Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc. (NYSE:MAA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Albert Campbell: I’ll give you sort of the forecast how it’s laid out quarter by quarter, and Tim will give a little more specifics on it. It is fairly consistent around that 3% for the year with obviously more — a little higher in the second two quarters of the year, as Tim mentioned, as we get more traffic and renewals hold stronger and new lease pricing becomes most robust. It’s really going to come down to new lease pricing as the variable through the year. But the band is fairly tight around 3% in our expectation, just given the blend of over overall demand. And so…

Tim Argo: Yes, following up on the new lease rate, I mean, we again, absent last year that was record highs, new lease rates kind of November-December, early part of the first quarter, typically are negative. So it’s not unusual kind of the new lease rates that we’re seeing right now and then they start to accelerate as we get into the spring and summer. But in terms of getting to low end, I think it’s kind of back to Eric’s comments on the economy, if we see a further deceleration in demand or see something a shock on the economic front that could drive pricing obviously lower and that’s how you get towards the lower end of the guidance and then the opposite a little bit better economic backdrop would push pricing higher and get us more to the higher end of revenue guidance.

Albert Campbell: If That shot came, it would — given that it’s coming — the impact will come through pricing, it would be manifest probably in the latter part of the year as those new leases blended in.

Austin Wurschmidt: Great. Got it. That’s helpful. Thanks everybody.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Nick Joseph with Citi. Please go ahead.

Nick Joseph: Thanks. Eric, in your comments on the stuff, you talked about the strong balance sheet and have been in a position to capture any growth opportunities. It sounds like you think may emerge from your comments on the call, it sounds like maybe that’s more of a second half ’23 comment. But where do you think there’s opportunities could come from? Is that more acquisitions, land, something else?

Eric Bolton: No, Nick, I would tell you that my belief is that we’ve been through this in the past, where we tend to find the best opportunity is in projects that are in lease-up, fairly newly constructed. There are more not have already finished the construction. They may be at that 50%-60% occupancy level in their initial lease-up. They’ve been leasing for probably the better part of the year. So they’re still €“ they are now getting to a point where they’re starting to run into lease expirations and related turnover, which just brings that much more pressure on the lease-up effort itself. And these, as I say, are not yet fully stabilized assets and thus, they’re more difficult to finance from a typical leverage buyer so that’s where we’re hopeful that we will find more emerging opportunities in that kind of a scenario.

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