Essex Property Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ESS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Connor Mitchell: Yeah, of course. And then, just another question. You’ve talked about the secured financing a little bit. So after you issued the secured debt earlier this year recently, just wondering if you could give an update on how the unsecured market is looking now versus the secured market and whether there’s been any narrowing of the spreads? The unsecured market has improved a little bit since then. Thanks.

Barb Pak: Yeah, this is Barb. So on the unsecured bond market for us today, we would probably be in the high 6% range to do a 10-year unsecured bond offering. And if we were to go do a secured loan, 10-year secured loan like we did, I think we’re in around a mid-six. So there has been a little bit of a narrowing from when we originally did our secured loan back in July, but there hasn’t been a lot of transactions on unsecured bond market as well. And so it’s a little unknown at this time. But we feel good about where we executed and our capital needs for next year. We don’t have a lot of capital needs next year.

Connor Mitchell: Appreciate the color. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho. Please proceed with your question.

Haendel St. Juste: Hey guys. Couple quick ones for me. First, Angela, I guess I’m curious, any perspective on — there’s an article in New York Times the other day, in it called — California called — slam San Francisco for egregious barriers to housing I think was the header. So I’m curious if you have any thoughts on this. Certainly the idea of low barrier to entry, low supply in California is the key theme, key part of the thesis there. So I’m curious if there’s any perhaps updated perspective reviews on the barriers to building, if there’s any changes that are being contemplated that could be real and how that could impact the marketplace? Thanks.

Angela Kleiman: Hey, Haendel. It’s Angela here. It’s a good question, I think. We’ve all seen the acute housing shortage in California and despite Governor Newsom’s efforts to enact multiple legislations to spur housing production, it just has not moved the needle in a meaningful way. And you may recall that he campaigned on building 3.5 million homes by 2025. And as part of that, there were numerous legislation passed and even recently a few more passed. But that barrier continues because there is a cost barrier, there is — as part of legislations they enacted requiring prevailing wages, there’s environmental protections and so it just is very challenging. And so I go back to that original goal of 3.5 million homes that to be built by 2025.

Currently they’re on track and have issued about 450,000 permits. So now units built and we’re two years away. So that gives you the magnitude of how we view supply and why we do believe that it will remain favorable. And when we look at the permit data, it remains very low as well.

Haendel St. Juste: Got it, got it, thank you for that. And then one more, I believe, earlier you mentioned that concessions in San Francisco, broadly in your portfolio average, one week. I was hoping you could bifurcate that a bit further, maybe San Francisco proper versus down in Peninsula. Thank you.

Jessica Anderson: Hello, this is Jessica. I don’t have that information in front of me. I mean, San Francisco is such a small market for us with just a 1,000 units and a couple of large buildings. But like I said, as far as what we’re currently offering, I would say roughly one week free with a little bit more in pockets of the Bay Area like San Jose. Oakland is supply impacted, so we have higher concessions there. Seattle, very minimal concessions. All of Southern California outside of Los Angeles, minimal concessions.