Joe Russell
Analyst · Ronald Kamdem of Morgan Stanley
No question for last two to three years, we've seen heavy amount of supply in entering many markets across United States. Statistically and in particular if you look at the amount of deliveries that took place in 2017, which was roughly over $4 billion, last year, just over $5 billion. Our view for 2019 is it's likely to be similar to 2018 deliveries. So if you just look at those three years, there is no question there has been a lot of new products that's entered the market. The totality of that is in its full view is pretty commanding, it's got 90 million square feet plus or minus 1,200 to 1,500 properties. So as we've talked over the last few quarters, we've been very transparent around the markets that we've seen the most impact from all the supply entering. Another part of the delivery and the complexion of these properties is something I talked about last quarter, which not only is it a heavy level of deliveries but on average the size of many of these properties are much bigger than they've been historically. So you've got a number of owners out in some of these markets that frankly don't have the tools or capabilities to operate them in a traditional way. So I think there is an element of both disappointment and potentially and ultimately some level of distress that could come from that as they learn and see the challenges of running these larger properties. So you also asked about, okay, how are we thinking about this shift? So there is a couple of good things here. One is first of all the markets that have seen these delivery levels many of the markets have actually absorbed the products well and we've been encouraged by that. I would point to the resiliency of the product type itself and the depth of many of those markets, consumer behavior all those things. But they're still a number of markets that continue to be impacted. Those include Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, where again we have seen this overhang from the amount of new supply entering. And we don’t see that really changing here in the near-term. The good news, however, is there is a lower level of our deliveries anticipated going in many of those markets going into 2019. Some of our better markets, again, going into 2019 include Boston, Philadelphia, LA, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Orlando. So we do see some additional product coming into Boston, for instance, New York. And again, we're going to keep our eyes wide open around the potential impact from that additional supply. The good news is the West Coast, outside of Portland, has been pretty resilient to supply additions. And again, we see very good metrics and just overall consumer and customer activity coming from those markets, because we have far less new competition. So with all that said we still feel like we're not out of again a heavy supply environment. But on the flipside, we continue to be encouraged by some of the things that we've seen through 2018, particularly in the fourth quarter and our feelings activities playing through as we begin 2019.