Essex Property Trust Inc (ESS) — Q2 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, operator. We welcome everyone to our second quarter earnings conference call. John Burkart and Angela Kleiman will follow me with comments before we open the call to Q&A. Results for the second quarter of 2019 exceeded our expectations with core FFO per share growing 6.1% compared to the second quarter of 2018. We are pleased to raise our full-year core FFO guidance by $0.20 at the midpoint, which is attributable to strong operations and improving cost of capital and solid execution from the Essex team. Angela will provide more details about the quarter and the increase to our full-year guidance in her remarks. 2019 is playing out mostly as expected with market rents for the Essex metros remaining unchanged at 3.1% as detailed on F-16 of the supplemental. Generally, the tech markets continue to outperform led by San Francisco and Seattle, while Southern California has lagged expectations. Looking at job growth on Page F-16, San Francisco's estimated job growth was revised upward from 1.7% to 2.6% pushing its estimated 2019 rent growth to 3.5%. As noted last quarter, Southern California job growth had a slow start to the year and has since experienced a modest acceleration. June trailing three-month job growth in Southern California was 1.3%, equal to our forecast on page F-16. We will briefly comment on several indicators that support our expectation for continued job growth and housing demand, all of which are consistent with our belief that the West Coast vibrant economies remain well positioned for future growth, beginning with office development which continues to perform at a healthy pace and is required for job growth. For the nation, under construction office properties represent 2.1% of existing office stock; within the Essex footprint all counties except Orange and Ventura are producing new office space at a greater pace than the national average. The Bay Area leads the West Coast in office development with over 16 million square feet or 4.9% of stock currently under construction. In Seattle, nearly 5 million square feet of office was under production or 3.3% of stock, not including the planned expansion of the Microsoft campus with an estimated 3 million square feet of office space. We also track the job openings at the top 10 public tech companies, all of which are headquartered in an Essex market. As of June 30, these job openings were up 19% year-over-year and remain near all-time highs since we began tracking the data several years ago. It's worth mentioning that Amazon continues to actively hire in Washington State where it has approximately 11,500 job openings. Venture capital financing remains at record levels in the Bay Area this past year with about $60 billion committed and the Essex markets accounted for 62% of all US venture capital funding. San Francisco led all US markets in VC funding the past year with almost $42 billion invested followed by Silicon Valley with almost $19 billion invested, the highest levels recorded over the past 20 years. Unparalleled access to skilled workers and growth capital continue to attract entrepreneurs to the West Coast. Recent IPOs Uber, Lyft, Slack, and Pinterest should catalyze growth given greater access to capital and improved liquidity; they join other publicly traded tech companies, many of which continue to expand in the Bay Area. Google, for example, was actively buying or leasing additional office space in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley communities of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Jose. In San Mateo County, Facebook and YouTube expanded in San Bruno, Burlingame, and Menlo Park. We believe that a stronger IPO market will likely drive other long-term benefits to the local economies. By one estimate, several recent IPOs have created 6,000 millionaires which will ultimately unlock previously illiquid equity positions. At some point, some of that wealth will likely be redeployed, which will increase consumption and set the stage for new start-ups down the road. A strong labor market, shortages of skilled workers, and low unemployment rates continue to push incomes higher. Essex's weighted average unemployment rate was 2.9% as of May and the median household income grew an average of 5.3% in the second quarter. With market rents growing in the 3% range, rental affordability continues to improve in all of our markets. Turning briefly to apartment supply, our delay adjusted estimate of around 36,000 apartment deliveries in the Essex markets in 2019 has not changed and we expect a similar level of deliveries in 2020 albeit with some meaningful regional variations. Turning to the investment markets, our outlook has much improved relative to conditions experienced in 2018. Significantly lower interest rates and strong equity markets have substantially improved our cost of capital. In 2018 we were a net seller of apartments using the proceeds to reinvest in development, preferred equity and to fund stock repurchases. We are now mostly focused on acquisitions and preferred equity investments. We are pleased to announce another accretive acquisition this quarter, which was a high-quality property in a market we know well. At this point, we hope to exceed the high end of our acquisition guidance range of $400 million. Overall market conditions for acquisitions have not changed much this year despite the dramatic reduction in interest rates. Apartment buyers continue to target value-add opportunities, which results in greater competition for these deals that leads to compression in cap rate spreads between value-add and core properties. Even newer properties are being marketed, with a claim of a value-add component. In this environment, we remain focused on our disciplined underwriting process with market selection and timing our primary concern. Our disposition activity, on the other hand, will likely end up below the low end of our $300 million to $500 million guidance range given our improved cost of capital. Finally, we note that shortages in the construction labor force continue to cause development delays, both in the Essex pipeline and more broadly. As noted on our prior calls, the combination of long entitlement processes in the coastal markets at a time when construction costs are growing significantly faster than NOI compresses development yields. For these reasons, we continue to believe that preferred equity investments in apartment development deals generally offer superior risk-adjusted returns over direct development. That concludes my comments. Overall, we are very pleased with our company's progress year-to-date and wish to thank all of the Essex employees for their hard work. I'll now turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Mike. We are starting the second half of the year with strong momentum, achieving 3.5% revenue growth in the second quarter. Financial occupancy for the same-store portfolio was 96.6%, 10 basis points below the prior year's period and 30 basis points less than the first quarter, while market rents were up in Q2, an average of 3.4% over the prior year's period, setting us in a favorable position as we lock down peak market rents. Our turnover in Q2 2019 was 46.4% on a trailing 12-month basis, which is down 3.2% from the comparable period ending Q2 2018. Although there are some pockets of weakness with supply interest in the local market offering large concessions, the West Coast markets overall are performing above our original expectation, largely driven by better employment growth in the Bay Area. As a result, we are raising our same-store gross revenue guidance for the full year by 25 basis points to a midpoint of 3.3%. I'll note that third-party economic research estimates for Essex market rent growth continues to be inaccurate. For example, one vendor stated that our June 2019 rents were up only 40 basis points over the prior year when in reality, they were up 3.8%. Strategically, we will continue to favor achieving market rents over higher occupancy, taking advantage of the strong market conditions to lock in higher rents. Regarding new multifamily supply, the pace of deliveries in Essex markets remains in line with the delay adjusted forecast we introduced last fall and we are maintaining our estimate of roughly 36,000 apartment units this year, which is consistent with 2018 volumes. Our estimates remain below third-party projections, but we expect additional construction delays in the back half of the year to bring third-party figures down closer to our forecast. Construction remains concentrated in a handful of urban core submarkets led this year by the downtowns of Los Angeles and Oakland. Deliveries also remain elevated in Seattle, but strong job growth is supporting the rapid absorption of new units and we are encouraged that the pace of new deliveries in Seattle is poised to decelerate in 2020. Beyond 2020, we would highlight that new multifamily permits in the Essex markets are down 11% over the past year on a trailing 12-month basis, suggesting that the near-term pace of deliveries represents a plateau followed by gradual deceleration of new supply growth. Moving on to a market update. In Seattle, employment growth continues to outpace the US and other major East Coast markets posting year-over-year growth of 2.9% for the second quarter of 2019. Amazon job openings remain at peak levels while office absorption stalled in the second quarter as large deals were delivered and occupied. Each of our four submarkets, North, South, Seattle CBD, and Eastside performed well, growing revenues between 3.2% and 4.5%. Moving down to Northern California, job growth in the San Francisco Bay Area averaged 2.5% year-over-year in Q2 led by San Francisco at 3.7% growth. As Mike mentioned, the continued expansion in the Bay Area is evident in the recent IPOs of sustained highs in VC funding. In the second quarter, we started two lease-ups. Milo, a 476-unit property in Santa Clara is now 22% pre-leased offering one month free rent. Station Park Green Phase II with 199 units in San Mateo is 24% leased offering concessions up to six weeks. Last, we started pre-leasing 500 Folsom with 537 units in downtown San Francisco scheduled for initial occupancy in the third quarter. Year-over-year same-store revenue growth in the second quarter was strong in the Peninsula submarkets with San Francisco achieving 5.9%, followed by San Mateo achieving 4.4%, San Jose at 3.9%, and Fremont with 3.6%. San Ramon and Oakland CBD came in at 2.4% and 2% growth respectively compared to the prior year's quarter. Continuing South, Southern California continues to perform at the lower end of our markets, largely due to lower employment growth, the region and LA County each achieved 1.3% year-over-year job growth, which is in line with our jobs forecast on Page S-16. Revenue growth in Q2 was led by Woodland Hills with 5.2%, Long Beach with 4.7%, West LA at 4.4%, and Tri-Cities with 2.1%. Our LA CBD revenues were down 2.2% due to the impact of the supply with the downtown lease-ups offering six to eight weeks free rent plus other incentives, such as free parking. In Orange County, jobs in the second quarter ticked up 1.2% year-over-year. Revenue growth in the North Orange submarket achieved 3.3% growth, while the South Orange submarket achieved 1.8% growth over the prior year's quarter. Finally, in San Diego, year-over-year job growth in the second quarter was 1.6%, 10 basis points higher than the US. The Oceanside submarket continues to lead the San Diego market in year-over-year revenues achieving 4.8% growth in Q2, followed by North City and Chula Vista submarkets with 3.6% and 2.6% growth respectively. Currently, our portfolio is at 96.2% occupancy and our availability 30 days out is 5.2%. Thank you. And I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Angela Kleiman.

Thank you, John. I'll start with a brief review of our second quarter results then focus on the increase to our full-year guidance. Beginning with the second quarter performance. I'm pleased to report that we have achieved a core FFO per share of $3.33 which represents a year-over-year growth rate of 6.1%. This result exceeded the high end of our guidance and represents an $0.11 beat to the midpoint. The key components of this out-performance are as follows: $0.03 from same property revenues, $0.03 from lower interest expense, non-same-store revenue and other miscellaneous items, and $0.05 from property tax savings and refunds primarily from lower Seattle millage rates for 2019. This is contrary to our experience from the past several years, where our Seattle property tax increase had been in the mid-double-digit range. Favorable year-to-date results enabled us to increase the midpoint of our same-property revenues by 25 basis points. While the benefits from tax savings and refunds enabled us to lower the midpoint of our same-property expenses by 80 basis points. The combination of these revisions resulted in a full year same-property NOI growth of 3.7% at the midpoint, which is 65 basis points higher than our initial outlook and near the high end of our original guidance range. In addition, we are raising our core FFO per share guidance for the second time this year. For the full year, we are raising core FFO per share by $0.20 to $13.20 at the midpoint, approximately $0.13 of this raise relates to improved NOI expectations, and the remaining $0.07 comes from a combination of lower interest expense, acquisitions and preferred equity investments made to date. On the preferred equity investments, we have exceeded the high end of our guidance of $100 million and this is primarily a result of larger deal sizes in this year's transactions. Lastly, onto the balance sheet. In the second half of the year, we have around $100 million of debt maturities and we have the ability to prepay $290 million of debt, which matures in 2020 without incurring any prepayment penalty. We will continue to be opportunistic as we consider our refinancing alternatives to optimize our cost of capital. Currently, we have approximately $1 billion available to us and our $1.2 billion lines of credit and our leverage level remains conservative at 5.5 times debt to EBITDA. I will now turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

Hi. Good morning out there. So this same-store revenue guidance raise was very nice to see. You brought up the low end of the range. So, Mike, with the positive market conditions you cited, how much consideration did you give to adjusting the top end of the range?

I'll start with that and then maybe Angela will have a comment. Obviously, we hit the top end of the range in Northern California, but we were pretty close to the midpoint or a little bit above the midpoint in the other markets. And so we thought there was plenty of room within the range. So we didn't need to move it. We cannot move rents super quickly because we have to turn the leases. And in the second half of the year, we turned fewer leases than we do in the first half of the year. So I think that the guidance range is appropriate where it is now. Angela, do you have anything to add?

We had guided to a tougher first half and a lighter second half originally with the midpoint at 3. And given where the first half came in, certainly, we are comfortable with where our guidance range is at this point. But having said that, keep in mind that the second half now will contemplate heavier supply. And so, in that environment, it didn't make sense for us to raise the high end of the guidance range.

Okay. I appreciate the commentary there. John, you mentioned turnover keeps improving on a year-over-year basis. How long is that sustainable and is there a level of turnover, at which point you say you will start implementing larger rate increases?

Well, as far as the rental increases, we are very focused on our customers being fair in their entire experience which, of course, includes what they pay. And so, we typically will not raise rents above the marketplace, that's effectively set in the marketplace. As far as how low can turnover go, I would love to see it continue to go lower. I think what's driving the lower turnover at this point in time are a combination of factors; one of them being the fact that our assets are well-located; of course, they always have been. So that hasn't changed. But what does change is the quality of life in many of the metros, the traffic continues to increase and as it increases, it makes our assets better relatively than other options. So that is one angle. Another angle is we continue to focus on the customer experience at the sites, and we do have room to continue to improve that. We will continue to work on making all of our customers have the best experience possible. And finally, affordability overall in all of our markets continues to improve as incomes grow significantly faster than rents. And so it's putting a lot less pressure on people to move for financial reasons, whether it's further away from their jobs or to other areas. So I do think there is some continued room to run. I think it works best for both our customers and ourselves to have lower turnover. So we're pretty pleased with it.

Thanks. You're seeing more attractive acquisition opportunities versus the recent past. You mentioned you may have exceeded the high end of acquisition guidance. So how large is the acquisition pipeline today?

Yeah. Hey, Nick, it's Mike. The acquisition pipeline is pretty decent. I would say that the fact that we're going to exceed the high end of the range is more a function of not having a real aggressive high end of the range given conditions at the beginning of the year, which we had a much higher cost of capital. And as we fast forward to today, interest rates have declined pretty dramatically and there's a lot more interest in property. So I think it's more a function of there's enough deals out there and our pipeline is a few hundred million, but there is no guarantee we're going to close all or even some of those deals, but we are much more in the hunt this year. Again, if you go back to last year, we weren't able to make the numbers work. We were selling property. We are a net seller of property, selling property 8th & Hope in downtown LA, for example, for a sub-4 cap rate and buying back stock. The conditions are just so much different. So we are back much more interested in the acquisition market.

Thanks. So then just maybe on the funding side, historically, you've been pretty active on issuing to repurchase shares if it makes sense. Looks like for most of the second quarter, you're trading above NAV, but given that acquisition pipeline and kind of the use for net capital, so I think you're issuing ATM equities in the second quarter?

Angela will have an answer to this, but I'll start. I mean, the simple answer is that we're debt-to-market cap is about 22%. So we just don't need to deleverage the balance sheet. In fact, we don't have any interest at all in deleveraging the balance sheet further. And we feel like we've managed it to where we want to be sort of late in an economic cycle. And so we're perfectly comfortable with where it is now and in fact could increase leverage a little bit, not that we're necessarily planning to do that, but we feel comfortable doing that. Angela, do you want to add to that?

Sure thing. Hey, Nick. In terms of the equity issuance activity, if you look at our acquisitions to date, we really didn't have a need because it will require via a down structure and the preferred equity investments. They fund over time inevitably and so the funding is very small. But generally speaking, in addition to Mike's comment on our leverage level, we do look to match fund our investments relative to the cost of capital to optimize that yield. And so even though our staff may, at any given point in time, be trading at above consensus NAV, we will still look for ways to make sure that funding is the most attractive and we have, as you know, several alternatives to how we can fund an investment. And so it may or may not be the common equity issuance as the first thing.

Hi, thanks for the time. Mike, you mentioned you view preferred equity, there is a more attractive risk-adjusted return versus development. So I'm just curious what it would take for you to restart the development pipeline or what spread maybe you'd need between cap rates to justify the risks you see today.

Yeah, Austin, it's a good question. And again the driving dynamic there is that construction costs are growing faster than rents in general and with entitlement processes in California stretching out 3 years to 5 years in many cases, you end up in a potential for lower yields on development than you otherwise have. I can cross out with the preferred equity where we're coming in just before the start of construction. So all about pre-development period is in the past and we're coming in and starting construction the next day. And so the risk-reward equation is much different. Having said that, we look at a lot of development in transactions and so it's not for not trying to make them work. We just had been pretty selective given where we are, our perception where we are in the economic cycle, and the risk-reward equation. And to get us interested in direct development, we would like to see between 100 to 150 basis point cap rate premium to stabilize yields, which for a quality property, let's say, are around 4% right now. So we'd be looking for that. And again, looking at the risk profile of what the entitlement process looks like, how long it's going to be in some of those other considerations in terms of our direct development appetite.

I appreciate the thoughts there. And then just second for me, you discussed 2020 supply is going to be or is projected at this point to be a similar level as 2019. But you did mention there are some variations in where that supply is concentrated. Could you just give us a little more detail of some of the moving parts by region?

Sure, our research team closely monitors most of these sites, giving us strong insights. As John mentioned, some data vendors have significantly different figures for multifamily supply projections, but we believe our numbers have been quite accurate, so credit goes to our economic research team for that. As you noted, we have around 36,000 units in 2019 and about the same in 2020. The significant changes include a 40% decrease in Orange County and a 40% increase in San Jose, with the latter moving from 2,700 units to 3,800 units. Oakland is expected to see a similar percentage increase, while Seattle will see a decrease of about a third, resulting in 2,900 units. Overall, these changes balance out to approximately zero increase.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning there guys and thanks for taking the question. So, John, earlier in your call you and even previously, you mentioned that this year it's emphasizing more of a rate growth drive from occupancy. And occupancy actually was down 10 basis points compared to what you would have imagined with 20 basis points you mentioned earlier this year. So I was wondering what's going on there and just the strong demand that you're seeing and if that's going to continue in the rest of the year. Or if you just continue to expect that occupancy to come down to about 20 basis points as you mentioned previously?

Sure. So the simple answer is yes. For the year, I expect it to tick down 20 basis points from where it was last year. But within that, a little bit more detail. So, yeah, as was mentioned earlier, the supply picture, there's more supply that is coming on to the market in the second half, it's about an increase of about 25% and it is my expectation because seasonally demand goes down, just a normal aspect of our markets. So as the supply increases and demand slightly decreases just because of seasonal factors, I think there'll be an increase in concessions and that will cause us at the end of the day to compete harder by either offering concessions at some of the stabilized assets or increasing what we're doing or allowing some things to go vacant longer. At the end of the day, I expect that there'll just be a little bit more pressure and that's part of the answer as to why we increased guidance where we did and we're comfortable with it.

Great, thanks for that color. And moving on the CapEx side, I noticed that in 2Q, it was slightly higher than the usual run rate and I was wondering if that, can you get a little bit more color and if that was a one-time thing and how we should expect capex to trend for the rest of the year.

Sure. Yes, the original guidance anticipated an increase to $1,600 a unit range and I expect that to be closer to a run rate than where we were. There are numerous factors that have driven this, the same factors that drive the increase in development costs that we talked about on a regular basis, increased labor and materials costs. So that's the big factor and then of course some of the newer buildings with the systems and other things that we have that we bought and built, they also typically run higher in capex on a per unit basis, not a percentage but a per unit basis.

Hi, good morning out there guys.

Good morning, Rich.

So I've got a two-parter on affordability here. So I heard the stats, Mike, that you put out in terms of affordability and rent growth and income growth. I'm wondering if you're actually seeing affordability improve empirically in terms of the new leases that you're signing, if you're noticing that in sort of the screening mechanism. And then separately from that, we've started to see home values and home prices in the Bay Area maybe roll over a little bit, maybe in other West Coast markets as well. Is there any read-through on affordability related to that or is that sort of a separate issue?

Those are all excellent questions. It's challenging to delve deeply into the affordability issue. We've been monitoring this for nearly 30 years, and it's one of those broader market indicators that we recognize as very significant. To illustrate, between 2010 and 2015, rent growth was 20% higher than household income growth. This disparity has contributed to the concerns surrounding affordability that we've been discussing for the past few years. Looking at the data from 2010 to now, the difference in rent and income growth has decreased to 13%, indicating significant progress in the rent-to-income ratio. This is crucial and is among the top factors we consider for these markets. We have seen substantial rent increases over extended periods. From 2012 to 2017, our same-store revenue rose by an average of 7% annually. It's important to note that incomes were relatively stagnant following the financial crisis, which reinforces the significance of this issue in relation to home prices. As you mentioned, home prices are down 6% in San Jose and up 3% in San Francisco, with our other markets falling between those two figures. Interestingly, the previous year showed the complete opposite trend with remarkable home price growth, and it seems there's a lagging effect tied to interest rates. Consequently, I believe we haven't seen home prices rebound sufficiently given the significantly lower interest rates, so I anticipate improvement in these home price figures moving forward due to mortgage rates.

Okay. Yeah, I think that's helpful color. And my second one here, maybe as a follow-on topic. Do you care to opine at this point in the calendar on the Rental Affordability Act that is I think currently gathering signatures as far as the ballot initiative for next year?

Yeah. You know, the, we keep track of it. And for those that don't know what that is, it's essentially the industry is calling it Prop 10 2.0 and where there is a potential for a ballot proposition that would amend Costa-Hawkins in, on the 2020 ballot. And there has been a certain amount of money that has been contributed by Michael Weinstein to support a signature-gathering effort. It's, I think, too early to tell exactly where that's going, Rich. We obviously track it pretty carefully and we kept our entity, Californians for Responsible Housing alive and well and organized in case of this. So we'll wait and see what happens. And because there's also the Assembly Bill 1482 which is the statewide rent control law, which started out as an anti-gouging type of proposal and it's currently in the Senate and it would cap rents at CPI plus 7, at least that's the current proposal. Again, it's in the Senate, could still be modified from here. But I think that that is pretty indicative of a better balance with respect to the discussion on housing, on the need for housing in California. Again, going back to the governor's campaign, campaigning on producing 3.5 million homes in California by 2025, that's about 600,000 a year. By way of background, we produced about 80,000 a year for the last 10 years on average. And so he has recognized the need for more housing and at the same time trying to balance that with the protection of the tenant base as well. So I think it's a more balanced discussion and I think that we will have to see where these things come. You're going to see action on AB 1482 long before you get an update on what might happen with respect to Prop 10 2.0.

All right. Very good. Thanks, Mike.

Hey, good morning out there. Mike, maybe just following up that last question on the whole rent control and discussion on California. Are you seeing any seepage of what happened here in New York where the restrictions and then in the regulations that were passed when they renewed rent control were so onerous that it actually discourages landlords and housing? Are you seeing any of that creep into the California political landscape where California wouldn't want to be outmaneuvered by New York or is it where Sacramento sort of being led by Governor Newsom that wants to promote housing and is more cognizant of factors or legislation that would inhibit that?

It's a good question, Alex, and thank you for that. I guess in New York, my perception is that that all happened very suddenly and there was a proposal and it was passed almost before people could have time to properly react to it and understand the unintended consequences of it. Whereas I think it's different in California because we've had this dialog going back to the Prop 10 especially a year ago, and in so doing, this dialog regarding rent control in general has been ongoing. And again, this is why I think the governor's comments are so important noting, another thing he noted was that there is a perverse incentive not to produce housing in California for a variety of reasons, and again he has recognized the need for balance in that equation. So I think we have a better discussion here and I think that it's been thought-through at a greater level than probably it has in some of the other states around the country.

Okay. And then moving to Seattle or actually Bellevue specifically with all the investment that Amazon is doing in Bellevue and focusing their office development there, are you guys sort of reassessing how you want to play the Seattle market, do you think that we would see you guys do more investment in Bellevue or maybe your existing footprint, you're happy with where it is based on the growth that Amazon is looking at for Bellevue?

It all depends on yields and risk. We love Bellevue. We love downtown Seattle. I'd say in general, we're becoming more suburban focused than urban focused because of a number of issues. There's more supply in the urban core. I'd say actually both with respect to office development but also with respect to apartment development. And so trying to avoid the cities that are having these large concessions because you've got three, four, or five lease ups competing with one another at the same time. So it's difficult to project forward that far. These concessions literally change on a weekly basis. And so I think our strategy is evolving too. Hey, let's just try to avoid the areas that have massive development given that the rent growth in those areas has been suppressed for pretty long periods of time now. So we will continue to monitor and I can't predict whether Bellevue or Seattle is going to outperform until we're a lot closer to looking at a deal.

Good morning. John, you talked about the development pipeline and concessions earlier. When you layer on new supply and stuff that was completed a year ago that might be having its first renewal, the five developments that you either currently have in lease-up or will in the next quarter or so, are any of those of a concern in terms of concessions that you guys think that you're going to need to lease some up? I think you said Milo was currently one month free. And then I think it was Station Green, the first phase was six weeks. Anything that's going to be outside of that sort of range?

Let me provide a broad response. When we deliver vacant units, we are highly incentivized, which explains why many developers are offering free rent. It's not that the market is weak; rather, they are aiming to rapidly achieve significant absorption. The two options are to fill vacant units or to accept lower net effective rates with qualified residents to maintain cash flow. We experience similar economics, though it differs when we own the asset, particularly with our same-store properties. We participate in development and aim to adapt to what works best in the market and what consumers want. I anticipate that we will increase our concessions over time, as is typically the case as we approach the fourth quarter. These decisions are made daily and reviewed intensively on a weekly basis, so we'll monitor that closely. However, based on our pre-leasing performance, the markets remain strong, and we are optimistic about the status of all our developments.

Any of them facing extreme new supply as Mike was alluding to before?

No, we are not in a situation where we have extreme competition at this point.

Okay. And then, Angela, if I look at the same-store expense growth year-to-date 2.9% sort of implies a low ones for the back half of '19, is that all on property taxes or is there something else that's going to drive same-store expenses down to the low 1% range for the back half of 2019?

Yeah, you're right, it's actually mostly driven by property taxes. So between the millage rate coming in lower than expected, and we of course have some refunds that we're recognizing in the second half. Those are the two key drivers.

Okay. So if I can squeeze one more in. Maybe other than market concentration, what's keeping you guys sort of BBB+ from the rating agencies versus an A- like Avalon and Equity?

Believe it or not, it's really market concentration. That's the key driver. Yeah, I think the rating agencies are so focused on the number of states versus the relevance of the actual state. I mean, California as we all know has like the third-largest GDP and is incredibly diverse and large. Having said that, I think just the fact that it's one state is what's tough with the rating agencies to underwrite.

Hi, good morning. Google announced it was looking to develop about $15 billion of real estate in the Bay Area with Lendlease, it sounds like a significant chunk of that is earmarked for residential. Do you see this as a significant medium- to long-term supply the threat that could be large enough to potentially affect rent growth, market rent growth in the region?

Yeah, this is Mike. They're not alone. Microsoft has a program. I think Stanford University has some discussions about mainly student housing, but there are some other proposals of corporations getting involved in housing. It remains difficult to figure out exactly what's going to happen in the short term. I don't think there'll be any actual short-term impact; these are mostly over longer periods of time. And I think a lot of the corporate housing is probably strategically important to them and their hiring given that one of the key reasons not to come to the Bay Area is concern over housing and housing price. So if you can assure someone that's relocating to the Bay Area that they have a home, I think that's a major positive in the hiring process. Overall, I don't think that any of this given the cost of housing and the size of these programs, I don't think it's going to have a material impact on the markets, but again we'll face that down the road.

Got it. And then my second question is going back to your development pipeline. You've got an extraordinary amount of lease-up and development coming in the Bay Area in the next six quarters, including 500 Folsom, and you talked today a lot about the strong environment in those markets. Do you think your yields on those could outperform your underwriting and can you share where the deals are penciling today?

I think we've discussed stabilized yields a bit, and I would reiterate that they are likely to stabilize around the 5.5 range. This isn't the case today or even next year, but it should be a few years down the line. As you know, development deals often include retail components, which are crucial since many people prefer to move into completed projects, so we want all construction finished. Therefore, that yield is a few years away. For the next year or so, I expect to see some positive growth, but not significant changes.

And is that 5.5 yield number on trended rents or on rents today?

No, on stabilized rents.

Stabilized rents. Okay, thank you.

Hey, good morning. A quick follow-on question on the lease-up properties coming in getting delayed, did that explicitly cause an increase to the FFO guidance where some of these properties you might have some initial drag, obviously, taking on the expenses, mid lease-up that might now occur or early next year? Is there any kind of dynamic there in '19 versus '20 with those development projects getting pushed out?

Yeah, Drew on the FFO guidance, the delay impact which ultimately I think you're looking at the higher capitalized interest on our S-14, it's a couple of pennies, let's say $0.02 for this year. So what that means is, of course, some of that dilution is going to get pushed next year as we continue to lease out, but I think the one positive is that this dilution instead of being as concentrated as we saw that occur this year, it'll be more moderated and it will just occur over time similar to the impact of supply delivery, that if they all come at once it's obviously much tougher to digest if they were to, say, happen more ratably over time. It's much more manageable.

Okay, thanks for that. And I guess one more topic kind of related to the corporate housing question. Should some of these projects really, the rubber meet the road, and some of them getting titled, some of them proceed, would Essex under the right economic conditions ever consider partnering with one of the corporations in some kind of project? And I guess, what would you need to see for that to make sense for Essex?

Drew, this is Mike. Many of the corporate housing proposals have included a request for proposal process, which may provide opportunities to collaborate with some of these companies and increase their visibility within the development community. Therefore, it is likely we won't be the only ones involved, and there will be multiple projects over time. It is still too early to determine the exact implications of this. We closely monitor the total amount of competing properties that will enter the rental market in the future. If we notice a significant impact, the construction period will give us time to respond. The terms of potential partnerships can vary depending on the deal specifics, and we frequently engage in joint venture developments. These arrangements are complex, so it's difficult to quantify them precisely. We will also consider the yield premiums on acquisitions based on current market rents, which I mentioned earlier. Whether we proceed through a joint venture or independently will depend on the level of risk involved, the financial resources available for speculation, and the duration of the pre-development phase before construction begins. Each deal presents its own unique circumstances.

Thank you, operator, and I'd like to thank everyone for joining the call today. We hope that you were having a safe and enjoyable summer, and we look forward to seeing many of you at the BofA Merrill Lynch Conference in September. Have a good day.