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: We have adapted procedures with the safety of our employees and customers in mind, while also continuing to serve our residents and customers in a difficult environment.
We have seamlessly transitioned to work-from-home in our corporate and regional offices.
The effort and dedication that our teams have shown during these past five weeks is admirable.
We have successfully navigated through new regulatory protocols and operating environments at an impressive pace, while maintaining our high quality standards.
I am proud of our team.
Our first quarter was strong with an NOI growth rate of 5.2%.
We saw strong demand on the MH side of the business, with a 4.9% increase in rental revenue.
We wrapped up our snowbird season and have a total RV revenue growth rate of 4.8%.
The drivers in that revenue were a 7.4% growth rate in annual revenue, a 7% growth rate in seasonal revenue and a 7.6% decline in transient revenue.
Let me first address our MH business.
Since the middle of March, we have taken steps to increase social distancing, include closing the common area amenities and opening our offices by appointment only.
We have been and remain focused on ensuring the health and well-being of our employees, residents, members and guests.
Our customers have appreciated the importance of these steps and have followed the new guidelines.
We have an occupancy rate of 95% in our core portfolio.
We have often focused on the occupancy rate, but at this time, I think it's important to focus on the quality of our resident base.
Our residents are homeowners who have generally paid cash for their home.
Our residents are committed to their communities, they care about the community and they actively display a pride of ownership in their homes.
Our overall occupancy consists of less than 6% renters.
We see our renters as future owners.
In 2019, 33% of all home sales were the result of a renter conversion.
In April, we saw continued strength in MH platform, with 96% of our residents paying us timely.
We have a deferral plan in place for April rental payments for those residents facing financial hardship due to the impact of COVID-19.
Moving to our RV business, we have had an acquisition strategy over the years of buying RV resorts that are heavily focused on annual and seasonal revenue streams.
80% of our RV revenue is longer term in nature and 20% come from our Transient customers.
Our properties have been impacted by local shelter and place orders which call for reduced or eliminated travel activity inside a jurisdiction.
Our RV annual customer generally has developed roots at the community.
The annual customer tends to own a park model, resort cottage or has an RV on the site that has add-ons that create a more permanent footprint.
For the first quarter, the annual revenue grew by 7.4%, comprised of 5.8% rate and 1.6% occupancy.
Our northern RV resorts generally open in April.
Our annual customers at these locations pay a deposit in advance and then complete their payment when they arrive for the season.
These are summer homes and weekend getaways for our customers.
This year the opening of 46 of our RV resorts has been delayed until at least the end of April.
While we have begun collecting the annual rent due, the delay in opening has caused a change in the normal payment pattern for these customers.
Our seasonal revenue stream comes from customers who have a reservation of 30 days or more.
Our seasonal revenue primarily comes from our sunbelt locations with 70% of the revenue generated between November and March.
The first quarter, which represents half of the full year anticipated seasonal revenue grew by 7%.
The second quarter seasonal revenue is generally our slowest quarter with approximately 15% of the overall seasonal revenue in 2019, occurring in the second quarter.
Our transient business represents under 6% of our total revenue.
We have always said that this piece is the most difficult to forecast.
Our transient customer stays with us an average of three nights.
The transient business serves an important role for us as we seek to convert that transient customer to a seasonal or annual customer.
Most of our RV resorts have a small portion of their overall revenue stream focused on the transient business, which becomes a lead generator for the rest of the business.
Towards the end of March, we stopped accepting transient reservations for the remainder of March and all of April.
As a result, the following shelter-in-place orders, we reduced activity to protect our employees and residents from any potential risks associated with transient traffic.
At this point, the shelter-in-place orders are limiting our ability to accept transient reservation.
With respect to our membership business, we have seen strong demand from the members during this pandemic.
As shown in our supplemental, cash receipts are similar to this year to last year at this time.
We made the decision to withdraw guidance because we are operating under unprecedented conditions and thought it would be more meaningful for us to provide an outlook when there are updates to regulatory protocol.
Our business has held up extremely well during these circumstances.
We are seeing the best of humanity from our employees, residents, guests and members.
We have often described a sense of community at our properties and we have seen these in full display over the past month.
We see neighbors caring for neighbors, working together to support the greater community.
The demand is high for our property that is seen by our April results.
Based on feedback that we have received, our customers are very much looking forward to enjoying the outdoors lifestyle at our properties this season.
The ELS team has reacted to an evolving climate in an impressive manner, and for that I'm grateful.
I will provide an overview of our first quarter results, highlight operating performance in April, including the results of our recent annual property and casualty insurance renewal and discuss our balance sheet and liquidity position.
For the first quarter we reported $0.59 normalized FFO per share.
Our results reflect the initial impact of COVID-19, which primarily affected our transient RV business.
Core MH rent growth of 4.9% includes 4.4% rate growth and approximately 50 basis points related to occupancy gains.
Core RV rental income from annuals and seasonals outperformed expectations for the quarter.
Our transient revenues, which were pacing ahead of guidance through February ended the quarter down 7.6% compared to last year.
As Marguerite mentioned, we began closing our reservation grid to incoming customers in mid-March.
First quarter membership dues revenue, as well as the net contribution from upgrade sales were higher than guidance.
Dues revenues increased 6.1% as a result of rate increases and an increase in our paid member count of 4.3%.
During the quarter we sold approximately 3,200 Thousand Trails camping passes.
We upgraded 727 members during the quarter, 15% more than the first quarter last year.
Core utility and other income was in line with guidance for the quarter and includes the year-over-year increase in real-estate tax pass-throughs resulting from the Florida reassessments we discussed in January.
First quarter core property operating maintenance and real-estate tax expenses were unfavorable to forecast, mainly as a result of higher than expected R&M expenses.
We incurred expenses to recover from storms in California and certain northern properties.
In summary, first quarter core property operating revenues were up 5.4% and core NOI before property management increased 5.2%.
Property operating income from the non-core portfolio, which includes our Marina portfolio, as well as assets acquired during 2019 was $2.8 million in the quarter.
Overall, the acquisition properties continue to perform in line with expectations.
Property management and corporate G&A were higher than guidance in the quarter because of the timing of expenses related to certain administrative matters.
Other income and expenses generated the net contribution of $1.4 million for the quarter.
Ancillary, retail and restaurant operations were impacted by COVID-19 and were lower than expected.
Interest and related amortization was $26.1 million and includes the impact of the refinancing we completed during the quarter.
I'll provide some detail on this transaction shortly when I discuss our balance sheet.
In addition to describing our operational response to the pandemic, the update highlights cash collections and liquidity as indicators of April performance.
In our MH properties, we've collected 96% of April rent.
The collection rate is net of approximately $180,000 of rent deferral requests we've approved.
Our largest population within the MH portfolio age qualified properties have the highest collection rate at 97% collected.
Our renter population, while a very small portion of our portfolio, has the lowest rate of collection with approximately 91% collected.
At this time of the year, our RV collection efforts are focused on the northern resorts, annual customers as they typically are returning to begin their season of camping.
As detailed in the update, 46 of these properties have delayed openings, which has affected typical payment patterns.
To-date, we have collected approximately 61% of the April and May annual RV renewals as compared to 71% collected at this time last year.
Our seasonal revenue in April was impacted by cancellations as certain customers chose to leave early.
However, we also saw customers extend their stays and are currently showing a revenue decline of 12% in April.
Our last update relates to our recent property and casualty insurance renewal.
On April 1st, we completed the renewal of our property general liability, workers comp and other ancillary insurance programs.
While terms and conditions are substantially similar to the expiring policies, adverse market conditions resulted in a higher than expected premium increase of 27%.
The resulting insurance expense for the remainder of the year is approximately $1.1 million higher than our expectation.
Now, I'll discuss our refinancing activity in the first quarter, highlight current secured debt market conditions and provide some comments on our balance sheet, including our current liquidity position.
During the quarter, we closed a $275.4 million secured facility with Fannie Mae.
The loan is a fixed interest rate of 2.69%.
which is the lowest coupon we've seen on a secured 10-year deal in the MH, RV space.
With the proceeds, we've repaid our secured debt maturing in 2020, which carried a weighted average interest rate of 5.2% and the outstanding balance in our line of credit.
The remaining proceeds funded working capital, primarily our expansion activity.
As I provide an update on the secure debt market, bear in mind that the current environment is quite volatile.
Conditions have been changing rapidly and we anticipate they'll continue to do so for some time.
That said, current secured financing terms available for MH and RV assets range from 55% to 75% LTV, with rates from 3% to 3.75% for 10-year money.
As we've seen in challenging times in the past, sponsor strength is highly valued by lenders and ELS continues to be highly regarded.
High quality aged qualified MH will command preferred terms from participating lenders.
In these uncertain times, we decided it was prudent to increase our available cash balance.
As noted on our COVID-19 update page, we have a current available cash balance of $126 million with no debt maturing in 2020.
We continue to place high importance on balance sheet flexibility and we believe we have multiple sources of capital available to us.
Our debt to EBITDA and our interest coverage are both around 4.9 times.
The weighted average maturity of our outstanding secured debt is almost 13 years.

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withdrawing our full year 2020 guidance.
qtrly normalized funds from operations $0.59 per common share.

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