UDR, Inc. (NYSE:UDR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Lacy: Yes. No, I’m glad you asked that. New York feels very strong today. And just to put it in perspective, again, this is about a 7.5% market for us in terms of NOI way. We are heavily focused in the financial as well as Manhattan just around 75%, 80% of our exposure. So what we’re experiencing there is strong demand. So we’ve got traffic up on a year-over-year basis, still running around 98% occupancy, no concessions in the marketplace and really no supply to speak to in the city itself. So New York feels very strong for us. I expect that you’ll continue to see high blends as we move forward into the first quarter and second quarter here. And quite frankly, we think New York could be one of our best markets this year with anywhere from 10% to 12% revenue growth.

Adam Kramer: Thanks, again. I really appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Juan Sanabria: Hi, thanks for the time. Just curious on what you’re expecting for turnover and bad debt as the year rolls on some noise in out of LA County just curious on how that impacts your business plan or expectations?

Mike Lacy: Yes. Juan, right now, this is Mike. What we expect is turnover to stay pretty relatively flat on a year-over-year basis. It’s up a little bit because we have seen a little bit more on the turnouts due to skips and evictions. I’ll let Joe get into a little bit more on bad debt. But right now, we’re continuing to focus on driving renewal rate growth. We expect we will have a little bit more move-outs due to that. But again, we’re not seeing people move out to buy homes. So that’s helping us offset that. And I do expect turnover to be relatively flat year-over-year.

Joe Fisher: Juan, it’s Joe. So we actually had a number of these questions last night and this morning on bad debt. So we’re still talking through this topic. Hopefully, €˜23 is a little bit different picture for us. But maybe just a recap on our approach, and then I can kind of take you through current trends and outlook. So our approach going back to 2020 when we started COVID, was to consistently estimate what we thought the collectibility for each individual resident was. So we didn’t take a draconian view and simply write off all delinquencies. We didn’t get overly bullish and say we’re going to collect all of it. But we try to think through, be it from cash or be it through government assistance, what the ultimate collectibility was for each of those different groups.

So what that resulted in was, when we had government assistance come in, of which I got to give a plug to that team, we ended up getting $60 million of government assistance on behalf of our residents and our investors this period of time, which, I think, if you look at that as a percentage of revenue, probably number one in the space when we took a look at it. So a big plug to those individuals have worked hard on that. But when we had that come in, it wasn’t a positive surprise to our numbers, which means it wasn’t a big benefit this year, also not a headwind as we go into 2023. And so if you look at recent trends, despite the fact that government assistance has been coming off, it was sub $2 million benefit in 4Q. It’s down under $200,000 here in the first quarter.

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