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Text: This is Tim Argo, Senior Vice President of Finance for MAA.
Actual results may differ materially from our projections.
We are encouraged with the solid start to the year as core FFO results were well ahead of our expectations.
A recovery in rent growth is clearly getting started.
Our overall blended rents on a lease-over-lease basis are running slightly ahead of last year, and our forecast is for continued improvement.
A combination of the recovery within the Sunbelt economies that is just starting to build, coupled with the continued migration of employers and jobs to this region, are driving higher level of demand across our portfolio.
We like the trends that we're seeing as we head into the important summer leasing season.
Our teams are off to a strong start this year with our unit interior redevelopment program, the rollout of our Smart Home technology platform as well as several new projects aimed at full repositioning of communities to higher price points.
We're excited about the upside in rent growth to capture from all three of these programs.
It was about this time last year when we hit the pause button on these projects in order to protect residents and staff during the initial months of COVID, and we expect to make solid progress this year.
Our new development platform continues to expand, and we're excited to have closed this month on our first opportunity in the Salt Lake City market.
We see continued strong job growth and positive migration trends to this market and look forward to expanding our presence there.
Supported by our strong balance sheet and growing demand for apartment housing across our Sunbelt markets, we believe we are poised to capture increasing earnings contribution from our development pipeline over the next few years.
As the Sunbelt market economies begin to reopen, it seems clear that based on the trends that we're seeing, that the worst of the pressures associated with COVID are behind us.
MAA's unique approach to diversifying across the Sunbelt has clearly worked to soften some of the pressures surrounding the recession and the slowdown in leasing over the past few quarters.
However, we're frankly more excited about the prospects for outperformance over the coming recovery cycle, the growing appeal of the Sunbelt markets, the upside that we have to capture in redevelopment within our existing portfolio, higher efficiencies, we expect to harvest from several new technology initiatives, and finally, a growing impact from our external growth pipeline, all combined to put MAA in a solid position for the coming recovery cycle.
Your commitment to our mission of serving those who depend on our company is much appreciated.
The recovery continued across the portfolio for the first quarter.
Leasing volume for the quarter was up 16%.
This drove blended pricing achieved during the quarter up 2.7%.
This is even with the very strong start we had in the first quarter of 2020 and up 200 basis points from the fourth quarter.
In addition, we were able to maintain strong average daily occupancy of 95.7%, and all-in place rents or effective rent growth on a year-over-year basis improved to 1.3% in the first quarter.
Collections during the quarter were strong.
We collected 99.1% billed rent in the first quarter.
We've worked diligently to identify and support those who need help because of COVID-19.
The number of those seeking assistance has dropped over time.
In April of last year, we had 5,600 residents on relief plans.
The number of participants has decreased to just 325 for the April of this year rental assistance plan.
This represents only 20 basis points of April billed rent.
We saw steady interest in our product upgrade initiatives.
We're off to a strong start for the year on our interior unit redevelopment program as well as installation of our Smart Home technology package that includes mobile controlled lights, thermostat in security as well as leak detection.
We completed 964 redevelopment units and 13,975 Smart Home packages.
For the full year of 2021, we expect to complete just over 6,000 interior unit upgrades and install 22,000 Smart Home packages.
We are also in the final stages of completing the repositioning work on our first six full reposition properties and have another eight that will begin this year.
April's collections are in line with the good results we saw in the first quarter.
As of April 27, we've collected 98.7% of rent billed, which is at least 10 basis points ahead of each of the comparable numbers for January, February and March of this year.
Leasing activity for April is strong.
New lease-over-lease pricing in April is running close to 4% of rent on the prior lease.
Renewal lease pricing in April is running 6.5% ahead of the prior lease.
Our resident satisfaction scores remained strong and are actually ahead of last year by 120 basis points, which should support continued strong renewal lease pricing.
We still have a few down units in April as a result of the winter storm, and including the impact of those, average daily occupancy for the month of April is currently 96.1%, which is 100 basis points better than April of last year.
Exposure, which is all vacant units plus notices through a 60-day period, is just 7.2%.
This is 180 basis points better than the prior year and supports our ability to continue to prioritize our focus on rent growth.
We are well positioned as we move into our busy leasing season.
Led by job growth, which is expected to increase 4.9% in 2021 versus the negative 5% in 2020 for our markets, we expect to see the broad recovery in our region of the country continue.
We expect Phoenix, Tampa, Raleigh and Jacksonville to be our strongest markets and expect Houston, Orlando and DC to recover but at a slower rate.
They've shown tremendous adaptability and resilience over the last year.
I'm proud of them and excited about their strong start to 2021.
Investor demand for multifamily product within our region of the country remains strong.
However, a lack of properties for sale is causing a supply demand imbalance that continues to drive already aggressive pricing.
This robust investor demand supported by continued low interest rates has further compressed cap rates, which are frequently in the mid-3% and low 4% range for high-quality properties in desirable locations within our markets.
Transaction cap rates on closed projects that we underwrote were down 25 basis points from last quarter and down 50 basis points from first quarter of 2020.
We remain active in the transaction market, but as outlined in our guidance, we are not forecasting executing on any acquisitions of existing communities between now and year-end.
While acquiring existing assets is a challenge, we continue to make progress on the expansion of our development pipeline.
As noted in our release, we closed on two land parcels in April as part of our prepurchase program, where we partner with third-party developers.
We expect to start construction on both of these projects in the second quarter.
Our Atlanta project is a 5-story mid-rise development located along the belt line extension in the West Midtown area of Atlanta, less than two miles from Microsoft's recently announced campus.
We also closed on a 4-story surface park project in the Daybreak master-planned community of Salt Lake City, one of the top five master-planned communities in the United States.
We are excited to expand our footprint into Salt Lake City, a market that shares many of the attributes that characterize our overall footprint: good job growth, great migration trends and a highly educated workforce.
In addition to these two projects, we have several other project -- or development sites within our footprint, owned or under contract, that we hope to start construction on later this year and into next year.
We have seen material run-up in construction costs, and specifically lumber.
But our construction team as well as our partners have done a good job helping us to mitigate some of this increase.
We continue to see some supply chain disruptions on appliances, cabinets, windows and other items, but on the majority of our projects, we've been able to work around these issues with minimal impact to our delivery schedules.
We continue to see strong leasing demand in our region of the country, and our two lease-up properties in Dallas and Fort Worth as well as our under construction property in Phoenix, all continue to perform very well, with rents and leasing velocity in line with or ahead of our pre-COVID expectations.
As part of our planned dispositions for 2021, we took our Jackson, Mississippi properties to market in the first quarter and received very strong investor interest, with the strongest bidding coming from portfolio buyers wanting all four properties.
The properties are currently under contract with our buyers inspection period ending soon.
We expect this transaction to close in the third quarter.
We are also on track to execute on the remainder of our 2021 disposition plan in the fourth quarter.
Our view of new supply remains unchanged with the expectation that 2021 looks very similar to 2020.
Based on 2020's permitting trends, we still expect new deliveries to start trending down late this year and into next year before possibly increasing in 2023, reflecting the recent increase in permitting and starts data.
That's all I have in the way of prepared comments.
Core FFO per share performance of $1.64 for the first quarter was $0.05 per share ahead of the midpoint of our guidance.
As expected, operating trends continued to improve through the quarter, producing same-store revenue and NOI performance that was slightly ahead of our forecast, providing about $0.01 per share on favorability for the quarter.
We continue to expect stable occupancy and strong pricing trends to have a growing impact on effective rents over the remainder of the year.
But keep in mind that only about 20% of our leases were effective in the first quarter, and we still have the majority of our leases to be signed during the summer leasing season in the second and third quarter.
The remaining favorability came from overhead and interest expense, which were both lower than projections for the quarter.
So overhead costs are expected to grow more in line with our original projections as the year progresses as our travel and other activities move toward more normalized levels.
Winter storm Uri impacted a portion of our portfolio during the quarter, where unusually cold temperature and electrical outages led to frozen pipes and damage at a number of our Texas communities.
Our operating teams worked hard to take care of our residents and get affected units back online quickly.
We incurred some casualty losses during the first quarter related to the storm.
We established a receivable for the vast majority of the costs, which are expected to be reimbursed through insurance coverage.
Net earnings impact to MAA during the quarter was only about $765,000, primarily related to down units.
Our balance sheet remains in great shape.
During the quarter, we paid off the $118 million of secured mortgages at an expiring rate of 5.1%.
We also funded an additional $64 million of cost toward completion of our development pipeline, which, at quarter end, included seven communities with total projected cost of $528 million, of which $193 million remains to be funded.
As Brad mentioned, we acquired two land parcels in April as part of repurchase development deals, which should begin construction later this year.
And as discussed previously, we expect our development pipeline to grow to around $800 million by year-end, which is well within our development autonomous limits.
As Tom mentioned, we also continue to make good progress during the quarter on our three internal investment programs: interior redevelopment, property repositioning projects and Smart Home legislations.
We funded a total of $22.7 million toward these programs during the first quarter, which are expected to begin contributing to our growth more strongly in late 2021 and 2022.
We ended the quarter with low leverage, debt-to-EBITDA of only 4.9 times and with $644 million of combined cash and borrowing capacity under our line of credit.
And finally, in a way to reflect the first quarter earnings performance, we increased our full year guidance range for core FFO by $0.05 to a range of $6.35 to $6.65 per share.
Our same-store performance trends were essentially in line with our forecast, and we expect pricing trends to continue to improve over the remainder of the year, with the most favorable prior year revenue comparisons coming in the second quarter due to the initial impact of COVID-19 last year.
We plan to revisit guidance after the second quarter when we'll have more clarity on several key assumptions.
So that's all we have in the way of prepared comments.
Christy, are you there?

user
qtrly core ffo per share $1.64.
sees 2021 core ffo per share $6.35 to $6.65.

assistant