Mid-America Apartment Communities Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Mid-America Apartment Communities EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.20
• Consensus EPS: $2.16
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.04
• One Year Ago EPS: $2.22

Mid-America Apartment Communities Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $549.30 million
• Expected Revenue: $551.21 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$1.92 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +1.00%

Mid-America Apartment Communities Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/30/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 1, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Mid-America Apartment Communities (NYSE:MAA) is a real estate investment trust, which engages in the operation, acquisition, and development of apartment communities. It operates through the Same Store and Non-Same Store segments. The Same Store Communities segment represents those apartment communities that have been owned and stabilized for at least 12 months as of the first day of the calendar year. The Non-Same Store segment includes recent acquisitions, communities in development or lease-up. The company was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Germantown, TN.

Mid-America Apartment Communities Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MAA First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen only mode. Afterward, the company will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, 05/01/2025. I will now turn the call over to Andrew Schaefer, Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Director of Capital Markets of MAA for opening comments.

[Andrew Schaeffer, Senior VP, Treasurer & Director of Capital Markets at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you, Regina, and good morning, everyone. This is Andrew Schaefer, Treasurer and Director of Capital Markets for MAA. Members of the management team participating on the call this morning are Brad Hill, Tim Argo, Clay Holder and Rob DelPorte. Before we begin with prepared comments this morning, I want to point out that as part of this discussion, company management will be making forward looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from our projections.

[Andrew Schaeffer, Senior VP, Treasurer & Director of Capital Markets at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

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. During this call, we will also discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. A presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP 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. Our earnings release and supplement are currently available on the For Investors page of our website at www.maac.com. A copy of our prepared comments and an audio recording of this call will also be available on our website later today.

[Andrew Schaeffer, Senior VP, Treasurer & Director of Capital Markets at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

After some brief prepared comments, the management team will be available to answer questions. I will now turn

[Andrew Schaeffer, Senior VP, Treasurer & Director of Capital Markets at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

the call over to Brad.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thanks,

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Andrew, and good morning, everyone. As detailed in our release, first quarter performance results were ahead of our expectations as strong demand was evident in multiple areas of our performance, including occupancy, collections and pricing trends. While pricing trends for new resident move ins continue to reflect the impact from new supply delivering in several of our markets, renewal pricing remains strong and our retention rate increasing, leading to first quarter twenty twenty five blended lease pricing that was ahead of our expectations. We are encouraged by the resilience our portfolio has displayed in the face of the unprecedented levels of new supply that we've experienced over the past year as well as our positioning to capture continued improvement as we enter the summer leasing season. As Tim will discuss in more detail, we are seeing encouraging signs that indicate leasing conditions are poised to support stable occupancy and improvement in blended lease rates that align with the outlook that we provided in our prior guidance, having a compounding impact on revenue performance throughout the year.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

While macroeconomic uncertainties have increased due to the potential tariffs, our exclusive focus on high growth markets, lower average price point, broad diversification by market, submarket and price point, our operating efficiencies and scale should position MAA to weather tariff or economic challenges and allow us to take advantage of growth opportunities that may arise. Because of these portfolio characteristics, MAA has not only outperformed in previous downturns in times of uncertainty but delivered good performance over the past year in the face of a fifty year record high level of supply. In the first quarter, we were able to increase our year over year occupancy by 30 basis points and produced average effective rent per unit that was only down $9 per unit from the level we achieved in first quarter of twenty four. Our current metrics are indicating no material change in customer behavior. Leads and leasing traffic remain strong.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Collections are solid. Migration trends are positive. And the challenges of single family home availability and affordability continue to support our strong renewal performance. Our focus on customer service is paying off as reflected in our sector leading Google scores, contributing to our growing retention rates. Supported by our asset management group, the teams are focused on harvesting the benefits of several leasing and reporting tools introduced over the past few years to maximize our operational effectiveness.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

We continue to invest in key areas that will support future earnings growth, including various new technology initiatives that enhance efficiencies and support our centralization and specialization efforts. We are ramping up the rollout of property wide WiFi across our portfolio, and investments in our interior renovation and repositioning programs are increasing. On the external growth front, our pipeline of lease ups and active developments stand at a combined cost of $1,500,000,000 Our operating performance at these properties should benefit from a supply environment that is trending below historical levels. We continue to believe investing in new developments will produce strong future earnings growth, especially considering the declining new starts and additional headwinds from decreased equity capital available for new projects. We anticipate starting between three to four new developments this year, with a suburban development in the Charleston, South Carolina market on track to start construction during the second quarter.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Based on our expected starts and completions for the year, our development pipeline should remain in the $1,000,000,000 to $1,200,000,000 range, a very comfortable level given our scale and balance sheet strength. We are focused on acquiring properties where we can utilize our various platform capabilities to generate attractive long term returns for capital. But with the transaction market pretty slow, it will likely be the back half of the year before we see more compelling opportunities begin to materialize. As part of our ongoing recycling efforts to improve the earnings quality of our portfolio, during the first quarter of 'twenty five, we exited Columbia, South Carolina with the sale of two properties with an average age of 32 that went under contract in 2024. We expect continued recycling efforts to occur later this year.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

With a thirty year performance record focused on high growth markets and an average executive team member tenure of sixteen years, we have operated through prior cycles of high supply and uncertainty. I remain optimistic about the approaching recovery cycle and our market's ability to absorb the new supply. Today, our more diversified and higher quality portfolio, stronger operating platform and stronger balance sheet position us to compete at an even higher level. Our high growth markets continue to see stronger job growth, household formation and investor demand. Through our internal and external investments, we have meaningful future value growth on the horizon as new supply deliveries decline and leasing conditions strengthen.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

We remain excited about the outlook over the next few years. To all our associates at the properties in our corporate and regional offices, thank you for your hard work and dedication in preparation for the busy leasing season. Your commitment and dedication to our residents and fellow associates are greatly appreciated. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tim.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Following up on Brad's comments, we're encouraged by the first quarter operating trends with blended pricing, occupancy and collections all slightly outperforming our expectations. We entered 2025 with occupancy and exposure in a strong position that helped drive a steady increase in pricing particularly on our new leases. The acceleration in new lease over lease pricing growth was greater than what we have seen on average historically, increasing 180 basis points sequentially from the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. The resulting new lease pricing on a lease over lease basis for the first quarter was negative 6.3%.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Additionally, renewal rates for the quarter showed strength growing 4.5% on a lease over lease basis, which was a 30 basis point increase sequentially over the fourth quarter. The resulting lease over lease pricing on a blended basis was negative 0.5%, which represented 160 basis point improvement sequentially from the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Average physical occupancy was 95.6%, up 30 basis points as compared to the same period in 2024. Collections continue to outperform expectations with net delinquency representing just 0.3% of billed rents. These factors combined drove the resulting same store revenue growth of 0.1% for the quarter.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Many of the markets that were outperformers in 2024 from a blended lease over lease pricing standpoint continued to do well in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, including several of our mid tier markets. Virginia stands out with Richmond, Norfolk, Fredericksburg and our four Northern Virginia properties all exceeding the portfolio average. Charleston, Savannah and Greenville also demonstrated strong pricing power. Of our larger markets, Tampa continued to show pricing recovery, Houston held steady and encouragingly, we saw significantly improved performance from Atlanta, particularly as compared to market conditions there in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Austin remains the laggard as it continues to face significant supply pressure with Phoenix and Nashville continuing to struggle with lingering supply concerns also.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Touching on our lease up portfolio, we had one property, MAA Optimus Park reached stabilization in the quarter. Our seven remaining lease up properties are competing well against the record new supply being delivered in our markets and ended the quarter with a combined occupancy of 71.6%. We pushed the expected stabilization date back one quarter for MAA Boggy Creek in Orlando and expect six of the seven lease up properties to stabilize in 2025. Rents for the group continue to exceed our pro form a expectations and should result in significant value creation for this portfolio. We continue to execute on our various redevelopment and repositioning initiatives in the first quarter and we expect to accelerate these programs over the course of 2025 and into 2026.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

For the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we completed eleven oh two interior unit upgrades, achieving rent increases of $90 above non upgrading units and a cash on cash return of just under 18%. Despite this more competitive supply environment, these units were vacant on average nine days less than non renovated units when adjusted for the additional turn time. We expect to renovate even more units in Q2 and Q3 with the goal to renovate approximately 6,000 units in 2025 with an even larger increase expected in 2026. For our repositioning program, we have effectively completed the repricing phase on all the legacy twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four projects with NOI yields approaching 10%. We have an additional six projects finishing up construction that will begin the repricing phase between now and July in what we believe will be a strengthening leasing environment.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

We are also now live on the four property wide WiFi retrofit projects we began in 2024 and are currently in the planning or construction phase for an additional 23 projects that we targeted for 2025. As we close out April, we continue to see encouraging trends that are aligned with our guidance. New lease and blended pricing in April improved as compared to both March and full first quarter with average daily occupancy for the month of 95.5%. Our sixty day exposure for April was 8.4%, twenty basis points lower than this time last year. It keeps us in a position for stable occupancy to allow for pricing power assuming the strong demand we've seen today remains intact.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

On the demand side, absorption in our markets in the first quarter was at a record level and represented the third straight quarter units absorbed exceeded units delivered, putting our markets in a good position to achieve a robust recovery as supply continues to decline. Additionally, the percentage of our residents accepting renewal offers exceeds last year's record level with lease over lease growth rates on renewals except for May and June outpacing our strong year to date renewal growth rates. This lower turnover is another mitigating factor against supply pressure with fewer units coming to market. Improving new lease rates should further help support continued strong renewal performance throughout the spring and summer leasing seasons. That's all the way I have in prepared comments.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Now I'll turn the call over to Clay.

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Thank you, Tim, and good morning, everyone. We reported core FFO for the quarter of $2.2 per diluted share, which was $04 per share above the midpoint of our first quarter guidance. About $0.25 of the favorability was due to same store NOI performance, with an additional $0.25 due to favorable timing of overhead and interest expenses, partially offset by $01 of non same store NOI performance. In addition to our same store revenue performance slightly exceeding our expectations, real estate tax expense was favorable in the quarter due to the timing of tax litigation settlements that were initially projected to be completed in the second quarter. Personnel costs, repair and maintenance expenses and marketing costs were all generally in line with our expectations.

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

During the quarter, we funded approximately $67,000,000 in development cost of the current $852,000,000 pipeline, leaving an expected $3.00 $5,000,000 to be funded on our current pipeline over the next two to three years. We also invested approximately $17,000,000 of capital in the first quarter through our redevelopment, repositioning and WiFi retrofit initiatives that Tim spoke of earlier. Our balance sheet remains strong with $1,000,000,000 in combined cash and borrowing capacity under our revolving credit facility and our low debt to EBITDA at four times, our balance sheet is well positioned to take advantage of opportunities should they emerge. At quarter end, our outstanding debt was approximately 94% fixed with an average maturity of seven years at an effective rate of 3.8%. Finally, with much of the leasing season still ahead of us, coupled with the uncertain macroeconomic environment, we are maintaining our core FFO and same store guidance for the year.

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

As outlined in our release, we expect core FFO for the second quarter of twenty twenty five to be in the range of $2.05 to $2.21 per diluted share or $2.13 per share at the midpoint. This midpoint includes the timing impact of the real estate tax litigation settlement previously discussed along with the typical seasonality of leasing and maintenance related operating expenses. That is all that we have in the way of prepared comments. So, Regina, we will now turn the call back to you for questions.

[Operator]

We will now open the call up for questions. In the interest of time, the company has requested a two question limit. Our first question will come from the line of Eric Wolf with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

[Eric Wolfe, Director at Citi]

Hey, thanks. So right now, I guess, at the May. I assume most people probably sign new lease about a month before they move in, but correct me if I'm wrong on that. So is it just fair to say that you have a pretty good idea of where new lease spreads will be in late May or early June? Or do you still

[Eric Wolfe, Director at Citi]

not have visibility into that yet?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Hey, Eric. This is Tim. We do have pretty good visibility. Obviously, the renewal side, we have really good visibility with sixty day notice required there. And to your point on the new lease side, I mean, varies.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

You do get a lot of people that are looking to move in more immediately in that zero to seven day range. But we've put a little bit of extra focus on pre leasing that has pushed that out a little bit. So we probably have even a little more color or a little more visibility this year than we did this time last year. So yes, we've got a fair amount of visibility. Certainly, April new leases, we know those.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I would say we probably have a good handle on, call it, half of the May new leases and probably 25% or so of the June new leases.

[Eric Wolfe, Director at Citi]

Got it. Yes. And I asked the question mainly because if you kind of look at the first quarter, it's tracking pretty similarly to what you saw last year. And so I think what people are trying to figure out is is, you know, are you seeing anything in in the recent data, whether that's April, May, June, that gives you more confidence, in this inflection in rent growth that that companies are predicting? Because so far the results have been a bit like last year.

[Eric Wolfe, Director at Citi]

So what kind of gives you the confidence based on recent activity that you're going to see that inflection?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. I mean we're continuing to see like I said particularly when we look at our pre leasing activity, we're continuing to see those new lease rates accelerate. And so if you look at kind of where we are December through to April, we were almost negative 9% on new leases in December and then up to negative 4.6% in April and saw a continued steady acceleration. I would expect that to continue into Q2 and then typically Q3 continues to accelerate a little from there, obviously dependent on how the economic environment plays out. But from what we're seeing right now, we feel pretty good where we are.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Nick Yulico with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Tricarico, Associate Director - Equity Research at Scotiabank]

Hey, good morning. It's Daniel Trooperico on with Nick. Maybe to follow-up on our next question on the maybe the confidence level of the blends. How should we think about the comp period related to concessions and the burn off impact as we get into the second and third quarters?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, I mean, certainly all the when you hear us quote lease over lease rates, that is net of concessions and includes us sort of spreading those concessions out. So there's nothing specifically there. But I would say, whether you want to call it easier comps or however you want to think about that, that is playing a part in this. We saw a struggle with new lease rates for most of 2024 and continued into the lower rates continued into early twenty twenty five. So there's combined the normal seasonality, combined declining supply pressure and frankly a little bit easier comps that helps give us confidence in where we're sitting today.

[Daniel Tricarico, Associate Director - Equity Research at Scotiabank]

Great. Thanks. And then a follow-up on development. Is there a potential to extend lease up expectations at any of your other development properties? And how should we think about the supply impact potentially being stretched out into 2026 in some of these markets that are still working through that pipeline?

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I mean, I think in terms of this is Brad. In terms of development in particular, I mean, we feel good about the dates that we have in terms of lease up performance in our packet. I mean, for us, one of the important things is we want to be able to protect the revenue performance of those properties and the rent performance of those properties. And given certainly our focus there, we're able to be a little bit more patient on the lease up performance. And so in our packet, we have a couple of our lease ups that have leased up a little bit slower than what we expected.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

But the good news is the rents that we're getting from those properties continue to outperform our expectations. The yield expectations, again, outperform what our expectations are. So we continue to believe that the lease up focus that we have will continue to perform in line with our expectations, and they're outperforming on the rent side. So we feel really good about the lease ups that we have at this point.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Cooper Clark with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

[Cooper Clark, VP - Equity Research at Wells Fargo]

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Could you talk about the cost side of development and how much is more or less locked in when you begin construction? And then also if you could touch on the same thing for the redevelopment pipeline as well.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. This is Brad. I'll hit on development. Tim can talk about redevelopment. You know, normally, when we could it depends on if the development is an in house development versus a prepurchase development.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

In our prepurchase pipeline, you know, our our development partner is giving us a construction cost guarantee. So so effectively, the costs are locked in when we go to agreement. So so, you know, we're we shouldn't face any pressure associated with those repurchase developments that we have ongoing. For our in house development, you know, normally, those are, call it, 95% or so locked in. When we go under construction, the buyout from the GCs are normally done pretty quickly from when we start construction on the project.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So those are generally locked in as well. So we're not seeing any impact to construction costs for in place developments to date. And for new developments that we're looking at, we're really not seeing any impact to date of potential impacts from tariffs or the immigration changes and the impact that could have on the labor side. In fact, what we're hearing from some of our contractors is given the reduction in the new starts and the supply pipeline that we are we're getting better pricing at the moment from many of our GCs and development partners. Margins are tightening up a bit, and they're getting a little bit hungrier new starts.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So we're seeing that at the moment on the new development side. Tim?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. And I'll touch on the redevelopment. And no pressure we're seeing so far, and I don't really expect any this year on that component. For one, appliances make up about 25 of our cost in terms of our overall redevelopment, and we have locked in pricing on those through about this time next year. And then we have several sources and availability on countertops and other things.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So we pretty much source. We know how many units we're going to do, and we have a plan for those units and have a lot of that already here in place, if you will. So if tariff concerns or others played on for a while, it could start to impact us late this year into 2026, but not seeing any pressure right now.

[Cooper Clark, VP - Equity Research at Wells Fargo]

Great. Thanks. And then if you could also just touch on urban versus suburban performance in some of your key markets and if it's fair to say that there's more upside to urban here over the next few years as supply normalizes just given the higher density?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. I mean, think that to answer the second part of your question, I think there's probably a little more upside potential on the more urban assets primarily because they've tended to get more of the supply over these last couple of years. So I think as that supply dies down, it probably helps out that group in general a little more. But we've seen in our portfolio, we've seen the performance between urban and suburban pretty much converge. There's very minor differences now in what we're seeing with occupancy or pricing.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

The suburban had been outperforming probably for the last couple of years relatively significantly and gap has narrowed as supply pressure has started to weigh in a little bit. It's obviously market by market. Atlanta is one where we're still seeing better performance outside the perimeter, if you will, as compared to inside or Midtown Buckhead areas. But generally, we're seeing that performance start to converge.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Jayna Gallen with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America]

Thank you. Good morning. Maybe if you could talk a little bit more about that improvement that you're seeing in Atlanta.

[Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America]

From the market data, it's still pretty weak, but that's very encouraging that your portfolio is seeing a turnaround.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. I I would say, you know, Atlanta, it's certainly on a relative basis. It's not I'm I'm not counting it as one of our top markets right now certainly in terms of performance, but relative to where it was for most of 2024, it starting to show some improvement. Our new lease pricing in Atlanta is the best it's since going back to mid to early twenty twenty three. And we've seen a little bit of occupancy recovery as well.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

We're about 120 basis points or so better in terms of occupancy than we were this time last year. So it's certainly a relative story compared to if you look at it compared to the broader portfolio, it still lags our portfolio a little bit, but it's much improved from where it was this time last year.

[Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Adam Kramer with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Adam Kramer, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Hey, thanks for the time guys. Just wondering about the kind of level of concessions in your markets today, maybe just high level. And then how does that compare to whether it's early in the year when seasonally slower period or even a year ago maybe? Just again, level of concessions today maybe versus a year ago.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. We've seen concessions broadly be relatively consistent the last couple of quarters and probably down a little bit from where it was this time last year. Would say the portfolio broadly or markets broadly anywhere from a half month to a month is pretty consistent. There are pockets obviously, where it's a little bit higher. There's lease ups probably more in that month and a half to two month range.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

But broadly, we're seeing kind of half a month to a month be pretty consistent in most markets. It's a little bit lower from where it was this time last year, pretty consistent with where it was in Q4 of twenty twenty four.

[Adam Kramer, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. And then just on kind of

[Adam Kramer, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

capital allocation and cost of capital here, obviously, the stock's doing a little bit better than some of the peers year to date. Was just wondering how you kind of view your equity cost of capital, your debt cost of capital, I guess, even disposition cost of capital. And when it comes to kind of funding these developments, funding other sources or other uses rather, how do you kind of assess both the cost of capital and the capital allocation priorities here?

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. This is Brad, Adam. And, you know, I

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

think

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

given where we are in terms as as Clay mentioned and given where our our current leverage is at four times, I mean, we we view our kind of incremental dollar at this point. The best place to to pull that from is is generally through through debt. And so, you know, really, at this point, given that leverage level, you know, we could, you know, grow our debt by billion, billion and a half or so and still be okay and within the ranges of of kinda where we think our credit metrics need to be. So, you know, we think that that's the best use of our capital at this point. And you'll see us continue to fund through debt anything incremental.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And certainly, we continue to sell properties this year, as we did in the first quarter, we'll continue to sell some properties later this year. That will also be a source of capital for our external growth uses as well. So that's where it will come from.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

Good morning. Thanks a lot

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

for taking my questions. New lease growth was down in December by 9%. You've seen some sequential improvement in April to down 4.6%. I believe last quarter you spoke to new lease growth hitting positive at some point this year. So are you still on track to achieve this based on what you've seen so far this year?

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

Or has the environment changed to the point where maybe that's not as likely this year? Thanks.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I think we still have an expectation that we could see it go slightly positive, call it mid third quarter or so. We don't expect it to get significantly positive. We have just slightly positive and then starting to trend back down as we get into Q4. So there's probably a little more uncertainty right now just given what's going on in the economy. But generally, trends we're seeing would support that and that's what we're expecting as of right now.

[Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC]

Got it. And then as a follow-up, you sold out of the Columbia, South Carolina market. Are there other markets that you can sell out of where you maybe don't have sufficient scale to kind of really do what what you're looking to do? And so, you know, are are there other markets you could look to sell out of? And how you know, if you reallocate the those, you know, proceeds into markets where you do have scale, you know, how much benefit can that have on expenses over time, you know, closing down markets where you don't have scale and reinvesting it where where you can?

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. This is Brad. I mean, certainly, we'll look to continue to drive efficiencies through our portfolio. And I do think one way to do that is for us to continue to sell, you know, some of these markets where we may have one or two assets. And we still have a few of those.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

We've got one in Panama City. We've got one in Gulfport or Gulf Shores. We've got two in Las Vegas. So in markets where we only have a couple of assets, certainly, by selling those, we can reallocate the time and energies of specifically of our regional folks to other properties to drive efficiencies throughout the portfolio. We'll continue to evaluate that.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Every fourth quarter, we go through an evaluation process to look at properties that we have in our portfolio and begin to look at those and prioritize what our disposition needs are for the following year. So that will continue to be a focus of ours along with looking at properties where perhaps the growth rate is not what we desire from our portfolio or CapEx needs are growing and it's just not a fit for our portfolio anymore. But that's a very thorough process that we go through every year.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Julien Blumen with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Julien Blouin, Vice President at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you for taking my question. Your markets have tended to be relatively resilient during past recessions, but do you worry a recession this time around would potentially be different just given the amount of supply you're still dealing with, vacancy still pretty elevated, pricing power as a starting point is weaker. So do you think maybe performance this time would be worse than in the past?

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, this is Brad. And as we look at certainly the demand fundamentals in our region of the country, no, I mean, we would not think that if there were a slowdown in the economy that we would expect any type of different performance in our region of the country than we have experienced historically. And, you know, certainly, as you mentioned, if you go back to, you know, the three previous downturns that we've seen, whether it's the 02/2003 tech bubble, the two thousand nine GFC or or, you know, 2020 COVID, the performance of our portfolio significantly exceeded what we saw out of our peers, and we have every reason to believe that that continues. And I would say, certainly, when the economy slows, we have historically seen our high growth markets hold up better than the national norms as the broad diversification of industries and employers, coupled with more affordable employment costs, as compared particularly to other regions of the country, have tended to drive that resiliency you just talked about within our markets. And I think for us specifically, our unique diversification by market and submarket, our product types, our price point.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And then the diversification between large and mid tier markets has continued to provide steadier performance for us. And we think that is a component that will certainly continue. And then the other thing that we've seen in the Sunbelt, particularly over the last five years or so, is just the Sunbelt job machine continues to to outperform. We've seen numerous knowledge based employment growth come to our region of the country. And then, you know, what we also have seen that I think is is very important is the the local and municipal, you know, governments are stronger than they are in other regions of the country.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And I think that really supports the pro business view of this region of the country. It also supports the ability to to add subsidies and incentives to to really support the job locations and relocations that we've seen. So, no, we we think, especially as potential onshoring continues and picks up speed, the Sunbelt's in a pretty good position to take advantage of that. And then the other point I would just make relative to demand, certainly, job growth is a component of that. And as I just laid out, we think that continues to perform quite well in our region of the country going forward.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

But there are other demand drivers in our region of the country that continue to perform pretty well. Migration trends continue to be positive. The single family availability and affordability is a challenge in our region of the country. And that's also a challenge that I think is a newer challenge to our region of the country. It's perhaps always existed in some of the the coastal markets, but it's newer in our region of the country.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

But I do think that's a phenomenon that's going to drive retention rates up over the long term. And today, our turnover is 41.5%. Two years ago, 46%. So that 5% reduction is a long term trend that I think will stay low, and that there's significant implications for that. So long term, we think that the Sunbelt continues to perform quite well regardless of, you know, the the economic view that's out there.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And then and then we think that our portfolio, in particular, for the diversification reasons I mentioned, continues to perform well.

[Julien Blouin, Vice President at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Thank you. That's all for me.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[John Kim, Managing Director - US Real Estate at BMO Capital Markets]

Good morning. Based on your second quarter and your full year guidance, you'll need to achieve about a 2.5% to 3% increase in FFO per share compared to what you'll achieve in the first half of the year. I'm wondering how much of that is driven by seasonality in rents? And what are some of the other factors that will contribute to ramp up earnings?

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. John, think in addition to some seasonality factors

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

that you pointed out, the other piece of that that should continue to benefit FFO over the course of remainder of the year is our lease up properties and as they continue to gain some velocity and go back

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

to the points that Brad and

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Tim mentioned earlier, the pricing pricing power that those properties have continued to show are ahead of our pro

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

form a. So we think that this

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

both on pricing and also on NOI yield basis. So all of that, we think will is really what's going to drive that continued acceleration in performance over the course of the year.

[John Kim, Managing Director - US Real Estate at BMO Capital Markets]

And you reiterated your, outlook to, roll out WiFi in '23 for projects this year. Can you just remind us what contribution that is to your same store revenue for this year? And what's the timing of the completion or the rollout of the remainder of your portfolio?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

John, it's Tim. So it's not a huge component So we have the we have the four that we completed late last year and then the 23 that, as I mentioned, are under construction now. We're down at about between one and one and a half million combined between those 27 projects, I guess it is, for 2025 just based on the rollout and how those rollout over lease expirations and the timing of the construction. Those 27,000,000 in general, we expect would contribute close to $6,000,000 once everything gets fully rolled out.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And so we're doing the 23,000,000 this year. We'll to make sure that sort of goes as planned and we would potentially look to accelerate that even more so in 2026. But it is going to be a multiyear project over the next four or five years would be my guess as we continue to accelerate it and ultimately look to roll it out to most if not all of the portfolio.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Wes Golladay with Baird. Please go ahead.

[Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Hey, good morning everyone. Can you talk about maybe your markets that are surprising to the upside and to the downside versus initial expectations?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Sure, Wes. This is Tim. The good ones and I mentioned several of them in the prepared comments, not any huge surprises there. The ones that have been pretty strong for the last twelve months or so continue to be strong. Tampa is one that highlighted, I believe, in the last quarter that we could see some upside, and that has started to play out.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So that'd be one that I would point to that's on the upcycle. I mentioned Atlanta being an improvement relative to where that one had been. And then Jacksonville is another where it's still a laggard in general, but it's showing some pretty good acceleration and some resilience despite some heavy supply there. So that's another one that was in one of our bottom three or four markets last year that I would expect to show a little bit more strength there. So that'd probably be one that I would put in a little bit of the surprise category.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And then I really mentioned the ones that are still laggards, Austin, Phoenix, and Nashville are the three that I would point out there that just continue to work through quite a bit of supply.

[Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Okay. And then for your insurance renewal that's coming up, any change in thought there?

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. We're still, we're still kind of in the process of of working through that. Still a little early on. We'll we'll have more to

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

say about it whenever, you

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

know, we release second quarter earnings. But, you know, just the initial conversations we've had have been have been, you know, positive, and and so we'll have more

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

more more to come. Our

[Operator]

next question comes from the line of Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

[Analyst]

Good morning. This is Mike on with Haendel. My question is, can you just provide a little bit more detail on the cadence you're expecting in both your blended spreads throughout the remaining three quarters of the year and your same store rent?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, as far as the blended trend, I mean, pretty consistent with what we talked about last quarter and pretty consistent with what I would say is more normal seasonality. So we continue to expect our blended for Q1 was negative 0.5. We continue to expect to see that push forward in both Q2 and Q3 and then moderate a little bit in Q4. But we talked about the trajectory of new lease pricing, what we're seeing there. Encouragingly on the renewals.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

May and June look really strong and sending out July right now, which we expect to be strong as well. So we think the renewals will continue to have a bigger part of that mix. We continue to see the renewal accept rates be stronger than what they were last year. And then obviously the rates we're getting there. So I think the mix between new lease and renewals probably a little heavier weighted towards renewal than what we had in right at the beginning of the year.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

But generally, the trends and trajectory is about the same as what we started the year with.

[Analyst]

Thank you. That's helpful. And just one follow-up. Can you give any color on potential impact of immigration policy and demand trends, for the Sunbelt markets that are lagging in the second half of this year?

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, this is Brad. You know, certainly, we're keeping an eye on the immigration trends. You know, we're we're frankly not seeing much of an impact on that at this point from an operating perspective. We're not seeing much of an impact either on the construction side, which is I think where perhaps we could see you know, we are likely to see some impact there if it manifests itself. But at this point, we're we're not seeing much of an impact on immigration, the immigration policy changes at this point.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

[Alexander Goldfarb, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

Hey. Good morning down there.

[Alexander Goldfarb, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

First question is when do you

[Alexander Goldfarb, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

think that you guys would have a sense of how much of the competitive supply potentially slips into next year? Just curious.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, I mean, nothing that we're seeing right now. There's been a little bit of slowdown in some lease ups in some parts and submarkets. But broadly, the supply picture looks pretty much like it has or like we've thought for the last few quarters where we're continuing to see it slowly moderate. I mean, we're still obviously at a higher than normal delivery cadence. So even though 2025 is lower than 2024, it's still what I would call above normal.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

But 2026, we expect that to drop pretty significantly to where it's below a long term average. So as we've said kind of all along, think where you really start to see that strength is late 2025, which will be offset by some normal seasonality that tends to lane. But 2026 is when we really expect to see that acceleration.

[Alexander Goldfarb, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

And then the second question is, on the leasing front, you guys have spoken about good visibility out sixty days. But do you see leasing as a good healthy leading indicator? Or your view is still apartments are lagging because if there's any job disruption or any tightening of the belt, it takes a while before the renter ends up downsizing or doing something different?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I think leasing is one, it's a better leading indicator than it has been. Think we just have more transparency and more data and more information that we look at and different cuts of it to where I talked about pre leasing earlier. We can see what's out there. So the new lease rates in particular are at nice edge. That's somebody who's out in the market.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

They're looking for somewhere to live. They can shop all of the comps. So I think it's a leading indicator. And then as much or more so things like collections and move outs and reasons for move outs, those can be pretty good indicators as well. Typically, you're going start to see, along with new lease pricing, you're going to see, you know, people having to move out perhaps before their lease term or early early terms with job loss or other things or people not not able to pay pay the rent and see delinquency uptick.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Between the three of those, those are relatively good leading indicators, but not seeing any concerns there certainly on any of those right now.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Rob Stevenson with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.

[Rob Stevenson, Managing Director - Head of Real Estate Research at Janney Montgomery Scott]

Brad, are you seeing any meaningful changes in the acquisition volumes in your markets and pricing expectations given this market turmoil rates and the potential that not all the tax cuts get passed in reconciliation?

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, we've certainly seen a reduction in terms of the number of deals here in, call it, April. I mean, first quarter is hard to gauge because a lot of the deals that closed in first quarter went under contract in 2024. We did see a slight uptick in the the number of deals that that we tracked in the first quarter. I'd say the volume of of, you know, deals on the market here in April has dropped significantly in our markets. So I would say the volume definitely has dropped.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

The pricing that we've seen, I would say, has been still pretty consistent, sub-five percent cap rates in general on everything that we've seen trade. There's certainly uncertainty out there that's impacting volume, but at this point it doesn't seem to be impacting price.

[Rob Stevenson, Managing Director - Head of Real Estate Research at Janney Montgomery Scott]

All right. That's helpful. And then Tim, what's the cadence of the comps on a year over year basis throughout the year? Do you get consistently easier comps on like a same store revenue basis as we move throughout the year with the fourth quarter being the easiest? Or are there pockets between now and end of the year where you had particular strength in 2024 and that the comps aren't as easy?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, as we get late in the year in the fourth quarter those will be the easiest comps in terms of that's when our new lease pricing troughed. But I will say even during Q2 and Q3 of last year, while that was our biggest strength on the new lease rates on a relative basis, we saw our best rates, if you will, that part of 2024. We didn't see quite the acceleration in those quarters that we typically do last year. So it didn't in other words, the new lease rates didn't accelerate as much in Q2 and Q3 last year as they typically do. So while the new lease rates were the absolute highest the middle of last year, I think they still present some decent comps in terms of where they are compared to normal.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So there's a bit of comp benefit the rest of the year, but certainly the most as you get late in the year. And then you factor in, obviously, we expect to continue to see less impact from supply. So that can help to accelerate some of that in the late in 2025.

[Rob Stevenson, Managing Director - Head of Real Estate Research at Janney Montgomery Scott]

Okay. Thanks guys.

[Operator]

Our

[Operator]

next question comes from the line of Ann Chan with Green Street. Please go ahead.

[Ann Chan, Senior Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC]

Hey, good morning. Just jumping back to the topic of lease ups or more specifically, can you provide some context on what issues are causing occupancy to decline at the MAA Vail lease up in Raleigh?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. This is Tim. I can I can hit on that one? I mean, certainly, we saw some slowdown just seasonally in terms of traffic and leads and the qualified traffic. There were some flooding issues there, frankly, that slowed down the lease up as well that we have now fixed.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And what we've seen over the last forty five days or so is that the leads and leasing both have picked up pretty significantly. So lead volume is up 50% or so in April as compared to March, and we've done 39 net leases over the last forty five days, which is about double where we were trending before. So we're trending back towards 70% now. So there's a little bit of uniqueness there and then combine that with the time of the year and seasonality, but feel like it's back on track at this point.

[Ann Chan, Senior Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC]

Okay. Thank you. And just a

[Ann Chan, Senior Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC]

second question for me. Are there any expense, line items that you expect may deviate meaningfully from, your initial guidance as the year progresses?

[Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Hey, Ann. This this is Clay. No. I would say at this point in the year, you know, we're we're still pretty lined up with what, the expectations we had, presented at at you know, just a couple of months ago. But no real changes across the board on any of really any of those line items.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Buck Horne with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Wonder if you could speak a little bit about the trends you saw in terms of move outs to buy and purchase a single family home. I think you mentioned that, that hit a new record low in the quarter. Just wondering like what kind of anecdotal feedback you're hearing from customers that either in their net decision process?

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

And really just wondering how sustainable you think those trends are going forward.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes, Budd. This is Tim. And we did see a continued significant drop in move outs to buy a home. It represented about 12% of our move outs in Q1, which was down 16% or so from where it was this time last year. And I think it's a combination of two things.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

The biggest one, obviously, is just the affordability issue of single family home pricing is even as rents have moderated, call it, over the last twelve to eighteen months, single family home prices have continued to go up and then mortgage rates obviously are pretty elevated as well. So even if you were to put a 20% down payment right now to buy a house on average in one of our markets would be about 40% to 50% higher cost before you even consider things like tax and insurance. So I think affordability continues to be the biggest thing. And then I think with some of the increased uncertainty in the economy, people just tend to stay put where they are. I think that's helping to benefit our turnover and people just a little more hesitant to make big life decisions like that.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And then thirdly, I think there is a transition over the last few years just in terms of how many people want to buy a house or want the flexibility or the lifestyle that the apartments can provide. So while I don't think it stays this low forever, I don't think it gets back to the levels that we saw in past times either.

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Got you. Got you. But you weren't seeing like a concurrent uptick in move outs to rent a single family house necessarily, were you?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

No. It was down a little bit as well, frankly.

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Got you. And just one last quick one. Just thinking about Houston and maybe some of the Texas markets, where energy prices are in this particular cycle, are you watching the energy sector, in particular as it relates to kind of your Texas markets? And how do you think job growth trends might play out in this particular cycle there?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

I mean nothing that we're necessarily watching more than we ever do. I mean Houston, for one, has diversified their economy quite a bit. It's still heavily energy dependent but has a lot of other industries that have popped up, and it's continued to be a strong market for us. Supply there has been really, really low about between that and D. C.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Our lowest supply markets and continues to have good household formation, job growth and population growth. So no concerns there. And I think all Texas markets will continue to be huge job generators and job machines regardless of what's going on in the energy sector.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Kim with Zelman and Associates. Please go ahead.

[Alexander Kim, Equity Research Associate at Zelman & Associates]

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just one for me here. The spread between renewals and new move in rent growth tightened slightly from the end of last year this quarter and it still remains historically wide. I was just curious how renewal rent growth has remained resilient despite the gap and what this dynamic means for your higher expectation for renewals as a percentage of signed leases?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Well, as you said, the gap did narrow a little bit in Q1 and even more so in April. And so even though on a percentage basis, it's a pretty wide gap. On a dollar basis for April, for example, it's about $130 or so gap between the absolute rents on new leases first renewals. So it's not as huge as you may think. But we've continued we've had this larger than normal, if you will, gap now for six, seven quarters and continue to get in that 4.25%, four point five % range on renewals.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

And if I look out for what we're achieving for both May and June renewals, we're in the 4.7%, four point eight % range on those and continuing to get even higher accept rates than we did last year, which was record level accept rates. So I think you got to remember the process we go through and the customer service that's involved and everything that goes into renewal, it's a lot more than just what is that absolute rate maybe compared to street rents. There's a lot of other factors and costs that play into it. We do a very detailed analysis of what we are going to send out as our renewal rates. And then Brad mentioned in his comments have the highest Google scores of any buying in the sector that certainly plays into it.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Nothing right now we can look out even into July and still seeing strong renewal accept rates and rental rates.

[Alexander Kim, Equity Research Associate at Zelman & Associates]

Got it. That's helpful. I guess just a quick follow-up here then. Any markets in particular where that spread is tighter than the average or even just wider than average just to provide some basis?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

It varies a little bit here and there, but not significantly. I mean, with what we've seen in the cadence of supply being pretty consistent across most markets, The seasonality or the gaps and all that have been relatively consistent across most of our markets.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Brett Heffern with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Yes. Thanks. Hi, everybody. For new lease spreads, I think you said last quarter that the full year average would be around minus 1.5. You now have a third of the year locked in.

[Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets]

I think the math on that would be like high minus fives, and that might imply something close to zero for the rest of the year. So I guess, you still confident in the minus 1.5? Or is the higher renewal acceptance rate offsetting maybe a lower new lease target?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yes. We did. We tweaked our forecast a little bit in terms of that mix. Mean, generally, we're as we said with our guidance maintaining the guidance where we were, our overall expectation of blended pricing is pretty much in the same spot it was before. But we did dial in a little bit heavier mix, a little bit more on the renewal side.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

A little bit we tweaked our new lease expectations a little bit, significantly, but down a little bit just really based on the uncertainty in some of the economics and seeing how that will play out over the next few months. But broadly, haven't changed a lot from where we were kind of coming out of Q4.

[Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Got it. And then on D. C, obviously, pretty small exposure for you guys, but I'm hoping that leads to maybe an unbiased opinion. Are you seeing anything there from Doge?

[Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets]

And what do you expect to happen as the layoffs and buyouts sort of accumulate?

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

Yeah. Right now, we're not we're not seeing anything. You know, it's our our if I look at April and and some of the more leading indicators in our DC market, the move outs are down in April even where they were this time last year. We're well over 96% occupancy in that market. And to your point, it's not a huge market for us.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

We have one property in the district, but it's a JV property that we only own 35%. We have four in Northern Virginia, two that are a little more close in, Pentagon City and Tysons Corner, then two that are a little further out. And then we have four or five properties in Fredericksburg, which Fredericksburg is our best market across portfolio right now. And so I think Pysons, for example, any any weakness we're seeing in terms of job loss is being is being offset by return to work and some some tech tech jobs that are in that market that are having to return to work as well. And then, you know, we're seeing nothing really changed with some of the ones that are a little further out.

[Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

So long way of saying no impact as of right now. Anything we're looking at and continues to be a strong yet not a super high concentration market for us.

[Operator]

And we have no further questions. I'll return the call to MAA for closing remarks.

[Bradley Hill, President & CEO at Mid-America Apartment Communities]

All right. No other comments for us. If you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out, and we look forward to seeing you guys in about a month.

[Operator]

This concludes today's program. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at any time.

Participants

Executives

• Andrew Schaeffer, Senior VP, Treasurer & Director of Capital Markets
• Bradley Hill, President & CEO
• Clay Holder, Executive VP & CFO

Analysts

• Timothy Argo, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Analysis Officer at Mid-America Apartment Communities
• Eric Wolfe, Director at Citi
• Daniel Tricarico, Associate Director - Equity Research at Scotiabank
• Cooper Clark, VP - Equity Research at Wells Fargo
• Jana Galan, Director at Bank of America
• Adam Kramer, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Michael Goldsmith, US REITs Analyst at UBS Securities LLC
• Julien Blouin, Vice President at Goldman Sachs
• John Kim, Managing Director - US Real Estate at BMO Capital Markets
• Wesley Golladay, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co
• Analyst
• Alexander Goldfarb, Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies
• Rob Stevenson, Managing Director - Head of Real Estate Research at Janney Montgomery Scott
• Ann Chan, Senior Associate at Green Street Advisors, LLC
• Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial
• Alexander Kim, Equity Research Associate at Zelman & Associates
• Brad Heffern, Director at RBC Capital Markets