Mid-America Apartment Communities Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MAA Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded, July 29, 2021.

I will now turn the call over to Tim Argo, Senior Vice President of Finance of MAA for opening comments.

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you, Malorie, and good morning, everyone. This is Tim Argo, Senior Vice President of Finance for MAA. With me are Eric Bolton, our CEO; Al Campbell, our CFO; Rob DelPriore, our General Counsel; Tom Grimes, our COO; and Brad Hill, our Head of Transactions. Before we begin with our prepared comments this morning, I want to point out that as part of the discussion, company management will be making forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from our projections. We encourage you to refer to the forward-looking statements section in yesterday's earnings release and our 34-Act filings with the SEC, which describe risk factors that may impact future results. These reports, along with a copy of today's prepared comments and an audio copy of this morning's call will be available on our website. During this call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures as well as reconciliations of the differences between non-GAAP and comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and supplemental financial data, which are available on the For Investors page of our website at www.maac.com.

I will now turn the call over to Eric.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thanks, Tim, and good morning, everyone. MAA had a strong second quarter with rent growth, same-store NOI and core FFO results ahead of expectations. Strong job growth and positive migration trends continue to drive higher demand for housing across our Sunbelt markets, and we expect continued strong rent growth. As noted in our earnings release, we are adjusting our performance expectations for the year and meaningfully increasing guidance for core FFO performance. The various factors that were driving employers and households to the Sunbelt markets before the impact of COVID continue. In addition, the COVID-related recalibrating by both employers and employees about where they choose to do business and live continues to also fuel higher demand trends across the Sunbelt, and those trends are accelerating. The new residents that we moved in year-to-date from outside of our Sunbelt footprint increased another 265 basis points as compared to the first six months of last year during the peak of COVID-related relocations. New move-ins from renters relocating to the Sunbelt currently constitute almost 13% of our new leases so far this year and are trending higher. During the second quarter in a number of markets such as Phoenix, Tampa, Nashville and Charleston, the percentage of new residents moving to our properties from outside the Sunbelt was even higher. As housing demand grows across the region, investor appetite for apartment real estate in the Sunbelt is also increasing. As Brad will touch on, we continue to see very aggressive bidding in the acquisition market with downward pressure on cap rates. MAA is well positioned to harvest the opportunities surrounding our long-time focus on the Sunbelt markets with a uniquely diversified strategy across the region. Strong leasing fundamentals, coupled with extensive redevelopment and repositioning opportunities along with the continued roll-out of new technology initiatives that will drive further margin expansion have us excited about the momentum from the same-store portfolio. In addition, as noted in our earnings release, we continue to expand our external growth platform with earnings-accretive new development and have several other projects currently under contract and in predevelopment. As always, I want to send a big thank you and message of well done to our team of MAA associates.

Your dedication and commitment to serving our residents and supporting each other is critical to our success and is key in driving our strong performance. Tom?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. We saw strong pricing performance across the portfolio during the second quarter. Blended lease-over-lease pricing during the quarter was up 8.2%. As a result, all in-place rents on a year-over-year basis grew to 3.1%. This is more than double the 1.3% growth rate of the first quarter. Average effective rent growth is our primary driver. And with the current blended pricing momentum, we expect it to continue to strengthen through the remainder of the year. In addition, average daily occupancy for the quarter increased to 96.4%. As outlined in the release, we saw steady progress on our product upgrade initiatives. This includes our interior unit redevelopment program as well as the installation of our Smart Home technology package that includes mobile control of lights, thermostat and security as well as leak detection. For the full year 2021, we expect to complete just over 6,000 interior unit upgrades and install 22,000 Smart Home packages. We're also in the final stages of completing the repositioning work on our first eight full repositioned properties and have another eight that will begin this year. Leasing activity for July has been strong. New lease-over-lease pricing month to date for July is running close to 17% ahead of rent on the prior lease. Renewal lease pricing in July is running 9% ahead of the prior lease. As a result, blended pricing for the portfolio is up 12% so far in July. Average daily occupancy for the month is currently 96.1%, which is 80 basis points better than July of last year. Exposure, which is all vacant units plus notices through a 60-day period, is just 7.1%. This is 100 basis points better than prior year. This supports our ability to continue to prioritize rent growth and indicates that new lease pricing will peak seasonally later than historic norms. We are well positioned as we move into the third quarter. I'd like to echo Eric's comments and thank our teams as well. They have shown tremendous adaptability and resilience over the last year. I'm proud of them and excited for their progress in '21.

Thanks, and I'll turn it over to Brad.

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. The strong investor demand for multifamily properties in our footprint that began prior to COVID continues to strengthen today. Transaction volume is up significantly since the first quarter as investors look to buy into the strong rent growth outlook in our Sunbelt markets. Strong leasing fundamentals, coupled with robust investor demand, have accelerated pricing growth, putting additional downward pressure on cap rates. Cap rates on deals we underwrote in the second quarter have compressed another 25 basis points from first quarter and the compression has accelerated in the last 30 days, pushing cap rates down approximately 100 basis points since first quarter of '20. We like the overall balance and unique diversification of our Sunbelt-oriented portfolio and have no need to change our market weightings by participating in the aggressive pricing market for existing properties. Therefore, we will continue to focus our capital deployment efforts on new development and prepurchase opportunities, which provide higher yields, higher growth and a much lower basis than the acquisition opportunities we're seeing in the current market. We continue to make progress on our development pipeline. As noted in our release, we closed and started construction on two prepurchase projects in the second quarter, bringing our prepurchase and development pipeline, both under construction and in lease-up, to 3,347 units at a total cost of $775 million. In addition to these two projects, we have a number of other development sites owned or under contract and hope to start construction on several projects later this year and into 2022. Our predevelopment opportunities are in Denver, Salt Lake City, Tampa, Raleigh and Nashville, all existing markets within our portfolio footprint. We continue to see very strong leasing demand in our region of the country and our recently completed properties in Dallas and Phoenix that are currently in lease-up reflect this strong demand. Both properties continue to perform very well with rents and leasing velocity at or above pro forma.

All of our under-construction projects remain on budget and on schedule despite continued cost pressures and supply chain disruptions. Our under-construction projects have fixed cost construction contracts, so they remain on budget, but we are seeing continued cost pressure on new projects. While the lumber-related run-up in construction costs that we saw in the first half of the year has begun to mitigate a bit, we are seeing cost pressures related to other commodities that we will continue to monitor. Supply chain disruptions related to appliances, cabinets, windows and electrical components are occurring, but our teams have done a great job working around these issues with very minimal impact to our delivery schedules. As part of our planned dispositions for 2021, we exited the Jackson, Mississippi market at the end of the second quarter with the sale of our four properties. For these assets with an average age of 36 years, we achieved strong pricing of $160 million, which was above the top end of our expectations. We are early in the process, but we're in the market with three other properties that we expect to close before the end of the year. That's all I have in the way of comments.

I'll turn it over to Al.

[Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you, Brad. The strong second quarter operating performance produced core FFO that was at the top end of our prior guidance range or $0.08 per share above the midpoint, which also supports improved performance expectations over the remainder of the year. As you saw in our release, we are significantly increasing our guidance for both core FFO and same-store performance for the full year. The increases are primarily based on projections of continued high occupancy levels remaining essentially full between 95.5% and 96% over the remainder of the year and continued strong rental pricing growth over the second half, particularly during the third quarter with some typical seasonal moderation expected in the fourth quarter. This supports a revised revenue growth projection for the full year of 4% at the midpoint of guidance, which is 200 basis points above the prior midpoint. Same-store operating expenses have largely been in line with our expectations for the year. As outlined earlier in the year, we expected expenses to be somewhat elevated during the first half, mainly related to the impact of our Double Play program, the difficult prior year insurance renewal as well as some continued pressure on real estate taxes, which represent about 40% of our total operating costs overall.

The growth rate for total operating expenses over the second half is still expected to moderate as originally projected with some impact from increased property level performance-based awards and inflationary pressures on repair and maintenance costs driving an increase to the midpoint of the expected growth by about 50 basis points for the full year. Finally, our balance sheet remains very strong. As Brad outlined in his comments, our development opportunities continue to grow. We expect our total pipeline of development communities in construction and lease-up comprised of both in-house and prepurchase deals to end the year just over $800 million, which is well within our defined risk tolerances while we expect the new high-yielding projects to be very accretive to earnings and value in 2023 and beyond. Our financing plans continue to include some activity over the second half of the year. Current market conditions appear to be stable and strong, supporting good pricing expectations across the maturity curve. We also continue to have positive discussions with the rating agencies regarding our corporate rating. We believe our current ratings are fairly conservative, and we look forward to continued discussions with all agencies over the next few quarters. That's all that we have in the way of prepared comments.

So Malorie, we will now turn the call back over to you for any questions.

Questions and Answers

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Now open we will take our first call first question from Nick Yulico from Scotiabank.

[Nick Yulico, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Thanks good morning everyone in terms of the new guidance on blended lease growth that you have for the year, I guess, it's implying some strengthening here what you've seen in July, and I assume for the rest of the third quarter, it's assumed. Can you just maybe just give us a feel for how that's going to look in the back half of the year? And as well, if those numbers are still very high, sort of single digit, double-digit numbers, what does that mean in terms of the benefit that you're starting to get for the lease roll as we're thinking about next year's results?

[Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Nick, this is Al. I can start with that, and maybe Tim and I can join on some of those details. So I think, obviously, as you saw in the second quarter, we had tremendous trend coming from the first quarter. Our average pricing -- our blended pricing was 2.7 for the first quarter, 8.2 in the second quarter. And so as you look at the back half, and you take the guidance that we put out of 6.5 to 7.5 for the full year, we're obviously assuming continued strength in that. And as I mentioned a bit in my calls, primarily in the third quarter because, July, we're seeing, and it's already very strong, we expect that to continue, we do expect some normal seasonal moderation in the fourth quarter, but still have strong numbers, but that blends down. So you can do the math on that. You're around -- somewhere around 8% for the back half of the year when you did the math on our new guidance. And so that's -- obviously, with continued strong and stable occupancy that we talked about, those are under guidance on that.

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. I'll add to that, Nick, to kind of answer your second question about sort of what the baked in is, the way we think about that is if you take sort of half of pricing in one year and half of the pricing in the next year, it should sort of average out to the full year effective rent growth. So to Al's point about our 7% blended lease-over-lease for the year, call it half of that we expect to blend into '22, certainly setting up some good strength for next year.

[Nick Yulico, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Okay. Great. Second question is just on -- if we look at some markets that are -- if we look at some of the industry data coming out on markets such as Atlanta, Tampa, Phoenix, right, what you also highlighted as being very strong markets, I think you also said that the migration into some of those markets from outside the Sunbelt is higher than other parts of the portfolio, but -- which may be a factor in this question. But I guess my -- what I'm wondering is when we look at the data, it feels like those markets right now if you blend what's going on with rent growth this year and last year is actually looking better than pre-COVID. And maybe that migration is a benefit or there's other factors, but just wanted to hear your thoughts on some of these really high rent growth markets, which are not -- they didn't have concessions. So this is pure rent growth you're seeing and it looks stronger than 2019. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think is driving that excess growth now versus pre-COVID?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. Nick, I mean, it is economy first. We've seen those never let up the gas on the growth. And so that's continued to roll on in those larger markets. And then secondarily, these move-ins from out of market has grown over COVID levels and over prior year in something like Phoenix, 21% of our move-outs were out of market. Tampa, 18% out of market. Nashville, 15% out of market. And Savannah, 16%. Those are substantially higher than we saw even last year, which we believe sort of accelerated the trend. So it is those items, and you're seeing folks follow jobs announcements from places like Oracle and Tesla and Microsoft and places like that.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And Nick, this is Eric. A statistic that I'll share with you that, Tim and some others pull together that I think is pretty telling. If you look at the MAA markets collectively, we have about 28% of the households in America live in our markets, 28%. But if you look at where new household formation is occurring, our markets constitute 42% of projected new household formations and that 42% is expected to grow to 44% next year. So there's a lot of factors that come into why the household formation trends are so much more robust in the Sunbelt, a lot of them you know. But I think that the trends that were there before COVID are still there. And then I think COVID has sort of caused, as I mentioned, companies and employers and households to sort of recalibrate their thinking a little bit about where they choose to live. And I think that, that has just added more fuel to the demand curve.

[Nick Yulico, Analyst at Scotiabank]

Thanks eric and everyone else.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question from Neil Malkin, Capital One Securities.

[Neil Malkin, Analyst at Capital One Securities]

Good morning everyone -- Great quarter. I'm still clapping you over here for the just amazing results, just continue to blow my mind. First, the IRT and Steadfast merger, that portfolio seems to be a little bit under the radar, but pretty sizable, mostly markets that overlap nicely with your portfolio, some B quality stuff in there. So opportunity to do some highly accretive redevelopment. Just wondering if you look at that deal and if there are any others like it out there and your thoughts on M&A using your stock price, given its very attractive currency at this point in the cycle and given the strength that you probably expect for the Sunbelt market for quite some time?

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Hi neil, it's Eric. We are somewhat familiar with that portfolio given the, as you mentioned, the large overlap with a number of our markets. But candidly, this is -- that is not something that we looked at and is not something that we would have looked at simply because I really saw or didn't see meaningful strategic value in trying to pursue that. The only new markets for us would have been in Indiana, Oklahoma and a small exposure in Chicago. And frankly, those are not markets we're really interested in pursuing. In addition, the in-place financing on the portfolio was not really a good fit with where we're -- our balance sheet strategy and where we're working to get the balance sheet position to. So absent a strategic -- a solid strategic rationale or some form of an assessment that a big opportunity really makes us stronger in some way, just getting a little size is not something we're really interested in trying to do. We're looking to strengthen the platform. We're looking to make ourselves better if we do something strategic, not just get a little bit bigger and certainly absent some sort of a strategic compelling reason to do it, waiting into this super competitive acquisition market and paying top dollar in this environment is, frankly, just something we weren't interested in doing.

[Neil Malkin, Analyst at Capital One Securities]

Yeah thanks i appreciate the comments there. Other one for me is you look at, especially, this quarter, EQR, AVB, the sort of coastal bellwethers have both made pretty candid comments about the regulatory challenging, less attractive coastal markets, California, New York, etc, and have started to, and to use your word, weighed into your market, your backyard. And obviously, that's a positive in terms of confirming your thesis on your markets. But what do you think the biggest, I guess, threats or risks and then potential opportunities could be now that some of the big boy, well-capitalized REITs are starting to sniff around your territory?

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, it's a big region and a lot of market -- markets across the region, MAA has a fairly, in addition to a long, long history, focused for the last 27 years on this region and on these markets, we also have, I think, a very unique approach to how we diversify across the region. And so we think that the long history we have on the region, the in-depth, deep knowledge we have of the markets and the submarkets probably continues to create some level of advantage for us. I think over time, platform capabilities associated with scale and revenue management, cost of capital and market knowledge to support both operations and also to support a disciplined new growth can drive competitive advantages and long-term outperformance. And as I say, with a 27-year history focused on this region, I continue to like our chances.

[Neil Malkin, Analyst at Capital One Securities]

Yeah okay appreciate that thank you guys and us tremendous tremendous quarter.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thanks neil

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question from John Kim, BMO Capital Markets.

[John Kim, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Thank you good morning. i wanted to ask about your guidance for blended lease growth for the year. It actually seems conservative at 7%, just given what you printed in the second quarter and then 16% July so far. On top of that, Tom, I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks that new lease pricing will peak seasonally later than normal. Can you elaborate on that comment? And then also if you really anticipate the lease growth to slow significantly from what you have for July?

[Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Let me start with that, John, and maybe Tim and Tom can jump in on some of that, too. In terms of where we have our guidance, if you look at what we're projecting for the back half of the year, I mean we projected a strong performance. We're taking the third quarter, as we talked about, we continue -- expect that to continue sort of July's trends into that. But we do expect some modest seasonal moderation in the fourth quarter, and that's normal. I mean we -- typically that happens. And so I'll say this, we're still projecting a fourth quarter that's well above probably anything we've recently done in recent history for sure. So it's strong, but we will have -- there's just less demand in that period. And good thing is that we've designed it. So those are less leases being signed as well. So it has less of an impact as well, but we do expect some. So just to give you a flavor, you can do the math on what we're talking about, but you're talking more like 10% or more expectations in the third quarter moderating down to 6% or so in the forecast. Still very strong projection, leading to the full year blend that we're talking about. So it's very good to see these trends, reflective of what we really think is going to happen over the full year in that.

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And one point of clarification, John, July is 12% on blended. I think you might have said 16% or 17%. The new lease was that with the blend, it was 12%. So we're expecting sort of August to be pretty similar to that and then start to trend down as demand typically starts to wane a bit.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

John, one quick way to think about it is blended, a combination of both new and renewal pricing year-to-date through the first half of the year was 6%. The forecast assumes that, that blended performance over the back half of the year, even with seasonal factors, is 8%. So it's still positive and good, and we think it's -- they're definitely reasonable to work off that kind of assumption.

[John Kim, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Thank you and then for the guidance, I think, for expenses, it went up for the year. A lot of that is due to higher repair and maintenance. Are you accelerating any of these costs just, given the strength in the market? Are you doing anything different as far as expensing versus capitalizing certain items?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

No changes in expenses and capitalizing. We would expect repair and maintenance cost to come down in the back half of the year just because of the odd comparisons this year. We have some inflationary pressure on some specific items in that. But that's in Tim and Al's guidance for the year.

[Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

There are a few things in that. First, it's a pretty modest increase in the range overall of 50 basis points, John, but there's really two things in that. One is perform -- property level performance awards for the strong performance that we're seeing expected for the year. I mean we're very glad to see it and proud of our teams for producing that. So there'll be some of that.

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

That's the bulk of it.

[Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

That's probably the bulk of it. And then you have some inflationary pressures on repairman, supplies and things that we do, which is typical across, I would say, everybody right now with full market, but pretty small overall.

[John Kim, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question from Bradley Heffern, RBC Capital Markets.

[Bradley Heffern, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Hi everyone thanks since we're on the topic of guidance, can you just talk through the 3Q guide a little bit? Obviously, in the second quarter, you have the 169 for core FFO and then the midpoint of the third quarter range is 168. So is there some sort of offsetting factor to this strong blended rate growth that you're seeing?

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I think if you look historically, over the last several years in terms of core FFO, third quarter is usually sort of a low point, and it's really just with all of the activity going on in the third quarter, we have -- the expenses are at their highest point, obviously getting the highest rents as well. But just the seasonality of expenses usually drives and I think -- honestly, like I said, I think if you look at the last several years, Q3 is probably our low point in terms of core FFO. Nothing structural driving that other than the normal patterns.

[Bradley Heffern, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Got it. And then going back to the first question on the call, the double-digit strength we're seeing in a lot of your markets, how long do you think that goes on for broadly? I mean is demand just so strong that it won't taper until you see either demand fall off or supply pick up or is there sort of just a kind of onetime pricing of the rent levels that these markets can bear?

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, I mean, fundamentally, it comes down to just supply-demand sort of balance. And we certainly continue to see evidence that the demand level is going to remain strong other than sort of normal seasonal patterns that we've alluded to. It's hard for me to point to any sort of definitive reason as to why the demand side of the equation is likely to show any significant moderation. I think that if you want to think about some level of catch-up occurring, if you will, as a consequence of what went on last year, we went back and took a look at what we expected to occur last year in the second quarter in our pricing before we knew about COVID. And obviously, last year, during COVID, we came in short of those original expectations to the tune of about 250 basis points in terms of blended lease-over-lease pricing. So if one wants to think about this year's performance has somewhat of an extra [Indecipherable] to it as a consequence of recovery from last year from a lease-over-lease perspective, I would argue that probably no more than 200, 250 basis points of that is a function of recovery from last year. Overwhelmingly, what's driving it is just all the factors that are driving the really strong demand side of the business in terms of employers and employees finding reasons to come to the region and the new jobs is continuing to form here. And as I pointed out a moment ago, with our markets constituting collectively, 42% of the household formation -- projected household formations in 2021, and that's growing to 44% based on the information we get from economy.com and some of these other services, it suggests to us that the demand side of the equation is likely to remain pretty robust. And we do think that it's unlikely for all the reasons Brad alluded to surrounding what's going on with construction costs, land sites and things of that nature, we think that we probably see supply levels remain fairly elevated like they are now going into next year, but it's hard for me to envision supply levels picking up materially from where they are. So as we sit here today, I think we're pretty optimistic that we're going to see pretty good favorable demand-supply relationship for us going into next year.

[Bradley Heffern, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Ok thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions ]We will take our next question from Nick Joseph, Citibank.

[Nick Joseph, Analyst at Citibank]

Thanks. you guys talked about the competition for assets and all the new entrants into the market, are you seeing a similar level of competition for developments in presale or is it a little different than stabilized properties?

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Nick, this is Brad. I mean I would say that it's certainly aggressive. There's certainly a lot of equity that's looking to put money out in development. I would say it's a little less. I think the demand for immediate earning assets is a bit higher than the demand for assets that are not going to produce for three years. So it's certainly aggressive out there with a lot of capital, but I would say it is less in the development arena and in the JV arena than it is in the acquisition market.

[Nick Joseph, Analyst at Citibank]

Thanks and then you talked about the population movement a lot with people entering the market. But when you look at the move-outs and obviously turnover still low, are you seeing people leave the markets or any changes for a reason to move out for the data that you collect?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

No. We're seeing a little bit higher move-outs. It's slightly higher on home buying, but primarily job transfer, which is kind of what you would expect, especially comparing to last year when there was less of that kind of movement. And then 4% of our move-outs are to outer area, and that's down from 5%. So once people move here, they tend to stay in the area and job transfers and home buying generate the change.

[Nick Joseph, Analyst at Citibank]

Thanks.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Alex Kalmus, Zelman Associates.

[Alex Kalmus, Analyst at Zelman Associates]

Hi thank you for taking the question when you look at the move-ins this quarter and the demographics of the move-ins, are they similar to your current portfolio? And do they vary from the out-of-state movers versus within the same markets?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

When we look at it, one thing that is interesting that is occurring, Alex, is you would think with the large run-up in pricing opportunity for us that, that would stress on affordability. But we're seeing affordability stay in that 19% to 20% range or the rent-to-income ratio, I should say, in that 19% to 20% range. So the incomes are -- that are coming in are higher, and that is -- that gives us plenty of room to run in that area.

[Alex Kalmus, Analyst at Zelman Associates]

Got it thank you very much and moving to the Smart Home tech side, you've talked in the past about the A/B testing and potentially getting some top line dues from -- including the Smart Home technology. Have you updated that analysis? And are you still seeing the same sort of top line benefits there?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. We're getting a very solid $20 to $25 bump in that. And then what we'll begin to see as well, we really underwrote on the thing that we knew we would get or we felt strongly about was the revenue opportunity. We're beginning to see the benefits of our mobile maintenance plan, which was -- we just installed mobile maintenance or upgraded mobile maintenance for the portfolio in the second quarter, and that will begin to create some efficiency for us on the expense side on leak detection as well as just saving time between units responding to calls real time, those kind of things.

[Alex Kalmus, Analyst at Zelman Associates]

Got it thank you very much.

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thanks alex.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question from Amanda Sweitzer from Baird.

[Amanda Sweitzer, Analyst at Robert W. Baird]

Thank good morning you've gotten plenty of questions on guidance, but I did want to ask about your occupancy outlook that's embedded for the full year. It sounds like you may have seen a slight increase in turnover now recently given the sequential occupancy decline in July. How are you thinking about balancing rate and occupancy for the remainder of the year? And do you think you've reached a structurally high level of occupancy for your portfolio in the second quarter?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes.

[Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Amanda, I'll start with that, and then Tom, you can -- but the way we look at it is we've talked about in the past, around the 96-point level, which we are, we're talking about for the back half of the year, high 95s to mid-96 range we're projecting, that's essentially full, given our turnover and the way things are right now in our portfolio. So we're projecting to be stable with that very strong. But to give ourselves in the back half a little bit of room to continue pushing on price, we certainly don't want to expect occupancy to continue growing from where it is because we'd like to continue putting these good prices in the portfolio. So that's what's underlying our expectations and our forecasting.

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. And Amanda, on balancing price and occupancy, I think we've always believed that when there is an opportunity to build strength in embedded rent growth that we should take that. And that is something that we did before the pandemic. We really pushed that, and that gives us -- gave us higher ERU or effective rent growth were all in place ahead of the downturn, which allowed us to weather the storm. And again, we're in an opportunity where we can push rate, and that is, I would say, primary. And honestly, I'd be happy from 95.5 to 96.5. And I think we were a little higher in second quarter, even with the rent increase, than frankly, we wanted to be. But given where current occupancy is and more importantly, where exposure is, I would sort of expect us to stay in that 96.1 and above range for the next couple of months. But I mean, we are building strength now and the opportunity to really help our future is to grow rate right now, and we're heavy that way.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Amanda, this is Eric. One final point I'll make on that. I mean we do monitor very closely the percentage of our turnover that's occurring because of the rent increase and we track that. And in the second quarter, the move-outs that we had due to the rent increase were about 7% of our move-outs and you compare and contrast that to 2019 a more normalized year and the move-outs due to rent increase range anywhere from 7% to 10%. So we've monitored pretty closely. If we saw move-outs jump up a lot because of rent increase, and we would start to taper back a little bit. But at this point, no real change occurring.

[Amanda Sweitzer, Analyst at Robert W. Baird]

That's helpful. Certainly, a good problem to have. And then on development, how are you thinking about staging the construction starts for those predevelopment projects you discussed? And then as you think about adding additional projects to that predevelopment pipeline, are you still finding the best opportunities in some of those longer-term repurposing and permitting opportunities that you talked about?

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, this is Brad, Amanda. Certainly, in terms of the staging, the developments that we're working on now, we've got a pipeline right now of about $800 million or so that we're really working through, both owned sites and then sites under contract and that we're working on predevelopment on and then also our prepurchase platform. So -- those take -- given where we are in the cycle and given how hard it is to get -- find sites and get sites entitled, the staging of those, you can't perfectly map those out frankly, and a lot of the developments that we're doing in-house are for sites that need to be rezoned. So it takes some time to get through that process. But frankly, really what we're doing on those is working through the predevelopment process and our approvals. And then really, once we get to a point where we can have a GMP and known construction prices locked in that's acceptable to us, we look to move forward with those opportunities. I would say the prepurchase time line is a bit more truncated because, again, we're putting off some of the risk associated with the predevelopment work to the developers that we're partnering with. So those have a little bit shorter time period on them. Sometimes, not all the time. So we're able to work those in kind of at our starts a little quicker than stuff that we're doing in-house. So a long way of saying, we can't really perfectly map that out. It's really once we get costs and approvals and everything behind us on those projects. And then what was the second part of your question, Amanda?

[Amanda Sweitzer, Analyst at Robert W. Baird]

Just in terms of future opportunities to add to your predevelopment pipeline, are you still finding some of the best opportunities in those longer-term repurposing or permitting opportunities that you've talked about in the past?

[Bradley Heffern, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Yes. I mean we certainly have opportunities there. I think I mentioned a moment ago, we've got about $800 million that we think we can repopulate here, and that's a mixture of stuff that is on balance sheet and then also our prepurchase, the sites that our development team are working on now sometimes are 1.5 years to get through the development process. So it's taking a little bit of time to do that on some of them, but those are great opportunities. But I'll say it is becoming increasingly difficult to find sites. It's becoming increasingly difficult to get sites zoned and permitted and really worked through that process. So those are taking a bit longer, but we feel really good about the pipeline that we have and then the ability to repopulate that as we go forward.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And Amanda, this is Eric. I would add that we do think that we see the competition for opportunities that involve rezoning or that involve a much longer process, the competition for those sites is not quite as fierce as what you find in something that is shovel ready, if you will, and ready to go. That's -- because a lot of -- particularly among the smaller developers and among the -- some of the private capital coming into the market, they have a mandate that doesn't allow them to take quite that much time often. And so we do find better opportunities more often than not and more -- those projects that require a little bit more time.

[Amanda Sweitzer, Analyst at Robert W. Baird]

-- Thanks your time.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thanks amanda.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Austin Wurschmidt, KeyBanc Capital.

[Austin Wurschmidt, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital]

Thanks good morning everybody. mark-to-market and trend out rents on your existing development pipeline, what the difference or upside between the yield that you underwrote and what that might suggest? And do you think that the projects could stabilize ahead of the time line that you've outlined in the release?

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Austin, this is Brad. I'd say broadly, again, we're seeing strength, as I mentioned in my comments, in our lease-ups. And we're seeing that both in velocity, and we're seeing that also in rate. So I would say, if we trended that out, we're going to see some good positive momentum in the yields that we have there. Certainly, for the two that we have in lease-up right now, that's the case. The other ones that are under construction where preleasing is kind of just starting, it's a little too early to say on those. But we're certainly seeing really, really good momentum as we go forward there. And in terms of the velocity, we did move up the expected stabilization date of our NOVEL Midtown deal in Phoenix by two quarters. Again, that market has been extremely strong and the lease-up is going very, very well and ahead of expectations. So we have moved that data up.

[Austin Wurschmidt, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital]

Not to put you on the spot, I mean, could you quantify what the yield -- you think the yield upside is? I think you've said 6% is sort of the average yield across the pipeline. I mean do you think it's -- is it 50 basis points or something less? Any sense, put a range on that?

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah I wouldn't say 50 basis points, but I would say it's, call it, 20 basis points at this point. But again, as we get into the NOVEL Midtown deals, 46% occupied. And it's really -- it's too early to put numbers on that. But broadly, I would say it's 20-plus basis points.

[Austin Wurschmidt, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital]

Got it. And then as far as redevelopment, I think the average increase was around 11%, but clearly, the new lease rates you're achieving across the portfolio are even higher. What do you think the premium is you're getting on redevelopment today?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Premiums right at 11%, honestly, because the way we really try to understand what the market will pay for the premium and match that and then let the market rate pushes up from there. So our redevelopment unit may be getting $200 more, $100 of that is the redevelopment premium, $100 of it's market growth.

[Austin Wurschmidt, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital]

Got it. And then one last quick one for me. What's the loss to lease today on the portfolio?

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, Austin, you can think about that in a lot of different ways. And talking to Nick earlier, one of the way we really think about that because it can be very seasonal, depending on what time of the year you're looking at. But I think we're expecting a 7% blended lease-over-lease for this year. So that obviously half of that or so carries into next year. So certainly in a good spot and it will depend on kind of where the full year lease-over-lease ends up.

[Austin Wurschmidt, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital]

Thats fair thank you guys

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Rob Stevenson from Janney.

[Rob Stevenson, Analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott]

Good morning guys tom can you talk a little bit about the markets in first half versus second half? And which ones do you expect to see the strongest incremental growth for the first half of the year to the second half of the year? And then which ones because either they've had such a big pop already are going to wind up seeing the least sort of incremental growth as you move forward here?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. I mean that's a relative question, Rob, because at this point in July, our leasing growth have got six markets below 10% blended rent growth and the slower of those are D.C. and Houston, which are, I think, 5.2 and 5.7 for blended rent growth, but that's encouraging progress for those. So I don't think that we have seen -- I don't see any market where it's slowing, to be honest with you, in terms of the market. Again, we'll have seasonal trends as you're well aware of, but places like Phoenix and Tampa continue to accelerate and places like Atlanta and Austin have really picked it up recently, and we're seeing that on into Dallas and across the portfolio. I mean the number of markets -- the majority of our markets are -- large majority of our markets are now pushing higher than 10% blended rent growth. So I don't see any sort of tipping point that's been reached other than seasonality. And of course, Eric made the point earlier, we're pushing through [Indecipherable] renewal increases and we're getting less pushback than we have historically.

[Rob Stevenson, Analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott]

Okay. And then, Al, when does the -- or when did or when does the insurance renew? And did you get hit with any type of major increase on the last renewal just simply because of higher construction costs on replacing units or furnitures, etc?

[Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah, we did our renewal effective July 1, and it was roughly, call it, 14%, 15% year-over-year, which is right in line with what we were expecting. We didn't see anything necessarily driven specifically by development costs. Frankly, the Winter Storm Uri is really what drove it more than anything. I think we would have had lower without that, but we feel like we're in a good position now and taking the appropriate amount of risk on balance sheet and expect to see that continue to decline going forward.

[Rob Stevenson, Analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott]

Okay. And then one last one. Given your markets, how many units do you have that you would evict if you could, but are legally prevented from doing so? And then how many units overall in the portfolio are currently in the eviction process?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Rob, I'd say on that, it's very limited. And you can see that with our collections of 99.2% right now for the second quarter. It's been strong. I don't expect to change in rules on evictions to change anything much, and we're working closely with relief fund folks to manage that process. So honestly, I don't see that it makes a big difference going forward.

[Rob Stevenson, Analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott]

Ok thanks guys.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Rich Anderson, SMBC.

[Rich Anderson, Analyst at SMBC]

Thanks good morning so the ultimate sign of fundamental strength, not that we knew the hint, is when new lease growth is greater than renewal lease rents. And so I'm curious if in the past when that's -- that condition has existed with MAA, how long does it last? And is there anything strategically you're doing for an incoming new resident that is perhaps driving that level of growth relative to renewals?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Rich, what I'll say is it is also a sign that we have opportunity on renewal. And I'll tell you the renewal pricing that was achieved in the second quarter was really priced in the first quarter and vice versa. So I think you'll see that delta begin to narrow as we reprice going out. July was higher than the second quarter, and we'll see that continue to grow a bit. But -- and the new lease rate really frankly gives us good cover to begin to move that up. And again, as Eric mentioned, we have a low pushback on renewal accept rates because they can get out and see the housing market, pricing is very transparency and -- transparent and they know they've got a good deal right now.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And Rich, in addition to what Tom alludes to, in terms of the gap closing just as a natural consequence of us of repricing on renewals faster, I mean there's a timing difference between how we price new leases versus how we price renewals, which he alluded to. But in addition to that, I mean what -- frankly, what defines how long the opportunity continues as a function of just basic sort of demand/supply characteristics. And as I've alluded to, we -- as we sit here today, we don't see anything near term over the next year or so that's likely to disrupt kind of the strong environment that we find ourselves in. So we think that we're going to keep pushing hard today on the pricing increases for new move-ins. And today, we are pricing renewals for what we will achieve 60, 90 days from now. And we will get to 60, 90 days from now, we'll be pricing those renewals at a steeper rate. So it's sort of -- as you say, it's an indication of real strong fundamentals, and we don't see anything near term that's likely to disrupt that.

[Rich Anderson, Analyst at SMBC]

And then when -- you mentioned early on, the 13% of new leasing is coming from outside the Sunbelt, and you gave some examples of some markets that are above that. What was that percentage kind of 2019? What would it be typically? I'm curious how much it's grown to that 13% level?

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I'll give you an example of it. In Atlanta, as an example, 12% of our move-ins came from outside the Sunbelt. And in 2019, that was a little over 8%. In a market like Phoenix, which is incredibly strong in terms of move-ins from outside the Sunbelt, that was over 21% in so far this year. And compared to the same period in 2019, that was a little over 18%. So it's about a 411 basis point jump from 2019 in Phoenix. We're seeing -- we saw a big jump in Tampa from 2019. It's about over 18% today versus 13% in 2019. So 380 basis point improvement. So it varies a bit by market, but it's pretty -- going back to 2019 before COVID, it's up and move-ins from outside the Sunbelt are up in, let's see, looking at our markets here. The only market that I see where it's actually the move-ins from outside the Sunbelt are actually down is one and that's Huntsville, Alabama.

[Rich Anderson, Analyst at SMBC]

Okay. Just a real quick last question. A lot of talk about the cadence between suburbs and urban, coastal versus Sunbelt, all those types of geographical dynamics. Do you see within your portfolio, any particular strength where the population is kind of denser? Do you have better performance there versus a more rural looking area or is it just the whole place is great?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I mean, broadly, the whole place is good, Rich. But the delta between urban, suburban and interloop -- and A/B was wider during COVID, both have narrowed. So A and B assets, the difference between the two is only 130 basis points. but it's 7.4 for our lagging A and 8.7 for our leading B. I mean those are both numbers I'm happy to have. And then the same real story, it's almost the same for sort of urban interloop versus the suburban assets at 7.5 and 8. 7. So there is -- both are strong, and there's just a little bit more of a supply headwind in the urban markets, but we don't see them as less desirable.

[Rich Anderson, Analyst at SMBC]

Ok thank you very much

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you Rich.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from John Pawlowski, Green.

[John Pawlowski, Analyst at Greenridge Global]

Great thank you so much. Brad, would you mind sharing the cap rate on the Jackson, Mississippi exit and the anticipated pricing on the handful of upcoming dispositions?

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. So we look at this a couple of ways. One is the cap rate on MAA's trailing 12 numbers. That was about 5.4, but looked at on a -- from a buyer's perspective with kind of adjusted taxes and insurance, it was about a 4.7 cap rate. Going forward on the three that we're looking to sell [Indecipherable] both of the metrics are very similar because there's not a big reevaluation of taxes on those. But -- we're looking in the, call it, 4.5, 4.75 range.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And John, just to keep in mind, that 4.7 cap rate on the exit from Jackson, Mississippi, that's on 36-year-old assets. So average age of that portfolio was 36 years old in Jackson, Mississippi.

[John Pawlowski, Analyst at Greenridge Global]

Understood. And the -- Brad, the upcoming dispositions, what markets are that?

[A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So we have two in Savannah and one that is in Charlotte.

[John Pawlowski, Analyst at Greenridge Global]

Great. Last one for me. Tom, single-family rental, build-to-rent communities are -- the deliveries are probably going to accelerate pretty meaningfully and the early [vintages] do have smaller floor plans, a little bit more like apartments. So curious, any case studies you're seeing when a build-to-rent community opens nearby, any impact on leasing? Any statistics or any color you could share would be of interest?

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

No, it's pretty limited. And while that is a booming space, it is a relatively small space. But the place we've probably seen the most that sort of thing happening is in Phoenix, and it certainly hadn't slowed our momentum there. And just as a reminder, I mean it's 5% of our move-outs are to single-family rental, which is really dwarfed by the job transfer number. It is not a driving factor, and we love it that they are raising their rents as well, though. I mean it is -- it's been steady where they've been.

[John Pawlowski, Analyst at Greenridge Global]

Ok thanks for the time.

[Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you john

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Buck Horne, Raymond James.

[Buck Horne, Analyst at Raymond James]

Hi thank good morning thanks Just real quickly, any thoughts or potential impact from eviction moratorium roll-off in your portfolio and/or how are you working with residents right now to potentially recover any rental assistance payments through the government program?

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Buck, this is Eric. No, we don't really see much change coming as a consequence of the expiration of that CDC moratorium. Frankly, it's not in our portfolio. We haven't seen a lot of that activity. And I think that as we touched on, ever since this started last spring, I mean, we have been very active in reaching out to our residents and offering assistance in various ways with over 8,000 of our residents that we've assisted, and we continue those efforts. And we are also very active in doing all we can to assist our residents with making applications that needed for financial assistance. We're very aggressive and active in showing them where to go, we are -- where we can, we're actually doing it for them and making application on their behalf, but it's not a big percentage of the portfolio, but we don't really see any near-term change occurring just as a consequence of getting into August when the CDC moratorium no longer being in place.

[Buck Horne, Analyst at Raymond James]

Great thanks and just following up on the single-family rental question there, just maybe a different tack on it. A lot of builders are out there and a lot of capital is out there building out entire communities and running them effectively like horizontal apartments. Any evolution in your thought process about maybe a partnership or a strategic partnership with a homebuilder or someone else to invest in a single-family rental community?

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, it's something we kick around from time to time, Buck. I mean we have a number of our communities where we actually do have adjacent townhomes and housing structures, if you will, that are not traditional apartment type and design. And if we were to find an opportunity to do something where you've got a purpose-built single-family community in the contiguous area with common amenities and all that kind of stuff, yes, I mean it's something that we would invest in. We're not out actively looking to make that happen at the moment. We think we were able to capture a lot of good growth right now with what we're doing with all the projects that Brad has alluded to. But we've got, if you will, a little bit of that in the portfolio already, and it's something that if we find opportunities in that regard to look at, we wouldn't hesitate to look at it.

[Buck Horne, Analyst at Raymond James]

Thank you guys.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you buck.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions. I will return the call to MAA for closing remarks.

[H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Okay. Well, we appreciate everyone joining us this morning. And any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out any time. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Participants

Corporate Executives

• Tim Argo, enior Vice President and Director Of New Construction
• H. Eric Bolton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
• Thomas L. Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
• A. Bradley Hill, Executive Vice President & Director Of Multifamily Investing
• Albert M. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Nick Yulico, Scotiabank
• Neil Malkin, Capital One Securities
• John Kim, BMO Capital Markets
• Bradley Heffern, RBC Capital Markets
• Nick Joseph, Citibank
• Alex Kalmus, Zelman Associates
• Amanda Sweitzer, Robert W. Baird
• Austin Wurschmidt, KeyBanc Capital
• Rob Stevenson, Janney Montgomery Scott
• Rich Anderson, SMBC
• John Pawlowski, Greenridge Global
• Buck Horne, Raymond James