Omotayo Okusanya : My question is specifically about the Sunbelt market. There seem to be some commentary regarding feeling that maybe some other supply issues maybe kind of become moving more towards the rear-view mirror in due time. Curious specifically how you are thinking through supply in the Sunbelt in terms of deliveries, ultimately absorption, and when we may start to see things turn or inflect in those markets.
Jim Sebra : Yes, great question. We have some stuff in our investor deck and we’ve kind of talked about it, I think on our year-end earnings call and certainly in our city presentation back in March that the expectation we have is that the vast majority of the new supply should be through, by mid part of this year. There’ll still be a little bit of lagging until the back half of the year for sure, such that we’ll have pricing power as we head into the back part of the year. The other thing that we expect again, given some of the data we’ve seen and done some modeling is absorption this year should be much better relative to kind of the new supply growth, whereas last year the absorption wasn’t as strong. As Scott had mentioned earlier, we’re still very bullish for the long term on the Sunbelt.
And that we think that job growth and population growth will continue to be very bullish there. And outpace the United States. We’re quite excited about kind of how the new supply is trending this year so far, and kind of how to our more Class B product is more insulated.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Linda Tsai from Jefferies.
Linda Tsai: I can’t remember if you tracked this, but how many of your residents moved out to buy a house a year ago versus in 1Q ‘24?
Scott Schaeffer: In the first quarter of last year, the reasons for move out was — of the people that moved out 16% moved out to buy a home in the first quarter of this year, for those that moved out 15% have moved out to buy a home.
Linda Tsai: And then on new leases, would you expect to see new lease growth stay volatile or should we expect to see continued improvement for the rest of the year?
Janice Richards: As we continue to maintain occupancy? And we go into leasing season, we’ll start to see some pricing power over the next few quarters. Again, still prioritizing occupancy within that pricing power.
Linda Tsai: So volatile?
Janice Richards: No. Our goal is to obviously sustain and to drive revenue where we can. And that would include pricing power and really working through that on a monthly basis.
Linda Tsai: And then I know you expected expenses to be higher this year. Is there a longer-term NOI margin you’d like to target?
Scott Schaeffer: We don’t necessarily target obviously an NOI margin. I think we continue to focus on maximizing that margin through time, which we’ve talked about in the past, using technology to become more efficient continue to obviously drive rent, growth and occupancy. And we won’t be satisfied with any number except that it’s got to keep going up.
Operator: There are no more questions. I will now turn the contract back over to Scott Schaeffer for closing remarks.
Scott Schaeffer: Thank you for joining us this morning and we look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming conferences, and then speaking again with you next quarter. Have a good day.
Operator: Ladies and gentleman that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
