Earnings Labs

Essex Property Trust, Inc. (ESS)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 30, 2008

$264.49

-1.27%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+5.93%

1 Week

-14.77%

1 Month

-15.31%

vs S&P

-3.85%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the third quarter 2008 Essex Property Trust earnings conference call. My name is [Tawanda] and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in listen only mode. We will facilitate a question and answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Mr. Keith Guericke, President and CEO.

Kevin R. Guericke

Management

Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. This morning we will be making some comments on 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 risk and uncertainty which could cause actual results to differ materially. Many of these risks are detailed in the company’s filings with the SEC and we encourage you to review them. Joining me on today’s call is Mike Schall, Mike Dance and John Eudy. Included in the earning’s release on our website you will find our market forecast for 2008. These forecasts have been revised this quarter to reflect the change in jobs and rent growth for several of our markets for 2008. Also included with our earnings release is a schedule titled 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 Essex markets. To get those details visit our website under investments and media. Last we reported a strong quarter with core FFO increasing 10.2% per share. For the quarter the portfolio grew revenue 4% greater than the same period in 2007 and 7/10% on a sequential basis. We are very pleased with that result. The recent events in the financial market has increased the level of uncertainty and the likelihood of longer periods of weak economic growth. This uncertainty will affect all metro areas and apartment markets. We believe our markets are well positioned for the long haul. The view that all California markets are experiencing the worst and the same of the housing crisis is inaccurate. Real estate is driven by local conditions. 0Our high quality of life coastal supply constraint department markets have not been…

John D. Eudy

Management

We have had on new additions to the development pipeline during the quarter and I have the following updates on our activity. Belmont Station in Los Angeles has been substantially completed and was open for occupancy on August 8th. We continue to make significant leasing progress and have leased 155 units or 56% of the property to date. The Grand in Oakland is nearing completion on budget and scheduled for occupancy in January. Our temporary leasing office will be open tomorrow and early indications are showing significant pre-leasing interest off of our website and phone bank. The building will be the only new luxury high rise rental community in its competitive market much like the Essex on Lake Merit was in Oakland when we completed it in May of 2002. As you may recall we experienced a six month lease-up of 270 units in the post 9-11 dot com era meltdown period prior to the economic rebound which began in 2003. I would expect the same type of market acceptance on the Grand. The remainder of the development pipeline and construction is on budget or less than the estimated development budget and slightly ahead of delivery time outlined in the S9 supplemental. We have added no pre-development projects or land held for future development during the quarter. On the pre-development projects we have in our pipeline all are currently leased at rates substantially below market rents and we have the flexibility to extend the leases or release should we desire to do so and extend our anticipated current scheduled start date. On land acquisition activity, we continue to be actively engaged in the market and are attempting to take advantage of any overreaction to the current economic climate and add to our land pre-development pipeline for 2014 and later deliveries.…

Michael J. Schall

Management

Last night we reported another strong quarter operationally. As you may recall, our 2008 guidance originally assumed a second half economic recovery that clearly will not occur. Given that expectation we are pleased with the performance of the portfolio especially our ability to maintain strong occupancy levels throughout our critical summer leasing season. During the quarter we experienced the following difficulties, overall sluggish employment growth especially in Southern California, localized supply issues in various submarkets including downtown Seattle, downtown Oakland and many Southern California submarkets and failed condo projects being rented as apartments. Partially offsetting these headwinds was a 24% reduction in move-outs to purchase a home. What does this mean? In the short term, weaker job growth and lease ups of a finite number of newly developed apartments and former condo projects will drive moderating multifamily fundamentals. However, longer term current trends will lead to a future point perhaps in 2010, where the coastal markets will experience a pervasive housing shortage. Typically three things happen when rental market conditions soften, first more people double up. This is difficult to track directly although we have anecdotal evidence that it is beginning to happen particularly in Southern California. Second, is a compression between A and B rents. Most of the newly developed communities in the coastal markets, including our own are A quality property. For the most part they require more concessions than anticipated indicating compression in rents. In general, B quality properties near A quality lease ups are not doing well, but are less affected than the A’s. Finally, delinquency becomes a bigger issue. For the quarter same property delinquency actually declined although we are aware of the need to remain vigilant in our collection efforts. With strong occupancy throughout our markets we are well positioned for the seasonally weaker…

Michael T. Dance

Management

My comments today will briefly discuss the basis narrowing the range of our 2008 guidance and then I’ll highlight the activities that have strengthened our financial position, add ability to meet the 2009 and 2010 debt maturities and all commitments. After the $0.01 adjustment for the right off of unamortized loan costs related to the sale of Cardiff by the Sea, the third quarter funds from operations are in line with first call’s consensus estimate and the guidance we provided on the second quarter’s call. As Mike highlighted earlier we have maintained high occupancies throughout the portfolio and we are well positioned to replicate the same property revenue results achieved in September in to the fourth quarter. The midpoint of our FFO range for 2008 assumes that there will be modest revenue growth from the apartment communities in the non-same property results with the ongoing lease up activities at Belmont Station and from the communities in the redevelopment pipeline that are close to returning to stabilized occupancy. The midpoint of the 2008 guidance assumes that short-term interest rates will continue their recent downward trends as the Fed continues its bias of reducing interest rates to stimulate the economy. To achieve the high end of guidance we will need continued rental growth in our Northern California and Seattle markets, high occupancy in Southern California at current rent levels, lower volume costs on variable rate debt, and approximately $0.05 from a combination of increases in noncore income or expense reductions. I’ll now comment on our capital plans. It is important to note that it is an Essex discipline to match fund investment decisions with the cost of capital that generates positive arbitrage and accretion to cash flow per share. Accordingly, to meet this match funding objective it has been the capital plan…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Dustin Pizzo - Banc of America Securities.

Dustin Pizzo - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · America Securities

John, can you just talk about where pricing is today on some of the land opportunities you’ve been looking at versus where say it was three to six months ago? And also, have there been any further changes to what you’d be targeting on the development side from a yield perspective or is the mid-6 range still a fair assessment there?

John D. Eudy

Management

First on land prices, they probably peaked when the condo urban guys were active in the markets two and a half years ago maybe. At that time we were boxed out. We hadn’t contracted any land in our pipeline for well over three years. My range would be between $100,000 and $150,000 at door for land was being contracted at that time and up. Currently there have not been a lot of transactions to look at so it’s difficult to gauge but I can tell you we are in negotiations on deals where we had fished around we’ll call it $1 and now we’re offering $0.50 and we’re getting a response. Where it all settles out I can’t say because we haven’t really done a deal yet in the range that makes sense. With that in combination with there’s going to be some retraction on these hard costs that we saw go up 100% over five to six years, we expect our development yields that we’re targeting are in the mid-7 range on current yield.

Dustin Pizzo - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · America Securities

Keith, as you guys look at where cap rates appear to be headed and the potential for additional stress in the market, have you moved any further down the path of considering a Fund III today?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

Fund 3 is an ongoing conversation. We have not made any more commitment than we spoke about on the last call. It’s something that we’re very interested in. We are cognizant of the benefits of it. I think the reality is many of the potential investors out there are suffering from the denominator effect so the ability to go out and be aggressive to raise a fund is problematic. Having said that, it’s on our radar.

Dustin Pizzo - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · America Securities

Mike Dance, the equity you guys issued during the quarter, was that done through some sort of drip? I just don’t recall ever seeing any press releases or SEC filings about it or anything like that. Separately can you also just touch on the expected pricing of the mortgage applications you mentioned that are in with Fannie and Freddie?

Michael T. Dance

Management

About a year and a half ago we had a prospectus supplement with a Cantor Fitzgerald control equity offering and that is the vehicle we used to raise the common equity. Current pricing from Freddie and Fannie continue between $115 and $120 debt service coverage and we’re seeing anywhere between $225 and $260 in spreads depending on the quality of the security.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Analyst for Michael Bilerman - Citigroup Investment Research.

Analyst for Michael Bilerman - Citigroup Investment Research

Analyst

Tenants. Can you provide a little bit more color in terms of any kind of consolidation you’re seeing? Do you have figures around any increases in unit occupancy?

Michael J. Schall

Management

As I said on the call, it’s all anecdotal at this point in time. We don’t have that information. I know that historically we started tracking it in Northern California in the late 90s. That was the last time it was relevant and it’s not something we track on an ongoing basis. So I don’t have any hard statistical information. Anecdotally, again Southern California has more double ups. If it becomes a greater factor, if we think that our occupancies in general are suffering because of it, we will start tracking it but we haven’t seen that need at this point in time.

Analyst for Michael Bilerman - Citigroup Investment Research

Analyst

Did you talk about delinquencies?

Michael J. Schall

Management

I did and I noted that during the quarter our delinquencies are down year-over-year.

Analyst for Michael Bilerman - Citigroup Investment Research

Analyst

Obviously there are some expenses that are fairly unpredictable going into next year, but what kind of initiatives are you taking to potentially control tax increases?

Michael J. Schall

Management

Most of our taxes are already controlled by Prop 13. Most of our portfolio is in California and Prop 13 limits California reassessment to 2% in general. I think most of our property tax exposure is limited because of Prop 13. In Seattle less so but we think that we had a big increase in assessed value last year which resulted in the property tax increases that we saw go through the quarter or really all this year. So I think it’ll be less substantially next year.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs.

Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

I wanted to follow up on the question on distress opportunities. Given the competitive nature of capital and where returns are today in perhaps other areas whether it’s debt at large, but where do you think returns will have to go in order to again raise that capital that you mentioned in there today? A further question on that is, would you anticipate raising liquidity on your own balance sheet, meaning sell assets today because Freddie and Fannie are still providing capital and you can sell at low cap rates and would you deploy that 12 to 18 months down the road?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

I think that the kinds of returns that investors are going to need in a front format are going to be in the high teens or low 20s, just expectations and alternative opportunities. I think that drives that. With respect to our own balance sheet, we sold the Cardiff by the Sea which was a very good asset and a very good market and basically it was an asset that we’d only held for a short time but the reasoning behind that was we were going to do a rehab project on it. Then about a year ago as you’ll recall our share price had dropped down to around $90 or just slightly under $90 and we thought it would be a better use of those proceeds to sell that asset and buy our shares back. As we all know, real estate’s not quite as liquid as our shares are so it took us about six or seven months to do that and by the time we got that transaction done our share prices were back up around $120. So we used those exchange dollars really to buy the property up in Seattle which was at a much better cap rate than we sold the Cardiff transaction by. Beyond that we’re sort of cleaning up some of our lesser projects down in San Diego that we acquired in the [Sachs] merger. I think right now what’s happening is that people who are actually selling are those who are in distress and started to sell into a distressed market. Unless we thought we could do substantially better, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, and the other probably that we have is that many of our assets have low bases so we have to finalize in exchange a 1031 exchange within identification period within 45 days. So we don’t have the luxury of sitting on those proceeds for 18 months to wait for better times. I think what we’re going to do is look at either joint ventures or hopefully a Fund III or if we have opportunities at $120 if we ever see that again to look at our own share price or our own equity. Those are the kinds of things I think we’re going to use to take advantage of the future.

Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Switching back to markets, the Pacific Northwest is specifically Seattle and then I guess San Francisco, can you give us a sense of with NOI growth really having been stronger than expected year-to-date, how much of a deceleration are you anticipating perhaps over the next six to nine months? Are you looking for levels to drop in half from here? Do you think that they go flat similar to where Southern California is?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

I think we’re in the process of analyzing our various submarkets and in the process of doing budgets. Clearly we’re not going to have the [effacle] growth we had this year but I think Northern California and Seattle are probably going to drop to the 3% to 4% range and so we’re still going to have decent positive growth in those two markets.

Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Why do you think you’ve still got some modest growth versus say the period after 2001?

John D. Eudy

Management

I can comment on that. The period after 2001 was extraordinary. I think we lost in terms of job losses 200,000 jobs approximately in Santa Clara County alone which was about 10% of the workforce. So those were incredible never-to-occur-again type of statistics. I don’t think that we see anything that’s remotely like that this time around. Again, there was a huge bubble you’ll recall Y2K, dot com explosion and then busting; those were extraordinary events. Again I don’t see any parallels to that at all. John Lopez, do you agree with that?

John Lopez

Analyst

That sounds right to me.

Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

On the concessions, I noticed that they were actually down in Southern California. Can you actually explain that given the pressures you’re seeing in that market?

Michael J. Schall

Management

I did comment on that. The comment was that with respect to our pricing model since we’re using a price optimizer piece of software, it generates an array of net prices. Not to say we can’t offer a concession but it tends to focus on a net pricing type model as opposed to a gross plus a concession. It’s really a function of the price optimizer software. The offset to that obviously is that economic rents are lower because our economic rents don’t include the net effect of a concession so the tradeoffs were lower concessions but also lower economic rents.

Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

And at the same time, what are you seeing from your competitors? What are the concessions like in the market now?

Michael J. Schall

Management

We’ll go to the new product of the market. There’s quite a bit of lease up activity throughout Southern California. We’re seeing in those transactions one to two months. That includes our downtown L.A. project as well. So pretty significant concession activity on all of the lease ups. Less so, typically half a month to a month on areas that do not have any lease up if any concession at all. Again, the net effect of rent sometimes does not include a concession. You just go with a lower coupon rent.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from [Michelle Coe] - UBS Securities. [Michelle Coe] - UBS Securities: I believe you said earlier that you expect next year’s FFO will not have the same growth as in ’08. I just wanted to clarify a little bit about what you said earlier. Do you anticipate FFO to grow in ’09?

Michael T. Dance

Management

What I said was we’re in the process of getting our budgets together and finalizing our projections for 2009. We aren’t in a position to give guidance. I was just signaling that you should not expect a 10% growth again. I will leave it at that but we aren’t in a position to give guidance at this moment. [Michelle Coe] - UBS Securities: I was also wondering if you could talk some more about the sale process for Coral Gardens, what kind of cap rate it sold for and if you can give us a sense of how some of the cap rates have moved over the last three months for A versus ESS?

Michael J. Schall

Management

It’s difficult to give you market information because there isn’t a very large market. As I’ve said, that asset is an asset that is sort of in a market that we’re not particularly happy with and the asset’s an older asset that we would like to just get rid of. The cap rate on that is probably about a 6 which is higher than we’ve seen in a long time. In fact it actually might be slightly higher than that. But it’s an asset that we think we can get rid of at this point and use the proceeds more productively somewhere else. There’s just not a lot of activity in those market places right now.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Karin A. Ford - KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Karin A. Ford - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

Just to follow up on Jay’s question regarding required returns. You said fund investors are looking for high teens to low 20s today. How does that compare to return expectations that you guys have when you’re buying today? Can you just talk about how you get to those returns given where you’re pricing you’re buying say the two assets you bought this quarter?

Michael J. Schall

Management

It’s very similar. Frankly what we look from a REIT perspective is we try to three things when we buy or develop a new asset and then [inaudible]: Be accretive to FFO, be accretive to our growth rate and be accretive to NAV. We don’t spend as much time looking at IRRs as maybe our outside investors’ partners would. Having said that, if you were to do the IRR calculations on the types of transactions, as you will notice last year we did almost $400 million of acquisitions. So far this year we’ve done about $80 million. So the reality is we’ve become much more selective and to find those kinds of returns is very difficult. The answer is we’re trying to find very similar kinds of returns even though we’re looking at slightly different metrics and there are very few of those transactions in the market. We think that things will get better. I shouldn’t say get better because that’s a double-edged sword but we think that those opportunities will provide themselves in the near future and we will have some. What we’re doing internally is very consistent with that.

Karin A. Ford - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

The next question is just regarding the Southern California submarkets. Did your ranking of the health of submarkets change at all? I think San Diego was near the top last quarter and Ventura was down the list. Is that still the same outlook?

Michael J. Schall

Management

I would say that San Diego remains at the top. Ventura sort of started having its difficulties sooner and it has worked through many of those difficulties. As you’ll recall it had pretty significant layoffs at Am Gen and Countrywide so the market has worked through significant amounts of those. So I’d put them and L.A. County sort of number two and then I think Orange County is the weakest at this point.

Karin A. Ford - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

The next question is on your dividend. I know you’ve got a pretty low payout ratio. Are you guys still hovering close to the minimum payout ratios to maintain your REIT status? Will you guys need to grow your dividend next year?

Michael T. Dance

Management

No. We have some room. Taxable income is about $30 million less than our current dividend.

Karin A. Ford - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

Final question on WaMu. I know you said it’s a little early to know what the impact is. Do you know what percentage of your residents are employed by WaMu?

Michael J. Schall

Management

I don’t know. We have not tracked that historically.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Salinsky.

Michael Salinsky

Analyst

Keith, I know you haven’t finished the budget for 2009 and I know you’re not giving guidance, but given what you’re seeing right now, what’s your gut feeling? Is this a shorter term pullback or is this more of a prolonged downturn here?

John Lopez

Analyst

Given what’s going on our outlook is that it’s going to be a very difficult job formation in 2009 through at least the first three quarters. Probably the duration is [inaudible] to five quarters on weak economic growth.

Michael J. Schall

Management

We think it will get better into the summer next year but we won’t really see strong improvement until the end of next year.

Mike Salinsky - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst

I noticed on your development pipeline [90 Archer] is now marked for sale. Is that a fourth quarter transaction or is that a next year transaction?

John D. Eudy

Management

[Inaudible] fourth quarter.

Mike Salinsky - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst

Will there be any gains on that?

John D. Eudy

Management

Yes.

Mike Salinsky - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst

I believe your marketing an asset from the Fund. Is that a next year event?

John D. Eudy

Management

We have put an asset out for the fund to market. At this point in time it’s not in contract so I don’t know that it will sell. If we don’t get a price that makes sense for us, we will pull it off the market.

Mike Salinsky - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst

You talked in the past that you’re bias was still towards Northern California and Seattle. Just given what you’re seeing with the developments in Seattle, WaMu and the Boeing situation, has that changed in any way?

Michael J. Schall

Management

I don’t think so. The reality is all these markets are cyclical and as Southern California continues to get beat up, John had talked earlier about some of the land prices that he’s seen come down. Some of that’s in Southern California so opportunities are going to come up. It’s difficult at this point in time to see which market is the best cyclical advantage but frankly if you look forward, Boeing is still going to be very strong. It’s got a hu8ge backlog on the Dreamliners. Microsoft is still going strong. We’re expecting Seattle to continue to be fairly strong at least through next year. Northern California as Mike said, this is very different than the 2001/2002 implosion we had here. We’ve lost very few jobs year-to-date compared to losing 200,000 jobs back there. So this market still has got legs. As I mentioned in my comments, we’ve got the formation of new ventures and new companies and we’ve got a great venture capital foundation here. So I think these are still the obvious markets but there’s going to be a point in time where things get so cheap in Southern California that it does open up and we continue to monitor that but frankly I haven’t seen it yet though

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Lindsey E. Yao – Robert W. Baird & Co. Lindsey E. Yao – Robert W. Baird & Co.: Related to the commercial I guess employment, you mentioned something about the 2.2% occupied by Boeing employees. Do you have an idea of how much of the overall portfolio is leased with commercial or corporate contracts?

Michael J. Schall

Management

We do not generally like the corporate business and so it’s not a big percentage, it’s less than 5% of the portfolio in general. It’s not something that we focus on and it’s a very small percentage. Lindsey E. Yao – Robert W. Baird & Co.: I guess with that, it’s a very small percentage but have you seen any trends so far with employers coming back to you saying, “You know what we’re going to have to cut back?” at all.

Michael J. Schall

Management

I know that’s a good leading indicator, we have not seen that yet. But again, I don’t think we have enough of those units to really be a good barometer on what is happening there. Lindsey E. Yao – Robert W. Baird & Co.: Then just looking at the new supply in Seattle, sorry if I missed this but can you just give some more color on the nature of that supply that’s coming online?

John D. Eudy

Management

There’s two nodes where the supply is coming on line. Over the next 18 months is downtown where there’s approximately 2,000 to 2,500 coming online. A majority of that is condo conversion and there’s a similar number in downtown Bellevue over the next 18 months and there’s two or three large high rise projects that have 500 plus that were originally intended to be condos. We think those will all go apartments. Those will probably burn off and supply will begin to decrease at the end of ‘010.

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

Those are high end units and they’re all going to be, the rents to make those things work and I frankly don’t know what the construction costs are because we didn’t do any of them but I know they’re high end and if they were being built in any normal market which that market is very similar to most of the California markets they’ve got to be $550,000 to $700,000 per unit so the rent that they have to get are very high. Frankly, most of our product up there is B plus A minus kind of product so we don’t think it’s going to have any absolute direct competition with us.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: If you could explain this to me in just like a sentence or two because I still don’t know that I get it entirely. You raised your guidance or low end of your guidance to effectively raise your guidance and then you didn’t get the second half recovery that you originally planned. Could you just explain? Is it just that you had better than you expected performance in your core markets? What was it that made that happen or was it just sort of a wide range to begin with?

Michael J. Schall

Management

Offsetting the not obtaining the second half growth in rents that we were expecting has been a windfall in short term interest rates. We’re really benefitting from the variable rate demand notes that we have on our low income where we have below market rate rents. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: That got you $0.20 of guidance?

Michael J. Schall

Management

Historically we’ve paid about 4.5% to 5% on those mortgages so take $250 million and we’re paying about 3.5% so almost 200 basis points on $250 million. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: The next question is on the lack of transaction activity, Keith and I guess all of you kind of referenced, does that to you illustrate – I guess it does illustrate that there aren’t stressed sellers out there and that is good in a sense that there’s not this situation where you have sort of a problematic environment from a debt maturity or debt expiration perspective. But, do you see that on the horizon? Do you see mom and pop owners of real estate that are going to be faced with some debt maturity, debt expirations in the next couple of years? Are you monitoring those types of situations?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

Yes, there’s sort of two issues, one is those properties that put five year bullets on essentially three to four years ago, that’s stuff we’re looking at and then sort of the other pocket that we think there’s going to be some opportunities in – well, there’s two other pockets, one pocket is there were a number of private rehabbers, they were fairly prominent and they were looking at pretty high octane transactions and used a lot of leverage. I think a number of those guys are going to face IRR clocks or just loans that mature here the next couple of years that they’re going to have pain because they had way too much leverage. I don’t think the moms and pops are going to be in trouble because the guys that went out and just put on normal Fannie Mae loans at 50% and 60%, maybe even 70% had rent growth in those last few years. The only ones that are going to be in real trouble are the ones that way over levered. I think that’s a potential opportunity. The last one is there are a number of condo developers that built projects that have sold nothing so we don’t have to look at a broken condo but they’re just upside down. They can’t sell, their equity is gone, maybe the mez is gone. We’re talking to construction lenders that might have to take a haircut to get out. I think there’s the opportunity and the issue is whether or not we can get the price to a point where it works as a rental. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: So in ’09 in a period where it will be sort of tough fundamentally you can actually see a good chunk of acquisitions if things align themselves right?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

Yes, I think that’s a true statement. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: Just two quick follow ups, are you seeing any people materially going out and renting foreclosed homes in your markets?

John D. Eudy

Management

Absolutely. It represents competition in several of our submarkets. Fortunately, we don’t have a lot of property in the inland empire, that would be ground zero for trying to compete, have a two bedroom unit competing against a three bedroom home at very reduced rents. Sacramento Valley, the same phenomena. So, it’s less the case in the coastal markets but still a factor in a number of places. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: But it’s not the individual like one bedroom person that’s going to live in a tree line street and watch kids playing hopscotch, right?

John D. Eudy

Management

No, no. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: It’s a family?

John D. Eudy

Management

It tends to be, even within the coastal market it tends to be the more outlying of the coastal markets. If someone in San Francisco doesn’t have that option, Palo Alto doesn’t have that option, Santa Clara County for the most part doesn’t. But, there are some properties, again not the core of our portfolio that are closer to the more outlying areas and they have a greater impact. Again, it goes right back to what Keith said which is look at where the foreclosure activity is the greatest and that is where you’re going to see the greatest impact from rental competition. Richard Anderson – BMO Capital Markets: Lastly, are you seeing people move from Class A to your properties? Are you seeing that sort of type of traffic?

John D. Eudy

Management

It’s hard to track that. We think anecdotally we think that is happening as people become more price sensitive and try to focus on improving their personal balance sheets, pay back a little bit of credit and they can obviously do so if they go in to more affordable properties. We also mentioned there’s a number of submarkets that there’s a significant amount of new product being delivered, it tends to be very high end and probably pushes that segment of the rental market beyond what it would have historically been pushed and as a result of that I think we are going to see pretty significant discounting of the As and that will inure to the benefit of the Bs.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of [Hanwell St. Jess] – Green Street Advisors. [Hanwell St. Jess] – Green Street Advisors: To follow up I guess on an unrelated question, are you seeing any pressure from your investors to sell assets given what’s going on with asset pricing in the market and the broader economy?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

No, we’ve just had meetings with our investors this last summer and we talked about the markets and what’s going on and basically in the current fund we’ve got about three years left plus a couple of extensions so this downturn we don’t think it’s going to last forever and clearly we think we’ve got plenty of time coming out at the other end to still execute and make the right decisions. [Hanwell St. Jess] – Green Street Advisors: Are you adjusting expectations, what I initially believe were high teens, return expectations?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

We have not adjusted those expectations for the long term. I think that a number of those assets were bought early and we had good cap rates going in and we’ve gotten some great rental growth and great NOI growth in the assets that are in that fund. I think we’re going to be just fine if we sit tight and execute at the right time. [Hanwell St. Jess] – Green Street Advisors: To follow up on an earlier question, I didn’t quite hear the answer and I guess I was just looking for more color on change in asset pricing that you feel has occurred specifically more in the last 30 to 60 days given your activity in the marketplace?

Keith R. Guericke

Analyst · America Securities

Again, I think you’re right, I didn’t answer that specifically and partly because I don’t know. There has not been a lot of transactions as somebody had mentioned earlier. We had a fund asset that was listed, as of today we haven’t received a price that is acceptable to us so clearly prices in the market place are down. I would guess that B product is in the 5.75 to 6.25 range in most of our markets today. A year ago that would have been at least 100 basis points less so I think that’s kind of the range of where things are at. [Hanwell St. Jess] – Green Street Advisors: One last question, can you give us a sense or maybe quantify your pricing power between new leases, people coming in the door and renewals?

Michael J. Schall

Management

I think in this world the two are becoming closer and closer to one because everyone does for example a lot of Craigslist type advertising and information, rental information is so available via the Internet that your ability to have significant difference between new pricing and renewal pricing is pretty limited. I guess it depends on the circumstance a bit but we’re seeing a sort of tightening of that relationship as time goes on. I think that continues. I don’t see a big difference between the two.

Operator

Operator

At this time there are no further questions in the queue. Ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining today’s conference. This concludes the presentation you may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.