American Homes 4 Rent Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 1, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: AMH raised its full-year core FFO per share guidance by $0.03 to $1.86 at the midpoint, now expecting 5.1% growth and positioning it at the top of the residential sector.
  • Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter execution drove same-home occupancy to 96.3% and blended rental rate spreads of 4.3%, resulting in 3.9% same-home core revenue growth and 4.1% core NOI growth.
  • Positive Sentiment: Balance sheet strength improved as net debt to adjusted EBITDA fell to 5.2×, the $1.25 billion revolver remains undrawn, and a $650 million five-year bond at 4.95% bolstered liquidity ahead of full securitization payoffs.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The AMH development program is on track with 636 homes delivered in Q2, demonstrating flat vertical costs year-over-year and improving initial yields on new communities.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management expects a flatter seasonal leasing curve in H2 2025 versus 2024, with blended spreads staying in the high 3% range and occupancy holding in the low 96% area.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
American Homes 4 Rent Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings and welcome to the AMH second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you require operator assistance during the conference, please press Star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce you to your host, Nicholas Fromm, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Nick. You may begin.

Nicholas Fromm
Director of Investor Relations at AMH

Good morning and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me today are Bryan Smith, Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Lau, Chief Financial Officer. Please be advised that this call may include forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this conference call are forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. These risks and other factors that could adversely affect our business and future results are described in our press releases and in our filings with the SEC. All forward-looking statements speak only as of today, August 1, 2025. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Nicholas Fromm
Director of Investor Relations at AMH

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is included in our Earnings Press Release and Supplemental Information Package. As a note, our operating and financial results, including GAAP and non-GAAP measures, are fully detailed in our Earnings Release and Supplemental Information Package. You can find these documents as well as SEC reports and the audio webcast replay of this conference call on our website at www.amh.com. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Bryan Smith.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today. We had another great quarter driven by our continued commitment to the AMH strategy. Our year to date results reinforce that we are focused on the right things, adding value and growing earnings across all areas of the business. We do that by focusing on three key areas. First, Operational Excellence, where we leverage in house technology to support efficient execution and deliver a superior resident experience. Second, Portfolio Optimization, where data drives our asset management and investment decisions on markets, locations, asset type and quality. Third, Prudent Capital Acumen, where we prioritize a high quality investment grade balance sheet that provides flexibility and diverse access to capital.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

As we remain committed to our AMH development program and our strategy is working as outlined in last night's press release, we increased our full year core FFO per share guidance by $0.03 to $1.86 at the midpoint, now representing 5.1% growth. This guidance increase once again positions us at the top of the residential sector. Demand for high quality, well located AMH homes remains strong in the second quarter. Foot traffic was up more than 5% year over year, driving solid leasing and rate growth with more and more people coming directly to AMH.com to start their search for a new home. This translated in the second quarter, same home average occupied days of 96.3% and new, renewal, and blended rental rate spreads of 4.1%, 4.4%, and 4.3%, respectively.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Together with better than expected collections, same home core revenue growth was 3.9% for the quarter. These results reflect the strength of our revenue management strategy, which includes our lease expiration management initiative that we discussed last quarter. On the expense front, core operating expense growth was 3.6%, leading to same home core NOI growth of 4.1% for the quarter. Overall, the second quarter was a great example of outstanding execution by the teams across all areas of the business.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

After a successful spring leasing season, ourTeam shifted their focus to managing inventory ahead of the move out season. For July, leasing activity remained steady with same home average occupied days of 96.1% and new, renewal, and blended spreads of 3.6%, 3.9%, and 3.8%, respectively. Importantly, as we think about the balance of the year, we expect the seasonal curve in 2025 to be flatter than 2024 as we continue to execute on our revenue optimization objectives. With the flatter seasonal curve, we expect leasing to seasonally moderate less in the third and fourth quarters than they did last year.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

With blended spreads remaining in the high 3% area for the balance of the year. Turning to external growth, we remain committed to our prudent and disciplined approach. AMH development remains the backbone of our growth programs and is on track to meet this year's delivery expectations, with initial yields continuing to improve on newly delivered homes. On the acquisitions front, we review thousands of assets each month across our 30+ markets. While the vast majority still do not meet our buy box, we are seeing some encouraging signs, including bid-ask spreads beginning to move in the right direction from certain homebuilders.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

To close, our year to date results underscore the enduring success of the AMH strategy and the team's outstanding execution. With our continued focus on operational excellence, portfolio optimization, and prudent capital acumen, we are well positioned as the market leader in the single-family rental industry. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Thanks Bryan and good morning everyone. Like always, I'll cover three areas in my comments today. First, a review of our solid quarterly results. Second, an update on our balance sheet and recent capital activity. Third, I'll close with commentary around our increased 2025 guidance. Starting off with our operating results, this quarter was an excellent example of the power of the AMH strategy and our ability to create value and grow earnings across all areas of the business. For the quarter, we reported net income attributable to common shareholders of $105.6 million, or $0.28 per diluted share. On an FFO share and unit basis, we generated $0.47 of core FFO representing 4.9% year over year growth and $0.42 of adjusted FFO representing 6.3% year over year growth. In addition to our strong execution this quarter, we also received favorable property tax news out of the State of Texas.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

As many of you recall, the 2022 Texas property tax reform that lowered a portion of the state's property tax rates expired at the beginning of 2025. Since then, after much deliberation, the state recently passed a new round of property tax relief that once again lowers property tax rates for 2025 and 2026. That has been positively reflected in our updated full year outlook that I'll talk about in a few minutes. Turning to investments for the second quarter, our AMH development program delivered a total of 636 homes to our wholly owned and joint venture portfolios. That was right on track with our expectations and continues to demonstrate our unique ability to create value in an otherwise challenging acquisition environment. To demonstrate this point, during the quarter, our team reviewed tens of thousands of potential acquisition properties.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

The vast majority of these properties still do not meet our disciplined buy box criteria and we ultimately acquired a total of just five homes during the quarter. On the other hand, we continue to be active on the portfolio optimization front, selling 370 properties in the second quarter for approximately $120 million of net proceeds at an average economic disposition yield in the high 3%. Next, I'd like to turn to our balance sheet and recent capital activity. At the end of the quarter, our net debt, including preferred shares to adjusted EBITDA, was down to 5.2 times. Our $1.25 billion revolving credit facility was fully undrawn, and we had $323 million of cash available on the balance sheet, which includes partial proceeds from our second quarter bond offering.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

During the month of May, we took advantage of a narrow market opportunity to raise $650 million in a five-year bond offering. Priced at a coupon of 4.95%, these five-year bonds provide a perfect complement to our existing maturity profile, reflect a better than previously expected coupon, and will be used to fund a portion of this year's anticipated securitization repayments. Along those lines, after the end of the quarter, we delivered our notice to pay off our final securitization 2015 SFR 2. After the payoff, which we expect to close during the third quarter, our balance sheet will become 100% unencumbered with zero maturities until 2028. Next, I'll cover our updated 2025 earnings guidance, which was positively revised across the board in yesterday's earnings press release.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Starting with the same home portfolio, recognizing our strong leasing performance and improved bad debt outlook that we now expect to approximate 100 basis points on a full-year basis, we've increased the midpoint of our full-year core revenues growth expectation by 25 basis points to 3.75%. On the expense side, although the majority of property tax information is typically received over the course of the third and fourth quarters, given the recent favorable Texas update, we've reduced the midpoint of our full-year core expense growth expectation by 25 basis points to 3.75%. Collectively, this translates into an overall increase of 50 basis points to the midpoint of our full-year same home core NOI growth expectations to 3.75%. Additionally, outside of the same home portfolio, our teams have done a great job delivering solid operational execution highlighted by our new communities across all of our AMH development markets.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

When further combined with the modest upside from our opportunistically timed and well-executed second quarter bond offering, we have increased the midpoint of our full-year 2025 core FFO per share expectations by a total of $0.03. Our new midpoint of $1.86 per share now reflects the high end of our previous range and represents a year over year growth expectation of 5.1%, which, as Bryan mentioned earlier, once again positions AMH at the top of the residential sector. Before we open the call to your questions, I'd like to share a little more context on the strength of this quarter. It wasn't just a strong leasing season.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

This quarter was a reflection of the strength of the AMH strategy and our relentless focus on creating value across all aspects of the business, from operational excellence to portfolio optimization and prudent capital acumen, all of which contributed to the success of this quarter and our meaningfully improved full year earnings outlook. Thank you to the team for making the AMH strategy possible. Bryan and I will open the call to your questions. Unfortunately, Lincoln Palmer was briefly called away for a family emergency and won't be able to join us today. We send him our thoughts and support his time with his family. With that, operator, we're ready to open the line.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Juan Sanabria
Juan Sanabria
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Good morning and thanks for the time. Just hoping, Chris, maybe you could expand upon the seasonal changes you were expecting in the second half of this year versus last year and the implications for both rate and blended spreads.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, hey, morning Juan. Chris here. Good question. I know, very topical for a lot of folks. Let me share a couple of thoughts just in general on the curve that come to mind. Like we've talked about before, we spent a lot of time analyzing the shape of our seasonal curve in general. In particular, we've really been focusing on what our curve has looked like on a long-term basis versus more of the COVID and kind of COVID recovery timeframe.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

What we found is that with all things COVID related, trends really got distorted and we saw an atypical elongating of our seasonal curve over the last couple of years. By contrast, if you look at our stabilized business prior to COVID, we really saw that the seasonal curve tended to peak out kind of late May, early June. That's exactly what we saw this year. On top of that, as we've been talking about, one of our key objectives for this year was to help flatten the shape of the seasonal curve so that we can avoid the type of steep leasing deceleration we saw in the back of 2024.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

We've been really successful accomplishing that this year through the lease expiration management program where we've shifted expirations from what was called 50/50 before, first half, second half of the year, to what is more now, 60% in the first half of the year, 40% in the back half of the year. What that's done for us is it's really enabled us to capture more new leasing opportunities during prime leasing season. Importantly, it has shifted move outs away from the third and fourth quarters, which we expect to translate into less leasing deceleration this year, as you pointed out.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

If you want to illustrate that with some numbers, if we look at new lease spreads from, call it, let's say the middle of the year to the end of the year, in 2024, we saw over 600 basis points of new lease deceleration from middle of the year to end of the year. By contrast, this year we're expecting to only see about 150 basis points of seasonal deceleration, which puts us in a really great spot and makes us opportunistic as we head into the back of the year.

Juan Sanabria
Juan Sanabria
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

That's fantastic. Thanks. Just as my follow up, hoping you could talk a little bit more about the acquisition environment. Seems like the bid-ask spread is disclosing some of the national homebuilders. am just curious if you could expand on that and talk a little bit about aforementioned in prior calls, bulk or portfolio acquisition opportunities, kind of existing stable homes.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks, Juan. This is Bryan. In my prepared remarks, I talked a little bit about what we're seeing on the ground from a national builder opportunity perspective. I think it's been four or five quarters in a row where we've seen a lot of volume of deals come across our desk, but really not much change in willingness to negotiate on price. A lot of those deals didn't meet our buy box. We've talked about how kind of wide we were on price to make it fit our yield objectives. We've seen a little bit of a change of late, and it's not completely across the board. From some of the large national homebuilders and some of the markets that have maybe a little bit of extra supply, we're seeing an expanded willingness to negotiate on price.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

It gives us a lot of optimism as we get into the back half of the year on that particular acquisition channel's potential. I wanted to make sure that we highlighted the fact that we are sensing a meaningful change.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes to the line of Jamie Feldman with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Jamie Feldman
Jamie Feldman
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Great, thank you. I guess just thinking about the change in the outlook for core revenue growth, can you just talk about any other pieces? I know you talked about blends fixing the seasonal curve. Are there any other pieces of that calculation that have moved? Anything you can address in terms of that? Of how market conditions have changed across your markets, better or worse?

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, sure, Jamie, Chris here. I can start overall and then Bryan wants to fill in anything else at the market level. You know, just as a reminder, overall revenue outlook increased 25 basis points at the mid to 3.75% with the real driver being improved full year bad debt outlook like I mentioned in prepared remarks that we now expect to approximate 1% or so on a full year basis. That's further supported by the really strong year to date leasing activity we've seen where we still expect to see full year average monthly realized rent growth and call it the high threes and then our unchanged full year occupancy outlook in the low 96% which, like we've been talking about, reflects less deceleration in the back half of the year compared to 2024 as we see the benefits of our lease expiration management program. All those pieces will get you back to the increased outlook of 3.75% at the mid.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Jamie, this is Bryan. From a market perspective, we're really pleased with what we're seeing in our Florida markets. As an example, it's been well documented that there's some supply pressures there, but our Florida portfolio is holding up really well. It really gives us additional confidence on the flattening of that curve to see occupancy in Q2 in excess of 90% in that region and really good demand. We're optimistic about the back half on some of our major markets.

Jamie Feldman
Jamie Feldman
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Thank you for that. It actually leads to the second question which is, you had very strong results in the Midwest, Seattle, but you look at where you're acquiring more and it is some of those Florida markets and some of the heavier home builder markets. Can you just talk about that strategy and do you think over time the Midwest markets weaken and those other markets get stronger or just in general, why be growing in markets that do have more supply risk?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Thank you. Commentary specifically on the Midwest, we've really enjoyed strong performance in our Midwestern markets for a long time. You're looking at a snapshot of today. They're still characterized by very low supply, especially supply of the quality of home and the quality of location that we have in our portfolio. We don't see that stopping anytime soon. If you look at the relative affordability across different markets in the U.S., the Midwestern markets are comfortably within the top 10. People are still able to move there and have a high quality of life.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Our specific portfolio there, as I mentioned, is extremely well located, good school districts, homes with yards, single-family detached, close to the commercial centers. Our scattered site portfolio there has performed extremely well and I expect that to continue. It's a similar commentary on Seattle. Seattle has a couple of different characteristics than the Midwest. Again, very low supply, especially at the entry level and the pricing levels that we're leasing our homes at. Seattle, in contrast to the Midwest, is really expensive to own a home. It's about twice as expensive to own versus rent comparable products. Our development program continues to deliver nicely into that marketplace. We expect a long-term continued success there just with the economic engine and we expect the Midwest to continue to produce certainly through any sort of future that we can see.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

Steve Sakwa
Steve Sakwa
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Bryan. You talked about kind of the homebuilders willing to negotiate on price. I don't think you've really kind of done much yet, but where do you see that spread for the deals you're looking at with them against your development pipeline? I guess at what point would the development pipeline perhaps slow down if you could buy more kind of new product from the homebuilders?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks Steve. That's a great question. It's interesting. The price changes that we've seen are generally characterized by being in markets where we're not developing. We don't have the AMH development program. In the markets where we do have those programs, it's critical to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples. The inventory that we're seeing in our development markets is not as well located and it's not as high of a quality of build, and in many cases, it's characterized by being attached or townhomes. It's a different product in our 15 development markets. It's one of the benefits of having a diversified portfolio footprint in that we can look at opportunities across all 30+ markets, and we're seeing the price movement in our non-development markets.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

In terms of how far it needs to move before we do anything meaningful, our yield calculations on the ask prices today aren't that different than what we talked about last quarter, thinking about yields in the high 4s, and we need to see a meaningful move off of that to be able to do anything of volume, maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of approaching 20%.

Steve Sakwa
Steve Sakwa
Analyst at Evercore ISI

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

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Thanks, Steve.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Wolfe with Citigroup. Please proceed.

Eric Wolfe
Eric Wolfe
Analyst at Citigroup

Hey, thanks. Apologies if I missed this, but could you talk about where occupancy was in July? You mentioned that you expected a flatter seasonal curve than normal in the back half on blended lease rates and how that might also translate into sort of a lower occupancy change as well. I think last year your occupancy was down like 120 bps from top to bottom. I was just curious, you know, what that might look like this year. Yeah.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Thanks, Eric. Chris detailed some specifics on the curve expectations for the year really as they pertain to rate. I think the key point as it pertains to occupancy and our outlook for the balance of the year is really centered around our lease expiration management program and the benefits that we're expecting to see with dramatic reduction in lease expirations and therefore move outs. That gives us more power not only on the pricing side, but to be able to preserve occupancy in maybe a slightly slower demand environment due to seasonality.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Eric, you're right. This is Chris here. Less deceleration on the occupancy side as well. As you probably saw, first half of the year, same home occupancy was 96.2%. The guide contemplates full year, same home occupancy in the low 96%s. As you can see, we're expecting a little bit of seasonal moderation in the back half of the year, but not a ton. By contrast, if you look at same time last year, call it June through end of the year, we saw about 100 basis points of occupancy moderation. Much flatter as we see the benefits of lease expiration management.

Eric Wolfe
Eric Wolfe
Analyst at Citigroup

July was consistent with that sort of low 96% range.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

July was 96.1%, holding strong.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Haendel St. Juste with Mizuho Americas. Please proceed.

Haendel St. Juste
Haendel St. Juste
Analyst at Mizuho Securities

Hey, good morning out there. I guess Bryan, there's been lots of concern, let's call it, about the development platform this year with lower yields versus last year, some concerns about tariffs and higher input costs. You guys have been able to raise the guide partially this year because of some better outcomes and development pipeline. You mentioned yields I think were up a little bit.

Haendel St. Juste
Haendel St. Juste
Analyst at Mizuho Securities

I was hoping you. Could you talk a little bit more on how you've been able to achieve that? Is it better lease up? Is it less cost inflation than feared? What are your expectations for development yields over the near term? Thanks.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks Sandal. I think you covered a lot of it. I'll break it down a little bit. First of all, the change in our expectations on the contribution of development outside of same home was really due to outstanding execution by the team and quick lease up. There are a lot of different factors at play here. We put some new initiatives in that are starting to take hold on the pre-leasing side and pre-marketing. We saw some of that benefit early on, and importantly, we were able to lease through a little bit of backlog carried over from last year quickly in delivering communities so we could maintain pricing power, matching deliveries with demand. It's been a very important move strategically for us as well in relation to yield expectations for this year.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

As I said in my prepared remarks, we're on track for what we expected initially of mid 5% yields for 2025 deliveries, starting in the low fives and kind of progressing nicely through the year. There are a couple of things that we see there on the cost side. The team has done an outstanding job of managing costs. We've been looking at this implication of potential tariffs. It's been a hot topic for a long period of time, and any increases that we may have seen or will see from tariffs are being more than offset by improvements in the labor market due to decreased activity, plus some efficiencies that our teams are gaining as they become more established in the square marketplace or through value engineering and architecture.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

There's a lot of good things going into play, and you're putting all these things together, and we're controlling our vertical costs very well. In fact, our vertical costs for construction on the new development are flat year over year, and we're expecting that flat, no change in that as we exit 2025 and begin 2026. It's really coming in and working out as planned, and it gives us a lot of confidence going into next year.

Haendel St. Juste
Haendel St. Juste
Analyst at Mizuho Securities

Appreciate that. That's great color. Chris, maybe one for you. Just on the property tax side, you mentioned the nice boost from lower the Texas initiatives. I know we're still. Waiting a bit from other states, key states like Florida and Georgia. I guess I'm curious what you are expecting or kind of embedded in the guide for that. What do you guys see as maybe a long term run rate for real estate taxes? Thanks.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, good questions. I think you said it exactly right in part of your question in that, you know, reminder for everyone, we're still really only halfway through the property tax year. At this point we've received initial assessed values for really only a little over half the portfolio or so, as I'm sure everyone recalls. That really then starts at the beginning of the appeals process that runs over the course of summer and into the early fall, and reminder that we still receive the remainder of our values over the course of the third quarter, and the majority of tax rates aren't received until the fourth quarter.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

We're still early with the exception of the favorable Texas news, which I mentioned and you just pointed out, that really was the driver of the revision to our full year property tax outlook at this point, which as a reminder is in the high $375 million or so. The only other color that I can add at this point is that it's still very early. Based on some of the earliest rounds of initial assessed values that we've seen, we see a little bit of reason for optimism that there's a chance values could trend a touch better than we are expecting this year. I caveat that by saying it's early and we'll have to give you another update on this front next quarter.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

To your point in terms of longer term run rate, like we've talked about several times, long term average property tax growth for us is 4% to 5% in the high threes. We're kind of on the lower edge of long term average, and as we think forward, tough to predict 2026 or beyond at this point. We do know that rate of home price appreciation continues to moderate and we see that as being a potentially favorable setup to property taxes looking forward.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Kramer with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Adam Kramer
Adam Kramer
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks for the time, Chris. You guys have had this really good. Strategy around disposing of homes at these really low cap rates. Wondering now with sort of getting to the end of the secured debt coming off and sort of that. Freeing up homes to dispose of, wondering. How many homes you guys think you have left here to potentially still sell and sort of what the longer term, I guess sort of outlook is for that disposition strategy that you guys have employed? Along similar lines, net debt to EBITDA I think is 5.2 in the quarter. I would imagine that's below the midpoint of your sort of target range, How you're sort of thinking about managing the net debt to EBITDA, sort of managing the balance sheet, and you know, in terms of trade off with these dispositions?

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, great questions. I can start with the first piece of it in terms of what we see for opportunity going forward, especially as we are releasing previously collateralized homes out of the securitizations. A couple reminders. Last year, 2024, we paid off two securitizations that freed up about 9,000 homes that had been encumbered for about the past 10 years or so. This year, through our two securitization payoffs, we'll be freeing up another 9,000 homes or so. So 18,000 homes that our hands have been somewhat tied from an asset management perspective for the last 10 years or so. A lot of observations we've made in there from an asset management perspective that we'll be able to execute on going forward. I think we've maybe shared this before.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Best guess, at this point, there could be 10, maybe 10 to 15% of those homes that may ultimately become very attractive disposition candidates over the next couple of years. They're not going to work through the disposition system immediately. As everyone knows, these homes are being sold via the MLS, which means we let leases roll, residents move out, those homes go into the MLS, which naturally creates a little bit of runway ahead of us, creating great capital recycling opportunity for the next several years as we think about recycling into the development program and otherwise. To your point on leverage, you're right, leverage continues to tick down, low 5s today. We're generally comfortable with and targeting net debt to EBITDA somewhere in the 5s, which means we've got great capacity on the balance sheet to take advantage of incremental growth opportunities that we're watching very, very closely.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

That could be in the form of incremental development. We're watching all things from an acquisition perspective very closely. Bryan talked about what we're seeing in terms of the dialogue with our national builder relationships. As everyone knows, we're very bullish on and watch the portfolio consolidation market very closely.

Adam Kramer
Adam Kramer
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. That's really helpful. Thank you, Chris. Just maybe sort of the lease expiration initiative, I think you gave a helpful update on that earlier. Just wondering is that process sort of done or is there more to go with that initiative?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks, Adam. We're really pleased with the results that we've seen with that initiative, but it's really just starting and it's going to be extended into other areas of the business. For example, right now it's just focused on renewals and making some movements between the different months. Ultimately, it'll be extended into optimizing initial leases and I think it'll be a powerful tool as well. As we manage communities, they have some slightly different dynamics. Where you have a couple hundred homes in a single community, the expirations and timing is going to be really important. There's optimization opportunities there as well. As we get better and better at this too, the expiration management isn't just about moving things into the right season, but it's about moving expirations into the right weeks, into the right days in individual markets. There's a lot of additional sophistication that we expect to put into the program over time.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Spector with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Jeff Spector
Jeff Spector
Analyst at Bank of America

Great, thank you. In your opening remarks, you touched on several times the operational excellence and we saw you in March in LA. I know you talked a lot about your company specific initiatives with AI advancing rapidly here. I'm just curious how these advances are helping you with those operating initiatives.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks, Jeff. It's a great question and it's really nice insight into some of the success we've had on the leasing side. As an example, we talked in the past about our focus on technology and giving new technology tools to our teams to not only improve the resident experience, but accelerate leasing. There are benefits across the board. Our initial foray into how we're leveraging AI is starting on the leasing front. We've fully implemented a front end system that is a fantastic thing for the residents. It's allowed us to provide answers to any prospect's question 24/7, managing huge volumes. What it's done is it's freed up our licensed leasing professionals to be able to spend more time with the residents, the incoming residents, making sure that they're solving for their housing needs rather than just allowing them to rent what's available.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

There are a lot of good benefits that you're seeing there. I talked a little bit earlier too about our pre-leasing initiative. AI is empowering that as well. You can see some of the success we've had in the lease up of the new home, of the new development homes. Just to put it into proper context, that lease up has occurred with this better engine without the use of concessions in some markets that have supply and where concessions are common. There are a lot of good things. The AI benefits will be seen on the leasing side first. In the future, we're optimistic about applications into improvements on the communication platform with our residents. There are some really good things that are in the work. We haven't completed the rollout there yet.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Ultimately, I think the AI improvements and the new tools that we're able to put in the hands of our field teams will make the maintenance experience not only much better, but much more efficient. We're very excited about the possibilities to come on that side.

Jeff Spector
Jeff Spector
Analyst at Bank of America

Okay, thank you. In terms of your company just getting more aggressive in leveraging these initiatives, the platform, your team, what you're learning from your developments, I continue to read about more and more money, lower cost capital looking to invest in single-family rentals. I know you've discussed you decided to stop the third party management. Just curious, with the changes in your cost of capital, any reconsideration there?

Jeff Spector
Jeff Spector
Analyst at Bank of America

This way your company gets even more aggressive in a smart way, but more aggressively leveraging this lower cost of capital out there and your platform. Thank you.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah. Jeff, I think we've talked in the past about how we tested a third party property management initiative and some potential benefits there. We spent a couple of years managing exactly the type of homes that we thought fit well into that model. Our conclusion was pretty simple. We have such opportunity within our development program with optimizing the way we manage communities with improvements that we can make in our services platform that we felt that the best thing to do strategically was to focus on those opportunities in the near term. Over the long run, it's definitely possible that we would be able to leverage our platform in other ways. As we sit here today, the opportunities are just too great internally in front of us to focus on anything else.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Julien Blouin with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Julien Blouin
Julien Blouin
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Yeah, thank you for taking my question. Just wanted to touch on the new lease side. It looks like trends into July are holding up a lot better than last year, and it sounds like you're expecting a lot less seasonal decel into the back half of the year. How much of that is driven by the lease expiration management that you're doing versus how much of that is maybe seeing signs of better pricing power as maybe some of the competitive supply pressures are starting to ease.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks, Julien. It's a combination of a number of different things. The lease expiration management, where we have relief from move outs, hasn't really started yet, so it hasn't shown up in any of our pricing power, but it is a factor into our confidence for the back half of the year.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

We're seeing some really good pricing power in some of our markets. You look at the outstanding performance, we talked about it on the call earlier, of Seattle. The Midwest has been fantastic. It's a testament to our diversified portfolio footprint. There are some markets that are pressured, but it represents a very small proportion of our portfolio. We're doing good things on the management side. I think our revenue optimization has matured the way we price homes. Marketing is a little bit better, so a lot of good things at play. I would expect to see the benefits from the lease expiration management program later on in the year.

Julien Blouin
Julien Blouin
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Got it. That's helpful. And Bryan, we've seen your main SFR peers and some of the apartments run up pretty wide gaps between new and renewal rates, whereas those metrics have stayed a lot closer together in your portfolio. Wanted to check if that feels like a bit of a strategic choice on your end. Does it feel like maybe you're holding back a bit on renewals because you don't feel like it's healthy to have those wide gaps, or is there maybe an impact to renewal rates from your lease expiration management strategy?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah. Thank you. I think it's a great question, and it goes to the core of our strategy, especially as the way we manage renewals and how we think about them. We want to make sure that our residents are getting great value and that they know that they're getting great value. Those renewal rates have to be tied into current market rates, adjusting for any sort of delay in terms of sending those out 60 or 90 days before they need to be executed. There are some seasonal effects, but we want to make sure that any offer we make to our residents is a very good value to them and holds up from a market rent perspective. As such, you're seeing the sophistication that we have on pricing as another contributor to those tight bands.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

We've improved the way we communicate with our residents and quite often through a dialogue with them on a renewal offer. It's a very easy explanation as to why this is a good thing to renew and you're getting good value.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Singelyn with Green Street. Please proceed.

David Segall
David Segall
Analyst at Green Street

Thank you. When you did your analysis of historical leasing trends, I'm curious what you thought about how the history of turnover rates used to be a higher level of turnover than what you've seen since 2020. How has that informed your views of what turnover should look like going forward?

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, appreciate the question, David. Chris here, and then you know, Bryan can add in if you like to. I think ultimately what you're seeing in the first half of this year is really timing associated with lease expiration management. As we know, we've been strategically shifting expirations from the back half of the year to the front half of the year to align with leasing season. As we look at the data on a quarter by quarter basis, the actual retention rate, you know, the percentage of residents choosing to stay with us, has remained relatively consistent. It's really timing related in terms of shifting of overall expirations and in turn move outs.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

We would expect that to moderate down in the back half of the year, and on a full year basis our view around turnover rate is pretty similar to last year, and turnover days, days to re-resident as well. You can see that reflected in the fact that our view on occupancy on a full year basis is relatively flat year over year.

David Segall
David Segall
Analyst at Green Street

Great, thank you. It looks like fee income has been growing at a double-digit percentage in the first half. What specific aspects of fees are driving that, and how sustainable is that into the back half of the year?

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, that's really timing related as well. You know that the fee line typically correlates with leasing volume. As we've seen a greater proportion of leasing volume in the first half of the year given shifting and optimization from lease expiration management, we've seen fees shift accordingly. As we get into the back half of the year, we'd expect that to moderate back down. Generally speaking, in the guide we're contemplating fees to run relatively similar to growth in rents.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Goldsmith with UBS Securities LLC. Please proceed.

Michael Goldsmith
Michael Goldsmith
Analyst at UBS

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Maybe a good place to start is. Can you provide an updated assessment of remaining supply impact across the portfolio? Thanks.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks Michael. If you look across our 30+ markets, we're seeing very limited supply in the vast majority. I talked a little bit earlier about a couple of markets that have had outstanding performance in the Midwest, Seattle, where there's just clear shortage of quality housing, certainly housing that's comparable to what we're offering on the rental side. If you flip it to the markets that have been widely discussed where there has been some additional supply pressure, thinking about Phoenix, thinking about Texas, thinking about some of the markets in Florida, we're performing very well in those markets. The additional supply in Florida hasn't had much of an effect on us from an occupancy perspective. Maybe a little bit in rate, but our performance there has been outstanding.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Even in Phoenix, where there's a lot of supply pressure, again well documented, we're still in excess of 95% occupancy and it's just a matter of time until that gets absorbed. One of the key factors that we have, not only the benefits of the diversified geographical footprint, but it has to do with our product type and location within these markets. That's why you're seeing really the durability of our portfolio, whereas others might be pressured.

Michael Goldsmith
Michael Goldsmith
Analyst at UBS

Got it. Thanks for that. As a follow up, you know, occupancy remains above the pre-Covid levels. Is there an ideal occupancy level for the portfolio? If we do see a stronger housing market, could occupancy tick back down as move out to buy a home rise and turnover increases?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, I think the way we're looking at it pre-COVID, kind of the expectation was 95% range, and we've talked about it since the end of the pandemic that those new expectations have been increased to 96% range. There are a number of different factors that support that we're doing a better job of execution. I think the value proposition is being more appreciated. The difference in cost of owning versus renting is one of the contributing factors. Over time, we would expect to be able to maintain that. That's kind of our long-term goal. If you look at the way that the first half of the year played out, where we moved a bunch of additional expirations into the first half and had incremental move outs, we were still able to maintain a very high level of occupancy, which is a testament to a couple of different things.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

The depth of the demand and, second, our team's ability to execute, turn these homes quickly, and get them back up and leased up in the marketplace. In the event of some changes in the for-sale marketplace, we would expect to be able to adjust to any impact, and I would expect us to be able to preserve occupancy as well.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Linda Tsai with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Linda Tsai
Linda Tsai
Analyst at Jefferies

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Could you give us an update on resident income to rent ratios? Are you seeing resident incomes trend higher in your portfolio for new residents?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thank you, Linda. We're really pleased with what we're seeing. From our incoming residents, it seems to tick up a little bit each month or each quarter, I guess, but our ratios are still very strong. Income to rent in excess of five times. We've seen stated household income for move ins in Q2 accelerate past the $150,000 household mark that we talked about last quarter. At the same time, credit scores are still remaining strong. We're very pleased with the level of income and the strength of the incoming residents.

Linda Tsai
Linda Tsai
Analyst at Jefferies

Thanks. I think you referenced this a little earlier, but more explicitly, what's your view on the ability for home sales to recover more meaningfully in 2026 and what would be the potential impacts on AMH's portfolio?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, in terms of predicting the likelihood, that's a difficult one. In the event that it does or when it does, I think it's good for everything. I think a healthy housing market is positive across the board. It's positive to the economy, specific to our business. I think you probably see a change in some of the homes that are currently being offered for rent. Some of the shadow supply that has peaked in some of the Texas markets as an example. There are some benefits from that side. Increased activity is good. Our ability to process move outs and release these homes into a very deep level of demand gives us confidence that we can preserve the occupancy, and we expect with the affordability gap too, to be able to continue to have pricing power.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brad Heffern with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Brad Heffern
Brad Heffern
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Yeah, hi, everybody. Thanks. On the acquisition front, you talked about home builders already, but I was wondering if you could talk through what you're seeing either on portfolio deals or for scattered site as well.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, sure. Morning, Brad. Chris here. Look, on the portfolio side, for starters, not a lot to talk about on the scattered site side, but on portfolios, definitely something that we watch very closely. We're very optimistic on the number of assembled portfolios that we know are out there. No different than we've talked about before. What we especially like about those opportunities is the potential to uniquely unlock value by bringing those portfolios onto our platform, just like we're currently doing with the portfolio we acquired in the fourth quarter. In terms of activity out there, I think we shared this before.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

There was a number of discussions and dialogues more broadly going on out there in the market, kind of end of 2024, heading to 2025. It does feel like a number of those have kind of slowed down just given some of the uncertainty in the environment. We know that those assembled portfolios are out there. Ultimately, they're going to need exit and liquidity, and us and our platform provide a very valuable solution for them. We can cast a nice broad net given the diversification of our portfolio. Like we talked about a couple of questions ago, great capacity off of the balance sheet in terms of leverage capacity. I think we're very optimistic on those types of opportunities. I would remind everyone that we are also very disciplined on the buy box. For the right opportunities, we're very bullish on them.

Brad Heffern
Brad Heffern
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Okay, got it. Thank you. I was wondering if you could talk about what you're seeing on the land side. The lots under control seem to go down every quarter. I'm wondering, is that just a reflection of land pricing being unattractive or are you trying to resize the book there?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks, Brad. On the land side, what you're seeing with the decrease in the pipeline is really by design. A few years ago we had a very robust pipeline. We felt it was a great luxury coming into all the different changes that we're seeing in the marketplace. The size of it today is more appropriate for our expectations on kind of delivery pace of the 2,300 or so per year. There's been some optimization of that pipeline, but it sits at a healthy level today in terms of what the land market looks like. It's been surprisingly resilient from a pricing perspective. Some observations on the ground for us are we're seeing more deals of the higher quality land opportunities. Before, last few quarters I would say could be characterized by maybe tertiary locations, slightly inferior.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

We're starting to see better quality and we're also seeing an increased willingness from the sellers on flexibility for stage of delivery. What I mean by that is, is what stage in terms of horizontal development that these lots are going to be delivered to us. There's been some change on that side, which we're happy about. Going forward at this point in the near term, we're going to be replenishing based on deliveries to kind of maintain that healthy level where it sits now.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jesse Lederman with Zelman & Associates. Please proceed.

Jesse Lederman
Jesse Lederman
Analyst at Zelman & Associates

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Another question. On the land market, obviously homebuilders of late have been focused on tying up land via option. Curious what your appetite for that would be. For example, I guess on deals that you've tied up over the last few years with the for sale market slowing. Presumably if you had them tied up via option, you'd have the ability to go back and renegotiate, which could be a solid tailwind relative to your underwriting at that time. Curious your thoughts on that vis a vis buying them outright?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks, Jesse. We're flexible across really all options in terms of how we take down land. We have agreements where we have flexibility. We have some, as I said earlier in my previous remarks, that may be more developed, finished lots are coming back to the marketplace. That is something we haven't seen in a long time. We're very flexible and entrepreneurial and really trying to find the best way to get the best real estate, the best land, as quickly as we can into vertical and ultimately producing homes. Our team's very creative. We've talked about in the past, the team has very extensive public home building experience and expertise on exactly how to structure these land deals and they're doing a very good job of that.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

One other interesting point on the land side that we're seeing a slight change in is we have been in discussions for finish lot takedowns from some of the home builders and some of the land developers and those opportunities didn't exist, you know, two or three quarters ago. Anyway, all options are in play. It is one of the benefits of controlling the entire department, the full vertical. We look forward to optimizing that too.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Jesse, you may recall we've been active on the optioning front over the past couple of years. We've had thousand, two thousand lots or so optioned over the last couple of years. Definitely a valuable tool that we've used. Also, as I'm sure you know, optioning capital is expensive, right? Average optioning capital is double digits plus these days. As you know, Bryan's point is we're looking at everything that's out there. Commonly, the math can skew in favor of the balance sheet just given relative cost of capital delta. It's definitely something that we've used in the past and continue to watch very closely.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Omotayo Okusanya with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Omotayo Okusanya
Omotayo Okusanya
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Yes, good afternoon everyone and congrats on a solid quarter. I just wanted to ask on the regulatory front, whether at the federal, state, or local level, anything that's kind of bubbling up that you guys are watching and that maybe investors should be aware of?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Thanks, Tyo. We're paying very close attention to what's happening at the local, state, and federal level. We don't have anything really new to report. There's been some favorable developments. We talked about them in the past. Last year, there was some very favorable anti-trespasser legislation that was passed. On the flip side, I think everyone's aware of some of the changes in Washington state that we talked about on our last call. Since then, nothing really new to note other than the fact that internally we're very invested in our government affairs program and our strategy of making sure we get the word out that AMH in particular is part of the housing solution. We're bringing new supply into the marketplace that helps to address this housing shortage. I think we're doing a better job of getting the word out, but we still have a long way to go.

Omotayo Okusanya
Omotayo Okusanya
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Great. Thank you.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Thanks, Tyo.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes to the line of Jade Rahmani with KBW. Please proceed.

Jason Sabshon
Jason Sabshon
Analyst at KBW

Hi, this is Jason Zabchaan for Jade. Thanks for taking the question. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts around seniors housing in the active adult segment. Are you interested in targeting any acquisitions there? Developing active adult communities within your build to rent strategy? You have any data on what share of your renters belong to this segment, that would also be helpful. Thanks.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Hi Jason. Senior housing, something that we've talked about from time to time over the last decade, there's a couple of points that I think are important. As I mentioned earlier on the call, we have so much opportunity with what we're doing, just staying close to the core AMH strategy. Although senior housing might be something that we look at into the future, there's nothing in the near term that we're going to be acting on that side. In terms of the data, the demographic data of our resident base, we haven't looked at exact breakdown by different age cohort. The interesting part that we track is for the incoming residents. The average age of those households is 38 and it's been relatively consistent for a long period of time. There might be a gap between that and the senior housing question.

Jason Sabshon
Jason Sabshon
Analyst at KBW

Got it, thank you. Do you see the company holding a similar amount of land under development as a % of assets? Over the long term as to what's currently on the balance sheet?

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, this is Chris. We're in the right area. As Bryan mentioned, the land pipeline in general has matured very nicely. As we think about that as a percentage of the balance sheet, we've been very vocal from the start that we are committed to maintaining all things development, land and in-process construction to a single-digit percentage of the balance sheet, which I do not expect to see changing going forward.

Jason Sabshon
Jason Sabshon
Analyst at KBW

Great, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Austin Wurschmidt with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Austin Wurschmidt
Austin Wurschmidt
Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Great, thanks. On the lease expiration optimization, what do you think the free cash flow benefit from your recent efforts are, and what that value creation potential looks like? While you guys have spent a lot of time discussing the seasonal impact in the back half of the year, I guess how should we think about the seasonal ramp into the spring and early summer versus what that's looked like historically?

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Yeah, thanks Austin. From a high-level perspective, the lease expiration management initiative is really wrapped into the way that we're optimizing revenue as a company. We see benefits on the occupancy side, clearly on the rate side because of taking homes out into better pricing environments. It's really an example of a lot of the things that we're doing to optimize the entire revenue line. In terms of putting an exact figure on and quantifying the current benefit, that'd be difficult to do, but it's wrapped into a larger initiative that is going to give us really good momentum for years to come.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, a couple of other nice benefits. Just so you're aware, if you think about the shifting of leasing to the front half of the year, one, it gives us increased visibility to leasing's present activity earlier in the year. Two, it increases the proportion of new leasing opportunities we can capture in the strength of spring. Three, it minimizes or it lessens the proportion of new leases being captured in the slower back half of the year, which will favorably translate into earn, in effect, into the following year as well. Holistically, great win-win program all the way around.

Austin Wurschmidt
Austin Wurschmidt
Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense, I guess. Do you think while it hasn't necessarily translated into improving retention, does it drive down that days to re-resident because of the traffic that you see during that window early in the year?

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Over time, that's definitely part of the expectation. Right. We're taking back vacant units during the strength of the spring leasing season, which over time our expectation is that should on the margin be benefiting days to re-resident.

Austin Wurschmidt
Austin Wurschmidt
Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Can you just remind us what that days to re-resident for you guys is as it currently stands so we can think about it over time? Thanks.

Chris Lau
CFO at AMH

Yeah, sure. It varies over the course of the year. If you want to think about the second quarter, it's in the low 40s or so days to re-resident, which is fairly similar year over year.

Operator

Thank you, there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to pass the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Bryan Smith
Bryan Smith
CEO at AMH

Thank you for your time today. We really appreciate the continued interest in AMH and look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

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