Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: And we’ll take our next question from the line of Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Steve Sakwa: Mark, to stay on that question and your comments about sort of getting the keys back. Is it concentrated in any one market and are there other discussions where maybe people haven’t given you the keys back, but there’s conversations with managers and people are a bit more on edge about finding kind of work in the tech markets? Or just how would you handicap that?

Michael Manelis: Yes. So Steve, this is Michael. So I guess, I would say that we started this back in kind of the end of the third quarter or early fourth quarter, just really kind of tracking that like going deeper on reasons for move out, if people said job change, to understand it. And we are talking like less than a dozen. And when you say concentrated, I mean, it’s such a small number, but it really is spread only in the Seattle and San Francisco market. And I think the teams, if you went across the country would say we always have one or two that come in and say that they lost their job and they’re leaving, and that’s why. So we really haven’t seen anything. And clearly, there’s some conversations when you get into the renewals with some folks that they tell us that they’re changing jobs or that they lost their job.

But in the concentrations of Seattle and San Francisco, it doesn’t feel like they’re overly concerned that they’re not going to be gainfully employed, quickly.

Mark Parrell: And Steve, it’s Mark. Just to supplement on that just a bit. Our transfers are low, too. So sometimes you’ll see people going down to a cheaper unit and things like that that can also be an indicator of stress. We don’t see that in any meaningful size. And we did a little research, I want to share. We asked our folks in markets like San Francisco, Seattle, New York. When a local firm announces a layoff, then tracking that either using the filings, and I believe you do something similar, using the various governmental filings or some of the layoffs, dot, whatever websites and what we’re seeing is just like these tech jobs and a lot of these financial jobs were spread over the whole country of late, these layoffs are spread over the whole country.

So generally, we’ve seen a Bay Area company or a Seattle company announced layoffs, 20% to 30% of those are in that home market and the rest are spread all over the country. So I think what you and I, right, recall from €˜01 where if you had a tech layoff in San Francisco, that person was definitively in San Francisco, I think it’s much more diffused now, and it’s just a different sort of employment picture than it was in the past.

Steve Sakwa: Great. Thanks for that color. And then, maybe just circling back on the transaction market for either you or for Alec. How have you guys changed your underwriting, whether it’d be IRRs or kind of growth? And kind of where do you think the market is today for both acquisitions and for you guys to start any new development projects?

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