Keith Guericke
Management
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to our second quarter call. This morning, we'll be making some comments in the call which are not historical facts, such as our expectations regarding markets, financial results, and real estate projects. These statements are forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially. Many of these risks are detailed in the company's filings with the SEC; we encourage you to review them. Joining me today on the call will be Mike Schall, Mike Dance and John Eudy. Again, we are going to try and keep our comments short so that we are all going to speak. Included in the earnings release on our website, you'll find our market forecast for 2008. These forecasts are unchanged from the previous quarter. Also included with the earnings release is a schedule entitled "New Residential Supply" which includes total residential permit activity for the larger US metros as well as information on median home prices and affordability, as compared to the markets that we operate in. A note of interest, single-family permits for our combined markets, the Essex markets are down approximately 40% from the same quarter in 2007. This represents about 0.4% of existing stock. Multi-family is approximately the same. In order to get those details, you can visit our website under Investors and Media. Last night, we reported another strong quarter with core FFO increasing 11.7% per share. For the quarter, the portfolio grew revenues 5.1% greater than the same quarter in '07 and 1.3% on a sequential basis. Again, I think the strong performance just demonstrates the fundamentals of our supply-constrained markets. In the second quarter of 2008, we saw some signs of stabilization in our California existing home sales markets. Even though prices were down 21%, and…