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

Page 8 of 15

Tim Argo: Yes. And, one, I’ll add on the concession point, we’re not seeing any significant increase in concessions at this point. It was 0.3% of rents overall in Q4, which is in line with what we saw in Q3. We are — to the extent we’re seeing them, it’s still largely across the portfolio, more in some of the urban or downtown submarkets, which has seen more of the supply and seeing less concession usage on more suburban assets. But generally, no big change from what we’ve seen in the last couple of quarters. .

Chandni Luthra: Thank you for that.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Haendel St. Juste: Hey, good morning out there. Few questions from me on the external growth front. I was at National Multi-Housing, too, but heard that there is a €“ that buyers more institutional demand, but a shortage of sellers and products. But I guess I am curious if you would see an advantage to a selling more assets now is that perhaps the premium and perhaps be willing to sell a bit earlier in the year to capitalize on even if it doesn’t mean to put a dilution as the way to redeploy in a more favorable acquisition market in the back half of the year?

Brad Hill: Yes. Haendel, this is Brad. I’ll take that. As we entered this year, our disposition plan is really big component of that, as you mentioned, is the ability to redeploy that capital. That’s a big part of what we’re looking to do. And so we’re not looking to time the market. We do a very in-depth review of our disposition plans in the third, fourth quarter of the year to really identify what we’re going to sell for the year. And we generally don’t factor in what we think are going to be the market dynamics in terms of just maximizing value. We want to do that. But broadly speaking, what we’re trying to do is really build a long-term earnings within the company that really supports our ability to pay a growing dividend over time.

And so we think that’s better done on a consistent basis where we’re in a position to be able to sell assets, maximize our proceeds to the best we can and then redeploy that capital into external growth opportunities. So what we have in our forecast right now is a sale of 1 asset earlier in the year. And the reason for that is we’re targeting a strong primary market that’s in Charlotte where we think we can kind of maximize the proceeds given the fact that there aren’t a lot of sellers out there right now in that specific market. And then we’ll come out with our other assets later in the year when we think the debt markets will be a little bit settled down a little bit, spreads will be a little bit less volatile than where they are right now and frankly, where buyers can get a little bit more visibility on values.

We think that that’s the best direction for us in terms of our dispositions and our external growth plan.

Haendel St. Juste: That’s very helpful. I appreciate the color there. A follow-up maybe on the different side, but external growth related. We’ve seen a lot of mid and high four cap rate trades of late, but hearing the bid-ask spread that remains fairly wide, 10-ish from some folks, so curious kind of what you’re hearing or seeing on the bid-ask spread? And how this plays out? What do you think the market clearing price is or what you’d be willing to pay to get some deals done here? Thanks.

Page 8 of 15