Howard Lorber: Yeah. BK is going to answer that. But I will tell you, every time we think when it’s coming, it’s usually delayed.
Soham Bhonsle: Sure, right.
Howard Lorber: Whether it’s building or permits or financing for the development. But go ahead, BK.
Bryant Kirkland: Right. And Howard, I don’t know what else I can add to that. All that being said, it will come into revenue over the next four to five years. It will be more gradual. And — but the point about this business is it has great inertia and it keeps building on volume, so it almost becomes a residual.
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah. That’s right. Okay. And then just on the share repurchases, I know the two-year anniversary of the spin is coming up, so that sort of gives you an ability to sort of unlock that. Obviously, a lot of uncertainty right now with the lawsuits. But is there any thought being given to putting a plan in place, even if it’s just to send sort of a message to the market here with where the stock is trading?
Bryant Kirkland: Yeah. So, you’re correct, the two years comes up in 50 days from now from the spin-off. That’s going to be a Board decision. Obviously, the Board meets every quarter. It deliberates well on these matters, and we are very confident the Board will make a decision.
Howard Lorber: Yeah, we’re surely going to talk about it in great detail and then make a decision.
Soham Bhonsle: Okay. And then just last one. Bryant, on your run rate operating expenses ex the commissions, what’s a good ballpark to assume sort of over the next few quarters? And then can you just talk about any opportunities to lower that run rate just in 2024? Because it seems like we’re sort of going to probably hit a flat market on transaction volumes, but we could be higher on ASP. So just — yeah, anything there.
Bryant Kirkland: And we’re very proud of what we’ve done on the expenses. And we’re proud because we have been judicious because we’re taking a long-term approach. As Howard mentioned earlier, our operating expenses excluding commissions and restructuring were down $7.8 million versus the last-year quarter. That was comprised of about $3.6 million of personnel costs, and we have reduced about 60 employees over the last year, reduction of $2.2 million in advertising and sponsorships, another $1 million in just general type expenses, and $400,000 in travel. On a sequential basis, quarterly expenses were lower from second quarter by about $4.1 million, about $1.3 million of that was personnel, where some of the cuts we made earlier in the year are now starting to come in on a full quarter.
And also, $1.3 million on advertising and administration and $250,000 on travel. We’ve been very mindful of spending judiciously and not being penny wise and pound foolish, and not taking any cuts that would impact the agent experience. So, you know rent expense is one of our big numbers, and occupancy costs just on the pure lease is about $34 million a year. There’s another $10 million of other costs associated with the leases. So that’s about 22.5% of our non-activity-based expenses. We’ll start to see run-off of that before January ’25, starting in ’23. It reduces about $8.25 million over that two-year period. And after then, we start running-off about $3 million of lease expense a year. So, that…
Howard Lorber: Our plan really is to — unless it’s a specific location that we really need and it’s really being used, it’s to basically not renew any leases and consolidate where we have other offices.
