Tom Boyle: Very good question, Eric, to clarify what we’re meaning by that. So specifically, what we’re speaking to is month-over-month improvement in year-over-year revenue growth. So if you think about — pick a market, it’s growing 1% in the month of February. In the month of March, it’s growing 1.5%, that would be an reaccelerating market. So not a seasonal thing or revenue on an absolute basis going higher because of higher occupancy or things like that, but actual year-over-year growth improvement. And contextually, it’s part of the opportunity that continues to play through in many, many markets. We mentioned waning supply. So we’re also going into an environment where competition factor in the vast majority of our markets continues to decrease.
Again, as we’re starting to see this reacceleration that’s also, for the most part, in many markets with very little new supply coming in, that’s too an additive factor relative to the amount of demand that we continue to see an opportunity to drive more customers into the portfolio.
Eric Wolfe: And then I just had a question on the sales activity. You talked about the impact on your move-in rents for the quarter. But was just curious what criteria you look at in order to determine why you should increase that sales activity. So if we look at last October or this March, is why did you decide to increase sales versus the other month, especially given some of the recent positive demand indicators that you’re just talking about?
Tom Boyle: So we’ve run these sales consistently over time. And last year, we ran a number of different time periods. And in the month of — at tail end of February and beginning of March, we ran one as well. The primary reason is we had some inventory that we felt like we can move. And so the different points of the year, we’ll try different promotional tactics, sales tactics to drive customer activity, pairing that with advertising and the like. We tend to see good traction there. We saw good traction during the winter season here, as we talked about, and we’ll likely use — continue to use promotional activity, sale activity and the like through the year this year, not dissimilar to what we did last year.
Operator: Our next question is from Jeff Spector with Bank of America.
Jeff Spector: In the markets that you talked about where you’re seeing these accelerating trends, I guess, can you talk about that a little bit more, like what’s driving that from your view and tie that into the comments that you did say, Joe, that the new move-ins do remain challenging. So I’m just trying to tie those two together?
Joe Russell: Jeff, maybe to start with the second part of the question. Yes, challenging on a year-over-year basis but sequentially we’re seeing a good trend up. So we hope to continue to see that build as we go into further months into the year, and our confidence grows month-by-month even through the month of April, as we’ve talked about. So that’s one powerful component. Thematically, many of the markets where we’re starting to see this reacceleration on the early side were typically markets that were not the high flyers and the peaks of the pandemic era, so they haven’t had to reset relative to the more dramatic rate increases and overall demand increases that we saw through the pandemic. So on the flip side of that, you’re not hearing us talk about Florida, for instance.
So Florida has got a ways to go before I think we’d add them into that reaccelerating bucket. But on a more active level and more dominant level across the portfolio as we’ve listed out market by market we’re starting to see that improvement, particularly where we’ve got markets that weren’t those high flyers but have — seeing more consistent performance and we’re seeing to see — we’re starting to see that reacceleration as we speak. So there’s more to come, as we’ve also talked to. So we’re confident as the year plays out, we’re likely to add to this list of reaccelerating markets. And again, as I just mentioned, with many of these markets not dealing with an abundance of new supply as well.
Jeff Spector: My follow up [Technical Difficulty] you’ve revised their numbers a couple of times now…
Joe Russell: Can you repeat, I’m sorry you cut out for a second…
Jeff Spector: My follow-up, Joe, is on supply. I was saying that we subscribed to Yardi, and I think they’ve updated that now a couple of times where this year is higher than last year, but expecting a decrease into next year. I guess, can you provide a little bit more on your supply forecast? Like are you seeing something different or the same for this year, let’s say, and then for 2025 at this point?
Joe Russell: Jeff, if you step back — I mean I appreciate the way that Yardi attempts to track nationally, both development activity and then more precisely, what I think can be more difficult is the reality of how many of those projects actually get put into production and then are likely to complete on a year-by-year basis. So we’ve been very consistent now for the last two to three years where we in our own development activity have seen the competitive factor of the supply taper down. It’s tapering down in 2024. So I think I would say we have a bit of a different opinion if they’re pointing some type of an uptick this year. What we see and has been very commanding on a day-to-day basis and if you’re actually doing development as we’re doing on a national basis, the amount of headwinds, the amount of timing delays, the amount of complication market-to-market has not eased at all.
Again, we’ve been very consistent about that. And then you layer on, a, the cost of capital that Tom and I’ve been talking to as well as the unpredictability in certain markets relative to demand, et cetera, there’s more headwinds than any developer on an individual basis is facing. And by virtue of that, you’re seeing a downdraft in the amount of deliveries, which we think are going to continue going into next year and the year after. We’re frankly looking at development if you’re starting fresh in any given market that could take anywhere from two to three years just to get through an entitlement process right now. So just think about that from a calendar standpoint, that puts you out into 2026 and 2027 and there’s really not an easy way to combat that.
So the risk factors tied to development continue to increase for all the factors I just mentioned. And we’re pretty confident that our lens into that activity is far more accurate than others.
Operator: Our next question is from Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Todd Thomas: Tom, I just wanted to go back to the guidance, which you affirmed, and it sounds like the quarter was relatively in line overall. I’m wondering, are you still anticipating move-in rents to cross the zero threshold later in the summer and occupancy to remain down about 80 basis points in the year, or has the mix shifted around a little bit following this quarter’s and the April performance that you discussed?
