Mary Ricks
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead
Thanks, Bill. Q4 portfolio rent collections remain very strong and outperformed the market, with 98% of rents collected across our global office and multifamily properties, which, together, accounts for 81% of our stabilized portfolio. I’m pleased to report that across all assets, we collected 96% of our rents in 2020. In our multifamily portfolio, occupancy remained solid at 95.2% compared to 94.4% at the end of 2019. Suburban assets account for 88% of our multifamily NOI and our average monthly rent stood at $1,684 per month. We added another 880 multifamily units to our Mountain State portfolio in the U.S. in Q4, through an off-market acquisition, showing our sourcing capabilities in a challenging market. The Mountain State market, where we were an early investor, is now our largest region, accounting for nearly half of our U.S. market rate units. We have approximately 9,400 units, including 574 units under development in the Mountain States today. According to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada and Utah were the top 4 states in population growth in 2020. These trends are positively impacting our Mountain State results, which had a strong quarter with same-property revenue up 3% and NOI up 3.5%, resulting in approximately 5% revenue and NOI growth for 2020. It’s worth noting that over the last 15 months, we’ve acquired assets in new markets, including Phoenix, Albuquerque and Colorado Springs, and we continue to evaluate attractive new opportunities to grow our portfolio in this region. On the disposition side, we sold Club Palisades in the state of Washington for $175 million. We originally acquired this property back in 2011 for $68 million. And since then, we implemented our value-add asset management program, including interior renovations and enhancements of all the tenant amenities. In total, NOI increased by 88% during our ownership and the sale realized an impressive gain of $76 million. In Dublin, rent collections remained very high at over 99% in Q4. Multifamily occupancy in Dublin stood at 91.3%, slightly down from Q3 as a result of move-outs mostly related to foreign workers moving back to their home countries when the pandemic started as employers allowed working from home. Encouragingly, occupancy has increased from the November lows. We have seen this positive momentum continue through February as prospective residents aim to upgrade to our highly amenitized professionally managed apartments. We believe our unique offering will continue to be attractive in a post-COVID world as apartment completions of approximately 2,000 to 3,000 units per year are well short of the 4,500 units needed annually to address the structural shortage of apartments in Dublin. This is best demonstrated at Plan CT Phase 3 where leasing at the end of Q4 was ahead of our budget, and we are now 50% leased. And we look forward to continuing to provide this much needed housing in Dublin. Turning to our global office portfolio, occupancy remained stable at 94.2% at the end of the year compared to 95.2% at the end of 2019. Our top office tenants include Costco, Microsoft, KPMG, State Street, Indeed and the UK and Italian governments to name a few. And overall, our stabilized office portfolio has an attractive weighted average lease term of 6.5 years to expiration. For the quarter, rent collections continue to remain very strong as we once again collected 98% of our office rents. And so far, rent collections in Q1 have remained on track. On the disposition side, as we discussed on our last call, we sold Baggot Plaza in Dublin during the quarter. The sale of this unlevered asset generated cash of $165 million, a gain of $85 million and demonstrates the strong demand for quality office product from institutional capital. Globally, we saw strong leasing activity and completed new leases and lease extensions across 655,000 commercial square feet, which brings our 2020 total to 2.6 million square feet of commercial leasing with a walt of 5.7 years. As a reminder, 98% of the NOI in our office portfolio comes from low and mid-rise properties, and 74% of our NOI is generated from buildings that are either occupied predominantly by a single-tenant or in an office park. In the U.S., the largest office deals that we completed in Q4 exemplified demand for these low rise office flex spaces for both renewals and new tenants looking for space in our suburban locations. We’ve seen a growing focus on dropping regional or local hubs where people can continue to connect, use facilities and work collaboratively with colleagues and clients when required. As an example of this hub-and-spoke model momentum, we are seeing accounting and financial firms reserving suburban space to reduce commuting and provide resources to those outside the city center. While it is too early to tell the final outcome, we’re starting to see some evidence of firms providing their employees with flexibility in both ours and choice of office location, and we feel our low-rise suburban office portfolio is positioned to benefit from this. As companies begin to look beyond COVID our leasing activity remains strong with over 400,000 square feet in our pipeline at the end of Q4. We are working hard to close these lease transactions in the first half of this year. And we’ve already completed 12 lease transactions, adding $1.4 million of incremental income to KW in 2021. So we are off to a good start. And with that, I would like to turn the call back to Bill.