UDR, Inc. (UDR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the 3:40 p.m. session at Citi's 2023 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Eric Wolfe, Citi Research, and we are pleased to have with us UDR Inc.'s CEO, Tom Toomey. This session is for Citi clients only, if media or other individuals are on the line, please disconnect now. Disclosures are available on the webcast and at the AV desk. And as a reminder, the questions I will ask during the session will not reflect our implied views or opinions for myself or Citi research and are being asked for informational purposes only. For those in the room or the webcast, you can sign on to liveqa.com and enter code Citi 2023 to submit any questions if you do not want to raise your hand. Tom, I'll turn it over to you to introduce your company and your management team, give some opening remarks, and then we'll go into Q&A.

Great. And thanks, Eric. And certainly, Nick, thank you. And let me compliment you on your playlist. This is one of the best after 25 years of this. That's a dang good playlist.

Thank you.

With me today is Joe Fisher, President and CFO, to my right; and Mike Lacy, Senior Vice President and Head of Operations; and also in the room is Chris Van Ens, who heads our ESG and government regulation. Please [indiscernible] Chris, if you want. And Trent Trujillo also going through the room. And if you don't have one of our presentations, please raise your hand. We'll get you one or it's online at the web. Fair enough. So there, let me start off with, again, we recently posted and updated our presentation on our website, which includes both strategic and operational updates that summarize how UDR has outperformed in the past and is positioned to continue to perform well in the years ahead, thanks to our best-in-class operations, continuous innovation and diverse menu of capital allocation options. So a brief overview of UDR in its business. Now we're in our 51st year as a company. UDR is a $22 billion S&P 500 Apartment REIT that operates a diverse portfolio in 20 markets with nearly 60,000 homes. Primary attributes of that portfolio is diversification, both across markets, submarkets urban, suburban, A and B as well as price points; second, best-in-class operations, continuous innovation and flexible approach to our capital allocation around an array of opportunities that allow us to perform well and create value in any environment. And lastly, all supported by an investment-grade balance sheet with over $1 billion in liquidity. Our focus as a company is consistently generating above-average peer cash flow growth, which translates into superior TSR. Our durable operating and capital allocation competitive advantages and execution have contributed to our status of a full cycle investment. We have generated better than peer average FFOA per share growth in 7 of the last 10 years. And over the course of my 22 years as CEO of UDR, we delivered an annual average total stockholder return of 11%.

Great. So we've been starting each session with the same question, which is what are the top 3 reasons to buy your stock today?

I think one innovative culture that embraces technology and change, such as our next-generation operating platform and future initiatives, which Mike will detail in much more length but we see a great deal of potential inside of our operating culture and platform. The second, our operating strategies that have and we expect to lead continued relative outperformance and those are detailed in our presentations on Pages 5, 7 and 8. And lastly, diversification, specifically the variety of value creation mechanisms geographic footprint and price points that contributed outperformance over time.

Okay. So let's start with operations because that's, I think, where the majority of investor questions are coming, look through the presentation. It sounds like from your presentation, correct me wrong, but you're tracking in line with your 3.3% to 3.9% guidance expectation for blended rates in the first quarter. But can you maybe just give us an update on sort of where things are tracking month-to-month and you brought up in your earnings call that you have sort of 70% kind of visibility around this point. So as you look out a couple of months, maybe you could just update sort of what that sort of visibility looks like, what type of growth we should be seeing as we get into the peak leasing season.

Sure. I'll take that. Thanks, Eric. To start the year, we have seen traffic increase and coming off of 4Q where we saw a little bit more seasonality, it's been beneficial to see traffic returning to our markets, seeing it a little bit more on the coastal versus Sunbelt today. That being said, occupancy is still running in that 96.6%, 96.7% range. And we are seeing an increase in our blended rate growth on a month-over-month basis as we go into March. So, so far, things are promising. We feel good about where we're at today.

And can you share what those numbers are? Or?

Sure. When you think about new lease growth, we were slightly negative in January, we're flat in February. And then for renewals, we were right around 8% in January. We ended up by about 7% for February.

And as you look towards March and April, obviously, you're signing leases 30 to 60 days in advance. So you continue see that acceleration? And sort of if you have any sort of thoughts on sort of forward demand indicators that you're looking at traffic to your website, traffic to your properties. Anything that tells you about what you're seeing on the ground and how things could look in 60 to 90 days.

Sure. I would tell you right now, we are sending out renewals. We just finished up May, and we're still sending them out in that 7% range. Over the last few months, we have seen market rents growing on a sequential month-over-month basis. So we do expect that to translate into more new lease growth, and that gives us the confidence that our blended rate growth will continue to grow throughout leasing season.

And you mentioned that your growth in leads dip negative in 4Q. I mean, in your opinion, I mean, was that something to do with the environment. A few of your peers referenced that there was quite a bit of negative absorption in 4Q, is that an anomaly? Or is that something that you think could return back in the second or third quarter?

Yes. What we experienced was it was mainly in the coast and really specific to Pacific Northwest, where it did slow down a little bit in the fourth quarter. What we experienced and what we heard from the ground was people are just kind of waiting to see what was happening? Are they going to lose their job? How does this impact to them? What we experienced, though, not a lot of move-outs due to it. So we didn't have a lot of exposure to the industries that we're laying people off. And so what it felt like was pent-up demand. So as we turned the corner, we went into January, February, all of a sudden traffic started to return, more visits to our properties and that translated into market rent growth, holding our occupancy and quite frankly holding our line on renewal growth and continuing to send out pretty aggressive rates going forward. So it was pleasing to see that things started to pick up in the first, call it, 2 weeks of January.

Eric, if I could add a couple of comments. If you think about the last 4 years, post 2019, we've been through a lot. There are no normal operating metrics for those windows of time, '20, '21, '22, if you will. When we look at our business today in '23 and contrasted to '19, which is probably our last normal year, business is actually stronger in '23 than it was in '19. One, we're dealing with a healthy consumer, a very, very solid employment picture and outlook. And you're seeing that reflected in both our traffic pattern and our pricing pattern. So for us, 23 feels like a really, really good year for a variety of reasons in the last normal period that we can measure it against, it's better than that window of time.

Is there any other period that just reminds you of you just think this is sort of a unique point in time. I mean it's -- there's a lot going on in the housing market. There's a lot of changes going on with migration patterns. As you look out the next couple of years, I think I know it's sort of a crystal ball type of question, but sort of do you think that the people in this room will have overestimated just the sort of negative aspects of your business. When I talk to people, they're very secure about a recession coming. They're sort of looking out and seeing that there's going to be supply in sort of 3 to 4 quarters. Thinking that new lease rates might dip negative, Sort of how do you think it's all going to play out when we're sitting here next year, and we're asking the sort of same crystal ball type questions.

I think it's fair to ask that and my crystal ball is as good as anyone else's in the room, but I'll give you our theory, at least mine and ask Joe if like to tag on. First is, I believe we're in a capital markets recession not an employment recession. And I think the employment picture will continue to be very, very good for us. The capital markets recession, it's a war against inflation. We'll see when that tug-of-war ends. How it ends, whether it's a soft landing, a hard landing or they're able to just get through this. And second, not to disappoint everybody in the room, 24 is around the corner, and it's an election cycle. So the dynamics around 23 for me feel very good fundamentally in our business as a necessity business. Housing is. And the employment picture drives our business. So I feel really good about the 23%. By the time we get to '24, we're all going to be talking about elections and tax cuts and whatever else the agenda is. but the economic recession, I believe, will end in '20 -- excuse me, the capital markets recession will end because I do think they're going to win against inflation.

One of the main fears, I think and the questions we're getting asked is on supply in the Sunbelt. I think the thought is that there's been such strong demand for the last couple of years. It's been able to sort of sustain any type of impact of supply. But if that demand wanes at all, it goes down and you're in a couple of quarters later from now, and you're seeing high supply, it could have a pretty detrimental impact. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but maybe you could just give your view on supply in the Sunbelt, when it could become a problem whether that's later this year or into next year?

Yes. I'll Jimp in and then Mike can maybe clean me up. I'd say starting on the supply side, we do expect more supply, obviously, in 2023. So Sunbelt markets kind of up 10% to 20%, call it, 3.5% of stock on average. But you do need to look at total housing stock as well. So when you have 2/3 of housing coming through the single-family side, you've seen that really start to fall off a cliff in terms of new starts, deliveries, et cetera. So all supplies up in multi next year or in 2023 rather, you actually do have total housing stock coming down. The other piece of the equation is relative affordability. So any incremental households that are formed, you're definitely not seeing them go into the single-family side, at least on the ownership side. They'll buy us towards rentership, be it multifamily or single-family, and we've seen that when you look at our turnover stats. Traditionally, you're at 12%, 13% move-outs to buy a home, we're running pretty consistently at 8% at this point in time. Same dynamic exists in terms of move-outs to rent single-family homes. Those have come down. So I do think you got a couple of dynamics that help insulate on that front relative to what expectations are. That said, if you do pull demand and wage growth out of the equation, it's definitely going to be more of a headwind in terms of market growth. We've been pretty consistent that at some point, we were going to see that crossover in demand based on the forward indicators we saw, so we've been talking about cost catching up and at some point crossing over relative to Sunbelt. We are seeing that. We expect it to take place here in the first quarter or second quarter. As market rent growth has been better when you look at both Coast over the last 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. The earn-in was better for Sunbelt, a loss to lease is better for coastal. So you have some dynamics where we're setting up for a cross over here pretty soon.

I guess thinking beyond this year, is there any view on sort of which markets you're most bullish on, whether they're in the Sunbelt or coast, obviously you have a lot of your peers now, of course, moving into the Sunbelt and trying this diversification strategy. But just curious whether there are certain markets that you think are going to be sort of weaker or stronger for a longer period of time.

Yes. I'd say longer term, it's pretty hard to get caught up in the recency bias of Sunbelt. I know that's kind of the fad over the last 3 years, and everyone now wants to rotate into Sunbelt. We stayed fairly diversified throughout. We picked some Sunbelt markets when we were deploying capital in '19 to '21. We also picked a couple of coastal markets. So we look at a predictive analytics framework on the [ quant ] side, and then we have a qualitative overlay with a number of factors. There are always markets within each one of those regions that look good. So I'd say on the East Coast right now, we generally like D.C. area and then Boston. Down to the Sunbelt, we like Dallas as well as Austin. If you go coastal Northern California, with the exception of the regulatory footprint, looks pretty good on the quant side. So you got pick and choose your municipalities if you are going to go Northern California. So -- and say market-wise, it's a mixed bag. There is no clear cut over the next 3 years, it's got to be East, West or Sunbelt. And then it just comes back to where would we deploy, you're going to look at market and then you're going to look at asset type. And I think we've got a pretty good page in here, yes, if you look at the presentation on Page 9, we go back and look at the almost $3 billion of acquisitions that we did back in '19 to '21, and it shows you the value creation composition from those acquisitions. Good chunk of it comes from market and submarket selection. The rest of it comes from innovation and ops. And a lot of that is due to you buy a deal next door, a deal down the street. That's how you get more scale and efficiency out of our platform and enhance the NOI yield. So it's a little bit about market selection, a lot about which assets can you find in the market that are underperforming.

Eric, if I could add too, is just when you think about just the market fundamentals and all the converging markets right now in terms of blends and occupancy, it really comes down to what you're doing differently and so we've been focused heavily on innovation. And I think you can see in our guidance, we pushed another 50 basis points through this year. A lot of that's already in the works. We're executing on it today. And I think that's going to be the difference maker as we move forward.

I think we want to get into innovation, certainly, but maybe just on the regulatory overlay. How are you thinking about the regulatory environment today? And how does that impact both operations as well as these investment decisions?

Can you repeat that? I didn't hear the first part?

Yes, it's on the regulatory environment. You've mentioned the overlay on top of the data analytics model. So really how you think about giving that overlay in the regulatory environment today?

Yes. So it's one of the cold data factors along with things like climate change, business friendliness, fiscal health of that municipality, all of that, that kind of layers into what I'd say is somewhat more gut feel than it is quant. But trajectory wise, you can figure out where it's going. So it does play into our thinking. So as I mentioned, like an Oracle is something that predictive analytics or quant-based models like. I think we'd have a pretty tough discussion right now in deploying new capital into Northern California, just given how tenant-friendly they have gone. So it's going to weigh on our decisions more so than it has in the past clearly. It's not to say you're going to redline a certain market, but you're definitely going to have certain submarkets or municipalities that are more challenged. It's a revenue opportunity kind of wise. We've been talking a lot about where bad debt has been. We're at 98.5% collected over time on our billed revenue. Traditionally, we'd be 99.5% plus in a normal environment. I think we do get some of that back, but definitely not all of that back over the next couple of years. You have resident-friendly regulations such as addiction diversion programs, slower moving court processes, they definitely impeded us from getting back to 99.5-plus. So a minor tailwind but not necessarily the panacea that some expect.

With regard to Northern California, I mean, most of your peers when I asked this question today said that nothing has really changed from their perspective. in terms of viewing the market as being structurally different, whether it was from a regulatory perspective, it's always been a tenant-friendly place or from a demand perspective given some of the recent layoffs. But it sounds like you're saying that it actually in your model, and I know that you guys have been sort of updating your model using predictive analytics and qualitative analysis. It sounds like it actually has changed. And so maybe you could just go into greater depth about Northern California and whether you think it's may be wise to actually sell down out of that given your view?

I mean, there's puts and takes as with every market. So one of the dynamics you've seen is rent to income throughout our portfolio has remained relatively static. So even though we've had really good rent growth, we'd have really good income growth. There are different discrepancies with end markets. So Sunbelt has gotten more stretched on the rent to income, but go to Northern California, it's actually come back a little bit. So you actually have more relative affordability in Northern California, which is a net positive. So from a demand perspective, there's a positive there. The negative side is we do think that you do have more of a structural impediment when it comes to regulatory. It's always been challenging. There's always certain submarkets, municipalities that are more aggressive in resident friendliness than others. So you definitely want to avoid those. But it has changed. And I think there's a little bit more of a structural impediment in terms of what's the total NOI that you can capture going forward. How much effort you have to put forth to capture the NOI. So there has been a change, but it's not to say it's uninvestable by any means because rent-to-income ratio and demand is still there. In San Francisco, I mean, we've talked about it, whether you look at 3-month, 6-month, 12-month trends. It really comes down to that or New York is the best 2 markets in our portfolio. So while a lot of headlines are focused on tech and layoffs, the reality is that our portfolio has shifted in terms of tenant composition within Nor Cal, much less in terms of tech exposure than we had pre-COVID. Those jobs obviously dispersed and went to other markets. We also had biotech take over. And so we have a lot more residents in that part of the universe at this point. So it's a little different dynamic, but it's been a really strong market despite all the headlines that we like to focus on.

And on the call, you talked about looking more at JV Capital decided to grow. Obviously, that's the product of where your own cost of capital is today. So I mean we'll get into that in a second. Can you just give us a sense for the level of scale that you would be looking at with new JVs, the type of opportunities you would look at, how you would structure them, just anything in terms of like -- and also like lastly, if you can, when we could maybe expect something to close, whether it's going to be in the next 6 months or so?

Yes, fair. So maybe stepping back and just the thesis behind it. We've been talking about this for several years internally with our Board. So we've had an action plan waiting to be put into place. But the reality is that 50% of the time is a multifamily. We traded a nice premium to NAV, 50% of the time, we don't. During '19 to '21, we had a great cost of equity. We went out and deployed that and we kind of showed that on Page 9, that accretion. So this is all about how do you basically take the other 50% of the cycle and always have that flywheel of innovation and value creation going. And so finding alternative sources of capital from joint venture structures makes a lot of sense in that respect. So we're out there on 2 fronts at this point. One is on the operating or asset acquisition side and one is in what we call the developer capital program or our [indiscernible] lending platform. We're looking for joint ventures on both so on the operating side, trying to find a long-term 50-50 JV partner, somebody that will meet us on price from a term and a pricing perspective. But more importantly, it's going to have capital flows and plans to grow multifamily over time with us. So if we get portfolio XYZ done to start the transaction, we want to make sure that they have capital to come in beyond that and continue to grow for the next 3 to 5 years within a 10-plus year hold period. So that's going to allow us to enhance scale so we can get more efficiency on the operations side. Buy more of the deals next door. You obviously get a fee stream along with it, enhance the ROE of each dollar that we invest. And then you get the value creation of not sitting back on our hands in this environment. Instead, we can go buy some of these undermanaged assets and create cash flow there. So that's the thesis on the operating side, developer capital side, kind of the same thing. We've got a $0.5 billion portfolio today. We don't want to take it from $0.5 billion to $1 billion. we'd like to constrain our equity but enhance the ROE on it. So if we can go find a partner that wants to do a 75-25 type of investment structure on those same investments, we're going to enhance the cash flow growth of the company, enhanced diversification and get better returns over time. So in terms of timing, we're out there talking to partners on both of them. It's TBD because these are really long-term transactions we're talking about. So it's not easy like a disposition of just here's the bid date, give us your bids and we'll select the winner. This is a very elongated courtship or dating process where in their offices, get keep individuals. They're in our offices. So hopefully, we get something to the finish line, but it doesn't have to happen, but we'd like it to.

Based on what you're saying, it sounds like this is sort of north of $1.5 billion, $2 billion type opportunity over time, I mean, not upfront, but perhaps over time.

Yes. Over time, we've been comfortable. I mean if you go back a couple of years, we had $4 billion combined assets in the MetLife joint venture. We've whittled that down to under $2 billion through some asset swaps that we did back in '19, so we've been comfortable with much larger transactions. So $4 billion on a smaller enterprise back then. Today, it's $2 billion. I think initially, what you're looking at is probably $1 billion or less on an initial seed portfolio but potential to grow over time depending on partners' capacity, our own capacity.

Got it. And we have a couple of audience questions. First one is with new trends you're seeing regarding new features you're adding to developments and redevelopments and then they didn't say this, but I guess, part of it is because now that people are working from home, what they demand is probably different than what they demanded 3 years ago. But if you could just talk about how you're approaching development in terms of what you're offering residents today versus, say, a couple of years ago?

I think every development and redevelopment has a customer focus. And so there's no one box fits all. Trends that I do see is continuing to look at. People are enjoying just that common space element, whether it's a conference room, whether it's get out of my apartment, take a Zoom call. So I think that trend is going to continue to grow. The third is on the exteriors. We're just seeing more common area people like to get outside and socialize. So no big movie theaters, those types of things, no. I think we're finding people want to get together. And every community has a different template, different solution.

I think to around platform and what we've done in the last several years of fewer individuals on site with roughly 20% of the portfolio with nobody on site each day. We're trying to build the portfolio around more of that. So you take our recent DC development in union market. That one has a lease-up staff, but no permanent office. So the office spaces throughout the portfolio generally can be repurposed or just not built on a new development, knowing that we're not going to have the demand for that space to actually utilize, you convert that space into some of those common area. Similarly, you got to think about the tech packages. We're going to do smart rents on every new development, put the power into the individual's hands. So it fits with self-catering and everything we want to do platformize. We got building wide WiFi that we're rolling out at this point across the portfolio. So that's going to be on all new developments because it doesn't power the resident WiFi across the entire property, not just in their unit, and they show up day one and they have it. Well, it's fairly profitable to ourselves as we think it's probably going to be another $15 million to $20 million of NOI within the next 3 years. So there's a couple of tech-related things that help support the platform that we're trying to do to.

Got it. And I think the second question here relates to some of your tech initiatives. Since in your presentation, you mentioned the importance of advanced data science, I'm assuming also predictive analytics. Can you elaborate on that? And maybe on top of that, just since we're on the subject, sort of what are the main sort of innovations that you're focused on within the space? And what should investors be most excited about when you think about how technology looks today for your business versus in a couple of years?

Let me take the ESG piece. I mean the ESG piece is critical to our success. And you can see from '22 where we got a 5-star rating from GRESB and continue to be 1 or 2 in the space. with respect to our focus and scoring of ESG. As we look towards the future, I think '23 science-based targets, we've measured the portfolio. We're going through the certification process of that. And where we find the Holy Grail or the opportunity is the Scope 3. And Joe mentioned earlier, the in-unit WiFi initiative. We see a future where every unit has a hub, high speed, and then we can attach a sensor. We own that data then about the consumption pattern of every apartment home. So in essence, in a UDR community down the road, you're going to be able to say, here's my carbon footprint on your phone and here's the things you can do to bring it down. The power of giving the customer choice is a winning formula in any business model, and we see that as the biggest initiative. In the interim scopes 1 and 2, we'll continue to look at solar, wind, type cogenerating aspects where we can sell it back to the grid, can get an ROI. I think Chris and team have done a fabulous job of bringing our footprint down. When we look at the long-term targets, we think they're not easy, they will be exceeded. It would take us some time. But we're building that footprint and you will the technology to enable that. And -- and I would envision if this trend continues to move forward as an industry, we will all be sitting here in 5, 10 years and saying, what is your carbon footprint in your apartment home or your single-family home? And what are you doing to bring it down? I think that's what we're building towards other initiatives?

Yes. I'll give you a couple of examples, things we're really excited about. And over the last couple of years, you've heard us talk about the customer experience, just understanding what's happening. So it's paramount, you have to have ownership of your data because we all have so many different systems to be able to compile and aggregate that all into one place is a must. So the last couple of years, we've gone through over 350,000 data points to be able to understand the life cycle of our resident. So the moment they're searching our website to becoming an application, moving in throughout that process from a service standpoint all the way to the point where you may be moving out, we want to know what that trajectory is. We want to know what the likelihood is of you renewing or potentially being a turnover and we're watching this at the unit level, resident level, aggregating it to the property and the market. And again, being able to change that trajectory to increase our retention is something we're highly focused on. How that relates to our pricing system and everything else is something we're just now scratching the surface on. You'll see a little bit of benefit in 2023 and more to come in '24 and '25. In addition to that, really excited about the service side of the house, quite frankly, during the platform. We rolled out a lot of things. We didn't give enough technology to our service teams and being able to give them more information, understanding what's happening is going to make us more efficient, and it should lead to R&M savings. A few examples of this I would tell you, first and foremost, it's understanding what's happening with the service requests. When somebody submits hey, my washer dryer is not working. We want to be able to acknowledge that we heard you. We're going to be there in 24, 48 hours, and it's going to be taken care of. They want that transparency. We want to be able to provide it. Second to that, understanding what's happening with it? Somebody been in there and repaired this thing 10x. If so, why? Is the useful life thought, should we replace it, giving that information to our service techs is huge. And I'd say last but not least is just as you think about the turn process, for us, we've bended out all of. Our turns over the last 2 years, we've completely taken this out of the hands of our employees. We've sent it out there. Lost a little bit of visibility. And over the next 2 months, we will have this technology in place that allows us to see when is a vendor coming on the property, how long is it going to take them to do the paint, to do the car wash and how can we compress those days. So we'll be able to say, Painter come in this morning from 8 to 2 and then from 2 to 4, we can get in there and do the rest of the work. We want to bring our vacant days down. This is one of those avenues to do it. So I'd say the customer experience project, the service side of the equation and Joe mentioned what we're doing with the Internet are probably the 3 biggest things that are going to drive value, not only in '23, but beyond that.

And so on the customer selection or customer experience side, you take all these data points, the 350,000, you determine that this is a great renter, they're higher income, more likely to stay, pay on time or whatever the output is, what do you do then is you just increase your marketing to them to try to get demand? Are you lower the lease level because you realize, hey, they're probably a great customer over the long term? Like what's the output of knowing that someone is a potentially great tenant?

There's a lot of ways to look at this. Just one example as of late, we're going through all this information. We had a resident who's been with us for 3 years, seeing our praises nonstop, but they were late on one payment. We threw the book. Easy to waive $100 fee, not create that friction, if you will, and just change that trajectory. So there will be times where we waive some fees, maybe offer a market rate renewal growth and then on the flip side, we have individuals that tend to create more noise and they're causing problems for other residents. We want to identify that. And if you're going to live with us, quite frankly, you're going to have to pay for it.

Eric, maybe a couple of things to back up and think about. Recognize this industry, multifamily is a commodity business and a necessity. Ask yourself a couple of things. What is long-term success look like in a commodity business, that is a necessity. In the end, what it looks at, do you listen to your customer and listen to your associate and adjust your business model? Foundationally, if you don't do those things, you're never going to evolve and succeed and you have to have a culture that supports that. The second long-term financial metrics prove that the winners in a commodity business are either the lowest cost of capital or the highest operating margin. In our case, we've picked the highest operating model margin which is, in essence, supported by a self-service model. In our lives today, self-service exists almost everywhere, retail to travel to banks. And a lot of businesses that have evolved into the self-service have stopped at the first phase. That would be your banks and airlines who really don't care about your service level. They just care about their cost structure. That was platform 1.0. The next version is what Mike is talking about, the customer experience, is that actually you become capable of anticipating your customers' behavior patterns and your service level. So if he's able to close the back door or get a better renewal notice, then he knows how much more pricing and traffic in a real time that he can push through to get incremental revenue. And then you bolt on all the other optionalities, whether that's lockers, pet areas, WiFi? We can get a greater share of the wallet. So the long-term game plan here is really simple, highest margin against public and private, will attract capital to us, and we can continue to grow and grow and grow. So I think that's a very simple overview of our business strategy and execution. We're deep into that second generation of a self-service model. It will always yield more results, and that's where we're going to lean in.

Are there any quick audience questions before we go into rapid fire. We have about a minute left. It doesn't look like any. Okay, great. So what will same-store NOI be for your property sector in 2024, not your company, but your sector?

I think the consensus is 3% to 3.5%, we'd see probably 5%.

Around 5%. Okay. Any breakdown of revenue versus expense?

No.

Okay. The first one I add that stuff. Will there be the same fewer or more apartment companies a year from now when we're doing this?

I've been getting this one right...

You have that's why I asked second or third...

Let's say, if you include the small caps and the MTR is fewer.

Okay. And then the last question is what's the best real estate decision today, buy, build, sell, redevelop or hold?

I'd lean in on what's working, technology and redevelopment.

Right. Thanks for your time.

Thank you.