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

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Michael Manelis: Yes. Hey. This is Michael. So I think the way to think about the modeling of what a normal curve would look like is what we will see right now is new lease change will start to sequentially grow and typically will max out somewhere in that third quarter and then will seasonally moderate as you get to the year. For our assumption of this blended rate of 4, we basically are assuming about 2 — a little over like 2.25% in new lease change across the whole year but it is — it’s kind of like a bell curve. We’re going to work our way through the spring and keep building it and then we’re going to let it moderate. When you think about renewals right now, on capturing some of the loss to lease, we have some pretty good numbers at a 6.9% achieved renewal increase in January.

Our expectation, and I’ve got these quotes out for the next 90 days, we’re going to stay somewhere in this 5% to 6% range in this first half of the year. And then I would expect that number to moderate like it would normally do into like a 4% to 5% range in the back half of the year. So, on a full like likely guidance model that puts renewals somewhere just north of 5% and when you put those two together and you think about the retention factor, it winds up getting you to that blended rate of about 4%.

Haendel St. Juste: That’s really helpful. I appreciate that color. Maybe some color on your expectations between some of the stronger East Coast markets, New York, Boston, D.C., in contrast to some of the weaker West Coast, San Francisco, Seattle, curious how the spread between those two — or what do you thinking you’re expecting for the spread between those two regions this year? Thanks.

Michael Manelis: Yes. Well, maybe I’ll just kind of bucket the markets around. So I think I said in the prepared remarks, I mean, New York, we expect it to be our best performing market followed very closely by Boston and then really close by San Diego and Orange County as well. I’m going to put aside L.A. and San Francisco for a moment because of the bad debt implications. But if you really looked at all of our other markets, you could almost bucket them in this 4.5% to 5% kind of revenue growth range for 2023. And then you get into the San Francisco and L.A. that has the bad debt impact. Without it, both of those markets would be in this 4.5% to 5% range as well. But with it, San Francisco, right now, we’re forecasting around just under a 3.5% growth and L.A. is just north of a 1.5% growth.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from the line of Jeff Spector with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Jeff Spector: Just wanted to talk a little bit more, Mark, about your comments, and I totally understand the uncertainty on the macro, our econ team has once again pushed out its recession forecast for the second half of €˜23. So, I guess, just thinking about macro versus what your revenue management systems are telling you as the weeks go by, how will you be operating through the start of peak leasing into peak leasing and if things do look like — again, if it looks like it’s going to shift to the second half, how does that make a difference to how you’re approaching the peak leasing?

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