's eating into that inventory as fewer units are coming available. The last point I'll make on that is just the absorption piece that Brad touched on a little bit. You know, we've had elevated supply in our markets for the last two or three years. Still remains elevated, but certainly lower than it has been the last couple of years. We've seen that inventory get absorbed. The last three quarters, Q3, Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year, we saw actually more units absorbed than what were delivered. Not only absorbing the new supply, but going beyond that and seeing occupancies increase.
We have not seen that level of absorption since going back to early 2021. There is not a big, you know, plug of units sitting there that need to get absorbed or need to get occupied. We are kind of at a good spot with occupancy. Now as we see supply starting to drop and the demand picture continuing to stay strong and stay steady in our markets, that helps, gives us confidence. We are seeing it. We are seeing it in pricing. We are seeing new lease pricing continue to accelerate. Our renewals are as good as they have ever been going out for the next two or three months. All those things sort of give us confidence that we are in a good spot.
One thing I'll touch on too, and then let Clay give a few comments, is, you know, another question we get a lot in the meeting is just kind of what we're seeing from a market standpoint. Are there any that are outperforming or doing better than we thought they would or worse than we thought? Generally, I'd say the markets are performing about as we expected. A lot of the markets that have been strong last year, we expected to continue to be strong, have been so. It's some of our mid-tier markets: Charleston, Savannah, Greenville, Richmond. The D.C. area has been great for us. Houston continues to hold up well. Tampa's probably one that I would point to on the upside that's performed a little bit better. We're starting to see some positive momentum in rent growth out of Tampa, which is encouraging.
It's a significant market for us. On the downside, if you will, or some of the struggling markets continue to be the ones we've talked about, it's Austin, it's Phoenix, it's Nashville, with Austin being the biggest laggard. I mean, we feel great about that market long term. It has some of the best demand fundamentals of any of our markets, but it has been hit with a ton of supply, and particularly throughout the market. Even though supply in that market's dropping probably 30%-40% this year from where it was last year, it's still one of our highest supplied markets. The job machine there is great. We're seeing a lot of employers still move there. Population growth is great. We feel great about that market long term.
It is going to be one of the ones that struggles for us and probably one of the ones that is a little bit of a laggard as we see this recovery over the next several quarters. With that, I'll turn it over to Clay.
Yeah, I'll touch real quick on our operating expenses for the year and kind of what we're seeing to date. So far this year, you know, we still feel good about our guidance that we've initially set for operating expenses. You think about some of the discussion we've seen in the headlines around tariffs. We've been in touch with our vendors, understanding exactly what sort of inventory that they have on hand and feel good that they have enough supply of HVAC systems, appliances, that sort of thing that will get us through the course of this year.
In fact, we have contracts with certain vendors that are locked in through the remainder of this year and even into 2026. So feel good about repair and maintenance expenses and the personnel expenses, as well as another one we still feel good about. We've seen lower turnover this year. And we, you know, likely, given some of the uncertainty in the economy that's out there. But we're holding tight to our folks. And that's really good because that allows us to be able to perform better serving our residents. And then just to touch real quick on property taxes and insurance, both of those, we're getting good information right now on those two line items. We'll have more to say on kind of where both of those fall out as we release second quarter earnings in late July.
Lastly, then I'll touch on, then we'll turn it over to questions, is the balance sheet. As you guys see on page 26 and 27 of the materials that we've passed out, we're very well capitalized, very well laddered debt maturity stack. We've got one issuance that will mature in November of this year. It will mature at an effective rate of 4%. We feel like we're in a good spot to be able to refinance that whenever the time comes. We're an A-rating, so we'll have that benefit as we go through that maturity and, you know, get to lean on that credit rating. Lastly, I'll touch on, Brad mentioned the external growth. Our debt to EBITDA today is at four times. You know, we want to move that to four and a half to five times.
That would be about another $1 billion-$1.5 billion of additional dollars that will fund that external growth and that development pipeline that Brad was touching on. I feel like we're very well set to be able to continue to grow and operate in this environment and for a number of years to come. With that, we'll turn it over to questions.
Can you explain more that $300 gap you said between in place and new supply, is that before or after renovation? Is that net effective? Can you expand on that?
Yeah. And Tim, you can jump in here as well. Yeah. The $300 that we quote includes concessions for the new properties that are coming online. If a new property is offering a month or two free, that's included in that number.
Ultimately, what we're saying is the gap between our current rents and the effective rents for new product is over $300 a unit. It's higher in some markets. That's kind of the average. In some markets, it's as high as $500- $600, which really supports our ability to go in and renovate the units and rehab the clubhouse to be able to push those rents. That's one of the things that we look at. In the program, what we have found is over time is it works better when that new supply, as it stabilizes. What you'll see with us this year is we'll continue to increase that program. I think our plan for this year is about 5,000-6,000 units in that program. You know, and we'll continue to increase that appropriately as the supply around us continues to stabilize.
Yeah.
I'll just add that that is a good gap that we like to see. I mean, that's compared to our current in place rents. When we do our renovation program, typically we're raising rents $100 or so on average per unit. With that $300 or so gap, we can raise it $100, create what feels like a new unit for the resident, and still have a pretty good, you know, $200, which is in most places a 15%-20% gap between the new rents and still fit in nicely and give that resident what feels like a new unit without having to pay the price of those brand new lease-ups. Clearly, supply is coming down.
In your view, what will have to happen with rents or financing costs for developers and capital to start coming back into the market to then, you know, lead to other supply upside? Yeah. I mean, we get that question a lot. You know, last year, the limiting factor on new starts was debt capital. Debt capital was not available last year. That is available this year. Really, what we are seeing today is a pullback on the equity side. In fact, in, you know, there are two ways that we develop. We develop in-house, and then we develop what we call our pre-purchase platform, where we are partnering with some of the largest developers, merchant developers across the country. What we are doing in that platform is we bring all the capital. You know, when the property is stabilized, we own the asset 100%.
What we are seeing in that platform right now with some of the largest developers in the country is that equity is backing out of deals. You know, in the first quarter, we looked at over 40 deals through our JV platform where, again, we can bring all the capital. Generally, what we are seeing is most deals just do not pencil. The developer, they are very optimistic. They normally show returns that are, you know, 6-6.5%. But then when we go through the packet and align it more with what our expectations are, they are generally in the 5.5% range or so. You know, when you are looking at cap rates today that are, you know, 4.75-5.5% in our region of the country, that is a very small gap. That is one of the reasons why they are not getting the capital.
We've got to see a material increase in the underwritten yields for these developments for them to really start making sense. If you're trying to go from a 5.5% to 6.5%, you've got to get, you know, 20% or so improvement in your return. That's going to be a combination of things. You know, interest rates over the last year, year and a half are significantly increasing the cost of these developments. Construction costs today are not really moving up, but they may be in some markets coming down a little bit as the supply pipeline continues to trail off, but they're pretty much flat. We do need to see significant rent growth in order to make some of these developments start to pencil.
The other thing I think it's important to remember is even in the Sun Belt, I think some folks have the misnomer thinking that in the Sun Belt, you can go out, find a piece of land, and you can be under construction within six months. That's just not the case. It's a year to year and a half process minimum from when you go out and find a piece of property, get your permits before you can really start construction. There is a ramp up that's needed in the pipeline. I think once we start to see better economics in underwriting more broadly, again, in the first quarter, we underwrote 40-plus deals, and we're moving forward with two of those. It's a big miss rate in terms of the economics.
Where we're able to find some of these deals that make sense are, you know, one, in-house where it's a phase two for an existing property we already have, and we're not building amenities, so we have some efficiencies there, lower construction costs, things of that nature that help us hit those returns. Two, where we're partnering with developers or our development partners or also the general contractor, they're able to get better pricing than what we're seeing in the market overall today, which is also helping our returns. I think we've got to start seeing some rent growth in the numbers before the capital is going to be more comfortable coming in. When that occurs, there's going to be a ramp up process before you can really start to see a ramp up in terms of the new starts.
When supply kind of tightens in your market, how do you think about rent growth then? Is there any restrictions from the government or affordability? How do you think about that?
Yeah. I mean, the latter part of your question, no. I mean, we do not, we are not in a lot of markets that have rent control or certain restrictions on that. In fact, I think it is 90% of our NOI comes from states where rent control is prohibited by law. So not a lot of concerns there.
I do think, you know, if you consider normal to be 3-3.5% rent growth is kind of what we've seen in a normal supply demand dynamic, I do think we're set up, you know, particularly starting in 2026, 2027, even in 2028 for an above market rent growth sort of scenario with, for all the reasons we've laid out, with construction starts going down and demand being strong. You know, if 3-3.5% is normal, I think something in the mid to high single digits is reasonable for a couple of years. We've got, you know, even if development starts to pick up over the next couple of quarters, there's a good two and a half, three year window where we've got a pretty good operating environment.
You add that improving supply demand environment with some of the things Brad mentioned that we are doing internally to improve our internal growth. It sets up for a pretty attractive few years for us in terms of FFO growth.
If the economy is deeper than expected, interest rates fall quicker than expected, current expectations, how, what would that do to the demand side and the supply side of what you just presented?
Yeah. I mean, I think if the economy weakens, I mean, I think one of the things you can do is you go back and look at historical performance for us. Part of our strategy has always been to focus on full cycle performance, which includes the up part of the cycle as well as the down part of the cycle, which what you are presenting would presumably be a down part of the cycle.
We're very well equipped to handle those times. If you go back and look at historical performance for us when there was a downturn, you look at 2002, 2008, 2009, or COVID, 2020, what you'll see is in those slowdowns, the Sun Belt generally outperforms other regions of the country. There's a couple of reasons for that. I mean, the diversification of jobs within the Sun Belt is much greater than other regions of the country. You look at our performance, we outperform the sector average by over 300 basis points during those times. I think, you know, what you also see in the Sun Belt and is part of our story is the diversification we have. We're diversified by product, by price point, by submarket. We're also diversified in large markets and mid-tier markets.
I think it's that mid-tier exposure that really helps provide somewhat of a stabilizing contribution to earnings and NOI performance that we like, and it provides lower volatility of earnings if you look at our full cycle return. I think that part of our story helps protect us if things, you know, get a little bit tougher on the job side. I do think as we go forward, you know, if you look at the demand factors, whether, you know, it's job growth, it's migration trends, it's population growth, and then it's the single family affordability and availability, I think the job growth component of that has been less of a component than it has been historically. Because now you've got these other components that are very strong demand contributors in our region of the country.
If we see a little bit of softness in the job market going forward, it's not as big of a factor as it maybe has been historically. I think when you couple that with what we're seeing in the decline in the supply, I think the market will still, our market and our portfolio specifically will continue to perform quite well.
The supply side, just to follow up, is there obviously the stocks have come down quite significantly. Is that, could that change if interest rates come down and it's more forceful?
Yeah. I mean, I think definitely it could. To Tim's point, if you see the long-term average is 3.5%, you know, if you look at the job growth within our region of the country over the last few years, it has significantly transformed.
I do think that the market's ability to support, if equilibrium historically has been 3.5%, I think the market based on demand and job growth that has occurred in the region of the country with new manufacturers moving to the Sun Belt, with various companies relocating their headquarters, the job machine in the Sun Belt continues to produce jobs at a rate that I think is higher than what it has done historically. I think the market could support a higher than long-term average supply. I do, to my comments earlier, you know, the Sun Belt or any market's really never going to go to zero supply. That's not realistic. I think we do have a setup for the next few years where it's going to be substantially less, maybe less than half of what long-term average has been. At some point, that will increase.
New supply will increase. The market is very strong to be able to withstand that. All right. I think that's our time. We appreciate everybody's time today. If you have any questions, feel free to follow up with us. Thank you.