You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Our featured speakers today are Mark Parrell, our President and CEO; Michael Manelis, our Chief Operating Officer and Bob Garechana, our Chief Financial Officer.
Your commitment and hard work got the company through 2020, and I know you are ready to drive our recovery in 2021.
Turning to the business, we are encouraged by the recovery in demand in all of our markets, and especially in our urban sub-markets.
In real estate demand is the unsolvable problem, without it no other economic factor matters, and in our business both urban and suburban, we see plenty of it.
This positive trend in spite of a worsening pandemic, and renewed shutdowns in our markets gives us even more of a cause for optimism.
If demand is this strong now, we think that when the vaccines are more fully distributed, and cities reopen our business will really hum.
The fact that this is likely to coincide with our traditional leasing season with its higher seasonal demand, positions us especially well.
Admittedly though, pricing remains weak, but there are signs of the beginnings of improvement.
We also see declining forward concessions.
With occupancy firming and strong demand going into our busiest time of the year, we believe that we can recover considerable ground on the pricing side as 2021 plays out.
While we see signs of recovery, our current results reflect the still challenging climate in many of our markets.
You may remember that on prior calls, I made clear that the impact of lower rents and higher concessions in 2020, and currently will take some time to fully manifest itself in our reported numbers.
That impact arrived in the form of our fourth quarter 2020 same store revenue results, as we continue entering into new leases, and renewing existing leases at lower rents, reflecting the post-pandemic leasing climate, as well as amortizing concessions from leases written in 2020.
But just as our reported results lagged our actual operating environment on the way down, they will also lag it on the way up.
So you should expect relatively weak same store revenue results in the first half of 2021, with a marked improvement in our revenue numbers in the second half of the year, as we benefit from improving pricing, higher occupancy, and lower concessions, plus easier post-pandemic comparable periods.
The interplay of our expectations of increasing occupancy, pricing that is improving, but will be lower than last year's pricing until mid-year or so and the amortization of 2020 and '21 concessions, creates considerable modeling complexity for us, and for our investors and analysts.
Because of this more complex picture than usual, we thought it was particularly important that we reinstate guidance to give investors a better idea of management's view of the year.
Our guidance is at the wider than usual range to account for the multitude of factors, both positive and negative, that may impact our business in 2021.
All of this is of course premised on the continuing progress in controlling the virus, and an assumption that other general economic conditions remain supportive.
Turning to the long term, we believe that the fundamental factors that have long made Equity Residential an attractive place to invest your capital remain just as true now as before the pandemic.
First, our capital is invested in markets that will continue to be the centers of the knowledge economy, that drives the growth of this country, centers of Innovation and Technology, Finance, Entertainment, Medicine and Life Sciences.
Even in the pandemic, we have seen announcements of new high quality jobs in our urban centers like Amazon's announcement that it's putting 3,000 new technology and software development jobs in the Seaport District of Boston, and with the recent commencement of construction on Disney's new building in Hudson Square in New York, that will lead to a significant influx of new content creation and technology jobs.
And while the remote work trend may change the number of days that we are in the office we are by our nature social animals.
Our need to interact with each other, to create, to share ideas, to manage our businesses and to start new ones is not being met by meetings on a video screen.
Second, we believe that the entertainment, cultural, and social attractions that fill the great urban centers in which we operate, will soon reopen, and will again prove to be magnets for affluent renters.
We believe that many renters desire both the work proximity I just mentioned, as well as easy access to the amazing entertainment, cultural and social opportunities our cities will provide once they are reopened, not to mention the ability to live in an exciting, dynamic, and diverse community.
Our residents that live in our more urban properties do so because they value the lifestyle of our country's great urban centers.
Third, we have a highly skilled, affluent customer base able to afford our rent and to accept future rent increases as conditions improve.
Our residents are well-employed in growing industries like technology, biotech and new media.
Industries that we also think are less susceptible over time the job loss, from increasing waves of automation, and offshoring.
In the pandemic period overall unemployment rose to almost 15% and is now around 6%, while job losses for those with the Bachelor's degree or better, which is our target demographic peaked at 8.4% and is now gone down to 3.8%.
Our resident base proved its quality again in the fourth quarter, as we collected 97% of our expected residential revenues.
We think the quality of our customer base is over the long haul one of our greatest strengths.
Fourth, the superior location and quality of our portfolio makes our properties attractive places for our residents to live, and also makes our properties attractive places for private investors to invest their capital.
This makes our properties liquid, and appreciating over the long-term.
Capital has long been drawn to the higher quality properties we own, and that will continue to be the case, even in markets like New York and San Francisco, once the pandemic abates.
We also believe that the lower long-term capital spending required to maintain our properties and income stream compares favorably with that of older lower quality apartment buildings.
But our portfolio can always be improved and you should expect us to be more active recyclers of capital over the next few years.
As I have said on prior calls, even before the pandemic, in order to create the most stable and growing cash flow stream possible for our investors, we are inclined to further diversify our portfolio in the higher-end suburban locations in our current markets, as well as into a few select new markets with favorable long-term supply and demand characteristics, and a growing affluent renter base.
These affluent renters are found in abundance in our existing markets, but there are also increasing concentrations of them in denser suburbs near city centers of our existing markets, and in places like Denver, which is a market we reentered in 2016.
You've seen us do this over the last few years, as we have acquired properties in suburban Seattle in Washington, D.C. with strong resident demographics.
We are looking hard at several other suburban assets, as well as development and acquisition opportunities in Denver, that we find appealing long term.
We will fund this by lowering our concentration of assets in city centers in our existing markets, and by exiting assets elsewhere that do not meet our return parameters.
To close, we have the best team in the business, ready to maximize results as the pandemic ends, and a sturdy balance sheet that gives us ample flexibility.
We are tremendously optimistic about our company's future, because we believe that the markets in which we operate will thrive when we get to the other side of this pandemic, and with the rollout of vaccines we are on our way.
So 2020 has been the most challenging year that we have faced in our business.
Working together we got through 2020 by serving our customers, taking care of each other, and driving the best results possible given the circumstances.
Despite the challenges we are excited that 2020 is behind us and optimistic that 2021 will be a year of recovery.
As Mark mentioned, we have begun to see improvement in both Physical Occupancy and pricing.
Notably, this is the first time this has occurred since the beginning of the pandemic.
We continue to test price sensitivity in many markets by reducing both the value and quantity of concessions being granted, and beginning to raise rates.
In November, concessions averaged just over six weeks free on about 45% of our applications and recent weeks concessions have averaged just under six weeks and only about a third of our applications.
All that said, it will take some time to fully recover from the unprecedented events that have occurred, particularly in our hardest hit markets.
While we are optimistic about the recovery, it is hard to handicap its pace, especially in New York and San Francisco, our hardest hit cities.
Demand continues to be robust and has carried us through much of the winter season with increased move-in activity, well above seasonal norms.
Application count exceeded 2019 levels by 25% in the fourth quarter and we were able to generate sufficient front door activity that have move-in, outpace move-out despite higher turnover compared to the 2019 record low level.
We haven't seen this net gain and move-ins since the onset of the pandemic.
Applications have remained robust in January albeit below December's levels but that isn't surprising since improved occupancy has allowed us to start testing pricing and we have fewer units available to sell.
The chart on pricing trend, which includes the impact on concessions is a good indicator of where rents are headed and it has been improving across both the urban and suburban markets for the last eight weeks or so.
Blended rates, which combines new lease changes and renewal rates achieved, will continue to be negative for some time as this metric compares new leases written or renewed with those that were before the pandemic began.
That said, the rate of change of Blended rates has flattened and for the first time, we have seen modest sequential improvement in new lease rates which is helpful.
We continue to experience negotiation pressure on renewal rates and we are still renewing residents who signed leases pre-pandemic.
We have found some stability in the percent of residents renewing, which stands at approximately 52% in January, we expect that to improve to around 54% for February and March, which is still below our usual retention rates for this time of year.
Before moving to market commentary, I want to summarise that while the operating environment remains challenging, we continue to see good demand for our product and we are starting to see early signs of pricing improvement.
We have a long way to go, but recovery is in sight.
Now let me provide some brief market commentary.
Starting with Boston, strong application volume and improved retention through the fourth quarter resulted in steady gains in occupancy to position us to 95.5% today.
This market has been dialing back concession use and raising rates consecutively for the past four weeks.
At present concessions are being used on about 25% to 30% of our applications and averaging right at six weeks, which is compared to 50% use back in November.
Long-term demand drivers remain positive with a very bullish outlook for biotech and pharma space fueling job creation.
At this point, it is hard to forecast exactly how some of the traditional demand drivers associated with Boston play out, notably students, both domestic and international and the jobs that support that infrastructure.
We expect to have a better view on these by late spring, early summer before the fall semester.
Anecdotally, I will tell you that January did see a few applications from foreign addresses, which we haven't seen for several months.
Boston will have its challenges in '21 but its performance over the last two months has definitely improved.
In 2021, we look to regain more occupancy, which will allow us to then recapture some of the rate we lost last year.
New York continues to feel the outsized impact from the pandemic, but there are early signs of recovery.
We recently had our best traffic week in the last 12 months and our best leasing weeks since August.
Leasing activity is still driven by deal seekers and interest city movers, which is running about 10 points higher than normal.
We still see move-outs to the suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut, but that number is normalizing.
Occupancy has improved in the market and is just above 91.5%, which is the first time we have been over 90% since September of 2020.
Some additional color on recent traffic includes that we are just now starting to have former residents reaching out to our property teams contemplating moving back to the city.
Like in Boston, we are seeing the first signs of international students and specific to New York, UN workers looking to come back.
And finally, we saw a few roommate type prospects emerging from their parents basements.
Many of these prospects are looking for late spring or early summer time frames in anticipation of their offices opening back up.
We still see a good amount o f deal hoppers and upgraders as well as prospects from the outer boroughs who can now afford to live in Manhattan and many of them are telling our on-site teams they think the market bottom is near and they don't want to miss out.
Concessions remain prevalent in this market was 70% of the applications receiving about two months free.
Rates are beginning to show signs of improvement and we are just starting to gradually dial back concessions.
For 2021, our focus in New York will be recapturing as much of the occupancy rate as possible while lowering and possibly eliminating the use of concessions.
While the market will still produce a negative decline for the year, New York has upside potential given the dramatic declines we saw in 2020.
Recovery in this market will be fueled by a lack of competitive new supply, the return to office and the continued growth of the big tech employers in the market.
Moving to D.C. which has been our most resilient market on the East Coast, occupancy remained solid at 95.5%, but the market continues to feel the impact from the delivery of Class A multifamily product, which is not being absorbed as efficiently in previous years.
Federal government employment has grown, but the overall job growth has declined.
Concession use was up in the quarter with the largest amount focused in the district.
The good news, however, is that as fast as concessions came into the market during the fourth quarter, they have now been greatly reduced.
Since mid-December we are only using concessions on 15% of the applications and they've been averaging just below one month.
2021 will be focused on balancing occupancy and rate as we faced supply pressure from yet another 12,000 units being delivered into the market.
Recent signs of improvement provide us more confidence in the market's ability to absorb the new units and allow for continued rate recovery, which could make D.C. one of our better performing markets in 2021.
Denver, albeit a small portfolio for us is holding up well.
For 2021, all five of our Denver communities will be included in the same store results.
Occupancy is sitting around 96% and both new lease change and renewal rates are improving.
Renewals are showing positive growth rates in December and January and concession use is trending down.
In Seattle, we are seeing early indications that the bottom may be behind us.
Occupancy continues to improve as traffic is up over January 2020 by about 6%, and we are seeing weekly application numbers that are closer to peak leasing season levels.
Concessions remain common in the market, especially in the urban submarkets.
During the fourth quarter, concessions averaged about six weeks free and about 55% of our applications.
Strength in occupancy both at our properties and more generally in the overall market are allowing for a gradual reduction in concessions.
We have heard from our Seattle teams that many prospects are less concerned about the monthly rate right now as they are about getting a deal.
While current rent freeze restrictions may limit renewal performance in the first half of the year, overall fundamentals for this market support a recovery.
Recent home price appreciation and the increase in this quarter's job postings from the technology companies should continue to drive strong demand for our product.
The focus in Seattle in 2021 is maintaining the strong occupancy we currently have while pushing rate.
San Francisco remains our most challenged market, but even here there are some very early signs of recovery.
Occupancy is just below 94% and has improved 150 basis points since the beginning of November.
The Downtown portfolio remains pressured on rate with concessions that average six weeks in the quarter and about two third of our applications.
January concessions improved to a one-month average on less than half the applications.
Anecdotally, stories from our teams across the Bay are reporting that people who left to go to other areas like Denver and Sacramento are now looking to move back to be near their office or in desirable school districts.
The extent of the Bay Area recovery will improve as we get even more clarity on tech companies plans regarding return to office.
There have been headlines about corporate relocations at a state and clearly, that is not a positive for the market, but it is important to keep reading.
The Bay Area continues to attract venture capital and is yet to be replaced as the epicentre of the tech economy.
Bay Area tech companies are also feeling a bit more optimistic and their ability to receive H1B visas under the new administration, which could increase demand in this market.
'21 will continue to be concentrated in Oakland and in the South Bay.
Feedback from our local team was that the recent lifting of the stay-at-home order can definitely be felt in the downtown market with much more active streets and outdoor restaurant seating filled to the new lower allowed capacity levels.
These are the first signs of bringing life back to the city.
Our focus in San Francisco in '21 is to build back our occupancy, particularly in the downtown submarket, get rid of concessions, and then push rate.
While San Francisco will produce a revenue decline in '21, hit like New York has a lot of upside potential due to the steep decline in 2020.
Finally, moving to Southern California, which continues to hold up much better than the Bay Area, despite some pretty difficult pandemic related headlines in the LA area.
Our Los Angeles portfolio maintained occupancy above 95% through the quarter, concession use was modest and averaged just under one month on about 20% of our applications.
Operationally, the story is similar to the third quarter with continued pressure from new supply in the Downtown, Korea Mid-Wilshire corridor.
West LA continues to feel the pressure from the slow restart of online content creation but new lease and renewal rates have shown some stability through the fourth quarter and into January.
The suburban portfolio has very strong occupancy at or near 97% and the submarkets of Inland Empire, Santa Clarita Valley and Ventura County continue to experience modest year-over-year gains in rental income.
For '21, LA should be one of our better markets.
We have recaptured our occupancy, concession use is already been dial back and now our opportunity is on increasing rate and managing delinquency.
I will finish with Orange County and San Diego, which are primarily suburban markets for us and have averaged around 97% occupancy through the quarter.
These markets continue to demonstrate resilience and produced higher resident retention then in any of our other markets.
Both of these markets are presenting opportunities to increase rates and are expected to continue to perform well through 2021.
In closing, we remain optimistic that the early signs of recovery that we now see will continue.
And that through '21, we will build occupancy on the back of strong demand leading to improved pricing power.
Our efforts over the next several months will be focused on seeking out opportunities to maximize the trade-off between rate and occupancy while ensuring the well-being of our employees and residents.
As a result, our same store revenue, NOI, and normalized FFO ranges are wider than normal.
Let's start with our full-year 2021 total same store revenue guidance range, which is between -9% and -7%.
Note that this guidance is on a GAAP basis since we report same store revenues in the same manner and include the straight lining of concessions as required.
That said, let me take a moment to highlight the main drivers that will shape revenue performance for the year, along with our thoughts and how 2021 might play out.
You heard both Mark and Michael talk about the improvements we are already seeing.
We would expect this to continue and that as we get into the second quarter, occupancy should become a tailwind that begin to contribute to year-over-year improvement.
Much like occupancy, the middle and higher end of our guidance anticipate the pricing improvements discussed to continue both an improved leasing rates and reduce concessions.
This positive trend, however, will take a little longer to manifest itself in our reported numbers.
For leasing rates, it will take some time, not only to start writing new leases and renewing existing ones at levels above the prior year, but also to reset a meaningful part of the leasing book.
The good news is, that not only are we starting to see improving trends, these improvements may gain even more traction in time to coincide with our prime leasing season and resulting in positive year-over-year rates by mid-year.
The other element of pricing that is worth touching base upon is concessions.
As I mentioned earlier, we recognized concessions on a straight-line basis as required by GAAP.
That means as disclosed on Page 12 of the release, of the $31 million in cash residential concessions granted in 2020, we still have approximately $19 million of unamortized concessions that were reduced revenue in 2021, which is about 75 basis points of same store revenue.
Any new concession granted in 2021 will also be straight-lined.
So the earlier in the year that the concession is granted, the more of it that will be recognized in the 2021 financial statements.
We expect concessions granted will taper off during the first half of the year.
But because of the combination that I just described, 2020 unamortized residuals and the timing of new 2021 concessions, this improvement will fully manifest itself in 2021 reported GAAP results.
And finally some thoughts on bad debt.
As Mark mentioned, our collections have remained strong and consistent at approximately 97%.
We incurred in approximately $30 million reduction in revenues for the fourth quarter 2020 due to uncollected rent.
The middle range of our 2021 guidance assumes that this continues with only slight improvement very late in the year.
We hope that we can do better than that, but given the regulatory environment, we remain cautious in our assumptions.
Specifically, same store revenue performance will be sequentially negative from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021, and likely not improve until the second half of the year.
As fundamentals improve, consistent with our expectations, reported results will catch up from this improvement and benefit both sequentially and from a year-over-year comparison basis.
We expect same store revenue results in the second half of the year to be better than the first half results and to position us very well for continued growth and recovery.
Now, some color on same store expenses.
Our full-year guidance range for same store expenses is 3% to 4%.
The drivers of same store expenses remained largely unchanged.
The four largest expense categories continue to be real estate taxes, on-site payroll, utilities, and repairs and maintenance.
As you think about how this plays out quarterly, this comparison issue will especially be pronounced in the second quarter since many activities and corresponding expenses were halted in the first few months of the pandemic.
Now a little color on the major categories.
Real estate taxes are expected to grow in the mid 3% range, which is slightly lower than prior years.
While municipalities continue to be stretched, we are seeing some jurisdictions provide relief on assessed values and that coupled with aggressive appeals activity should help control growth.
Perhaps even more pronounced this year than usual will be the timing and success of this appeals activity which may present an outsized impact on where the number ultimately settles out.
Payroll ended 2020 flat to 2019.
This is the second year in a row that payroll growth has been less than 1%.
And while many of our efficiency initiatives were delayed because of the pandemic, our hard-working on-site colleagues have continued to gain in efficiencies.
As a result, 2020 makes for yet another difficult comparison for 2021.
By continuing our efficiency initiatives and keeping our eye on the ball, we should still be able to limit payroll growth for the full year to around 2%.
That leaves us with the final two categories of utilities and repairs and maintenance.
Both are estimated to have more meaningful growth in the 4% to 5% range.
In previous years, utilities benefited from a modest or declining commodity price growth.
In 2021, we're expecting higher natural gas prices, which is driving our forecasted growth.
For repairs and maintenance, a good amount of the growth encompasses catching up on activities that were delayed as a result of the pandemic, keeping in mind that this expense declined in 2020.
Our guidance range for normalized FFO in 2021 is $2.60 per share to $2.80 per share.
Major drivers for the change between our 2020 normalized FFO of $3.26 per share and the midpoint of $2.70 from our 2021 guidance include a $0.60 decline in same store NOI based on the revenue and expense assumptions outlined.
Keep in mind that nearly one third of that decline stems from the difficult comparable period in the first quarter of 2020.
A $0.07 decline primarily due to disposition activity that occurred in 2020 which is more than offset by a positive $0.14 contribution from lower anticipated interest expense, predominant due to taking those disposition proceeds and paying down nearly $1 billion in debt in 2020, and finally a negative $0.03 in other items.
The backloaded nature of the recovery in our NOI will also of course impact our NFFO numbers, which should improve on the back half of 2021.
A final note on the balance sheet, our financial position remains extremely strong, despite the impact of the pandemic.
As I just mentioned, in 2020 we paid down nearly $1 billion of debt using disposition proceeds, extended our already long weighted average maturities to nine years and continue to reduce our weighted average rate.
This activity has positioned us extremely well and in the year with net debt to normalized EBITDA of 5.0 times, nearly $2 billion in available liquidity, and very limited maturities until 2023.
Our access-to-debt capital remains excellent, positioning us well for opportunities should they present themselves.

user
sees full year 2021 normalized ffo per share of $2.60 to $2.80.

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