Juan Sanabria: Great, thank you. And then you guys are really kind of reinvesting in the platform and the systems given some of the rapid growth you’ve had over the last couple of years. So just curious as we start to think about ’24, how we should think about G&A growth again as you reinvest into the business?
Brandon Togashi: Yes, that’s a good question. We’re not prepared to speak to specifically the ’24. But we certainly are making investments. Some of those investments we’ve been making throughout ’23. So that’s kind of already baked in. Those investments are on the personnel side. We’ve hired staff. There has been opportunities, frankly, given the – the M&A activity in our space. There’s opportunities to add folks who had storage experience through our team. There has been technology investments for sure. Some of that runs through G&A, some of that’s capitalized and then it gets depreciated through our corporate investments and that does flow through to FFO, but it’s only still impactful given you’re spreading those costs out over a multi-year basis.
So, I wouldn’t characterize those investments one is like tremendous needle movers in terms of, in terms of like G&A costs. So, I think they’re needle movers in terms of the ROI that they can provide, but in terms of the G&A line item, it’s just not a super noteworthy delta.
Juan Sanabria: Thank you.
Brandon Togashi: Thank you.
Dave Cramer: Thanks Juan.
Operator: Our next question is from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please proceed.
Smedes Rose: Hi, thank you. I just wanted to ask you a little bit, if there’s any sort of change in the way that you’re thinking about occupancy versus rates, I mean, I get that everyone is trying to maximize revenue per unit where occupancy is now in the high 80s kind of back to where you were pre-pandemic and as the – and others seem to be maybe being more aggressive to maintain occupancies over 90% for various reasons. I’m just wondering is there any change like with what’s going on in the housing market, or the ventures market or anything that would make you change kind of the way you think about what’s the right occupancy level to achieve?
Dave Cramer: Yes, Smedes. Thanks. That’s a great question and thanks for being on today. Certainly, you know, the muted housing market and the lack of transition has certainly changed one of the demand drivers you know in our business and we have a lot of them, but certainly, that’s one of them that you know over the years has provided a good source of tenants for us. What the team is doing is really trying to balance how much we want to chase occupancy at the expense of rate and discount and how does that affect the life, you know, lifetime value of a customer and really how does that fit into our revenue model, and I think the team you know between marketing spend, between discounting, between how aggressive to be on asking rent, you know, street rate, entry rate.
And how to really balance our occupancy and you know I’m very pleased. So if you look at our annualized rent per square foot growth has been strong and I think, we’re finding our foothold around, you know, little calmer around the street rate movement and trying to balance that you know street rate occupancy discount to drive with the revenue number we want. And so what I would say is in the markets where it’s been very volatile like, you know we have new supply like Phoenix and Vegas and Atlanta. We probably had to react a little harder. But we have a lot of markets where we’ve actually found a good occupancy foothold and been able to really hold some street rate activity to leveling off. And so, to your point, it’s a balance. I think we’re probably returning a little bit more through our heritage where we’re not necessarily going to chase occupancy at all costs.
We’re going to balance and try to find our revenue path with balance occupancy rates and discount.
Smedes Rose: Okay. And then just to follow-up on that. I mean, any change in the way that you’re thinking about ECRIs going forward either more moderate or less frequent or you know the same – to the same degree?
Dave Cramer: We’ve been, that’s to me been one of the silver linings to our business for a lot of years and it remains. Our customer rates, it’s healthy, they are stable. That side of the revenue management business, we’ve been able to maintain our cadence and our level of increase, and quantity of increase and we’re just not seeing any change in customer behavior because of that program. And so why maybe we’re not attracting as many from the top of the funnel, because of the, you know the little bit slowing in housing market and the muted housing market. The existing consumer base is very healthy and we’ve had great success there.
Smedes Rose: Okay, thank you.
Dave Cramer: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from Jeff Spector with Bank of America. Please proceed.
Jeff Spector: Great. Thank you. You know back on the occupancy. Again, you have had the most loss versus your peers since the third quarter of ’22 and again that gap hasn’t you know closed as much as the peer. So again just trying to think about what your comments on the strategy. You know occupancy versus rate. And that or is it certain markets that are maybe winning on the portfolio versus others?
