Camden Property Trust

I didn't know it'd go this far, but here I am. These wheels, they keep on turning, getting right into the stars. I know it's all been worth it, man, I sure miss playing bars. All I ever really wanted was to sing and play guitar with my friends. Some said I'd never make it, that I didn't do things right. So I showed them who I was, and then I made it just to spite. I changed again. We'll be right back. I stood in the rain, I may be borderline insane. Been messed around, been put down, but I keep coming back again. I'll wear that hat yonder month, says I did it my own way. End of the day, I can say.

As soon as you are able, woman, I am willing to make the break that we are on the brink of. My cup is on the table, my love is feeling, waiting here for you to take and drink of. so if you're tired yeah Ahead of heaven, felt the tables turning Gotten through my darkest hour All of the thunder clapping Felt the desert burning Until you poured on me like a sweet sun shower So if you're tired of the same old story Good morning and welcome to Camden Property Trust's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call.

I'm Kim Callahan, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me today for our prepared remarks are Rick Campo, Camden's Executive Chairman, Alex Jesset, Chief Executive Officer, Lori Baker, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Fraker, Chief Financial Officer, Keith Oden, Executive Vice Chairman, and Stanley Jones, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Investments, will also be available for the Q&A portion of our call. Today's event is being webcast through the Investors section of our website at camdenliving.com, and a replay will be available shortly after the call ends. And please note, this event is being recorded. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I would like to advise everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and beliefs. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Further information about these risks can be found in our filings with the SEC and we encourage you to review them. Any forward-looking statements made on today's call represent management's current opinions and the company assumes no obligation to update or supplement these statements because of subsequent events. As a reminder, Camden's complete first quarter 2026 earnings release is available in the investor section of our website at camdenliving.com, and it includes reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures, which will be discussed on the call. We would like to respect everyone's time and complete our call within one hour, so please limit your initial question to one. then rejoin the queue if you have a follow-up question or additional items to discuss. If we are unable to speak with everyone in the queue today, we'd be happy to respond to additional questions by phone or email after the call concludes. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Rick Campo.

Good morning. Our theme for today's pre-call music is change. We recently announced some important changes to Camden's executive team. With the promotions of Alex Jesset, Lori Baker, and Ben Fraker, we continued our longstanding commitment to succession planning featuring Camden's home-grown talent. This will ensure the continuity of Camden's family values, institutional knowledge, and unique culture. Alex, Lori, and Ben each bring 25 plus years of tenure at Camden to their new leadership roles. And in the words of REO Speedwagon, I'll be here when you're ready to roll with the changes. These promotions will ensure that Camden will be ready to roll with the changes in the years ahead. But one thing that never changes is Camden's commitment to workplace excellence, which was recently reinforced by our place on the Fortune Best Place to Work list in America for the 19th consecutive year, ranking number 13 this year. 96% of our employees say Camden is a great place to work, which has led to the highest customer sentiment scores that we've ever seen. The macro case for improving apartment fundamentals continues to be strong. New supply has peaked and has been cut in half in most of our markets. First quarter apartment net absorption was one of the best since 2016, despite slow job growth and tepid consumer sentiment. Apartments provide consumers with a compelling low housing cost alternative to owning a home. I want to give a big shout out to Camden team members for continuing to prove the lives of our teammates, our residents, and our stakeholders one experience at a time. Next up is no stranger to you, but our new CEO, Alex Jessup.

Thanks, Rick, and good morning. As Ben will cover in detail, we had a strong first quarter. Much of the outperformance was timing related, and we are looking forward to seeing how our peak leasing season unfolds throughout the remainder of this quarter and next. In the first quarter, we recorded our lowest bad debt level since the onset of COVID-19 at less than 40 basis points. We attribute this, in part, to outsized income tax refunds received by many of our residents, combined with their continual financial strength and the impact of our enhanced resident credit screening. For middle and higher income earners, 2026 tax refunds are up approximately 10% over last year, creating enhanced spending power. Despite headline reports of declining consumer sentiment, the data illustrates the financial health of our target demographic remains strong, with spending up 3% year-over-year, primarily on services and retail. Our renters pay a low 19% of their income toward rent, allowing them additional discretionary funds often not seen in the more expensive coastal markets. On the demand side, our markets remain strong. CBRE's latest headquarter relocation study, which covers 725 public announcements between 2018 and 2025, shows activity accelerating in 2025 and concentrating on a short list of metros. Dallas-Fort Worth remains the top destination, with more than 100 headquarter relocations since 2018. In 2025 alone, the Metro added another 11 interstate or international headquarters from higher cost markets, including Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York, and Chicago. Additionally, for the 12 months ended January of this year, Dallas led the nation in absolute job growth, followed by Houston at number two and Austin at number four. On a percentage basis, Austin led the nation with most of our markets in the top 30. The Houston metro area led the nation last year in population growth, with just under 127,000 new residents added in the 12-month period ending July 1, 2025. That equates to one new resident every 4.1 minutes, or 347 new residents each day. Among the top 10 metros with the largest population gains, only the Dallas-Fort Worth metro came close, with roughly 124,000 new residents. No other metro added even half as many. This disparity highlights Texas' appeal to workers and families supported by relatively strong job markets, lower costs of living, and the absence of a state income tax. Beyond Dallas-Fort Worth, the CBRE relocation study showed a group of Sunbelt and growth markets emerging as consistent headquarter winners. It highlighted Miami, Austin, Charlotte, Nashville, Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta, and Raleigh-Durham as rising contenders with a pro-business climate including tax advantages, labor availability, and lower costs. The decades-long trend of domestic migration to the Sun Belt normalized in 2025, not disappeared. In fact, Witten's migration tracker shows domestic migration re-accelerating in 2026 as compared to 2025 in most of our markets, with sequential annual increases over 10% in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Phoenix, and Tampa. Camden is in the right high-demand markets ready for the upcoming lower-supply environment. Turning to the real estate front, our California sales process is progressing on schedule. As we shared previously, we've had strong interest with over 230 companies signing confidentiality agreements. We are currently in the diligence process with one buyer for the entire portfolio with an anticipated close date at the end of June or early July. If it does not work out with this buyer, there are other strong buyers who could step in, although with a later closing date. At this point, we're not going to comment further on the potential buyer or the sales price other than to say it is in line with expectations. We continue to assume approximately 60% of the sales proceeds will be reinvested through 1031 exchanges into our existing high-demand, high-growth Sunbelt markets. The remainder of the proceeds, modeled at $650 million, has been used for share repurchases in late 2025 and year-to-date 2026. During the first quarter, we disposed of a high capex 40-year-old community in Dallas for $77 million, generating an approximate 12% unlevered IRR over an almost 30-year hold period. After quarter end, we acquired Camden Alpharetta, a 269-home apartment community in the Atlanta, Georgia metro area, and Camden at Lake Nona, a 288-home apartment community in the Orlando, Florida metro area, for a combined $170 million. We are actively underwriting several other acquisition opportunities and remain confident we can effectively deploy the 1031 proceeds from the California sale. However, as I previously noted, the timing of the exchanges can add considerable variability to our 2026 earnings as we do not receive the sales proceeds until we complete the exchanges. I will now turn the call over to Lori Baker, our President and Chief Operating Officer.

Thanks, Alex. Camden's operating performance to date is generally in line with our expectations. While our first quarter results were slightly ahead of budget, the outperformance was mainly driven by timing-related items. Overall, and as expected, we saw slow but steady improvements across our portfolio as we move through the first quarter and into the beginning of peak leasing season. Our preliminary results for April are on track and indicate modest improvements in both occupancy and blended lease rate growth compared to the first quarter. Turnover remains exceptionally low, and our first quarter 2026 annualized net turnover rate of 30% was one of the lowest in our company's history. This is in part due to minimal move outs related to home purchases, which accounted for 9.2% of our total move outs this quarter. But it also reflects record levels of resident retention which are a testament to Camden's unwavering focus on customer service and providing living excellence to our residents. We will continue to focus on renewals and retention going forward, helping us protect and maintain occupancy, and to mitigate expenses related to unit turnover. Renewal offers for May, June, and July were sent out with an average increase in the mid-3% range. Our team at Camden remains committed to this year's rallying cry of smarter, faster, better, which means smarter in leveraging data, insights, and AI to drive better outcomes, remove repetitive tasks, and improve our margins. Faster with AI to enable quicker, more efficient service for our customers and teams, and better by amplifying our people, and improving the customer experience as reflected in our highest customer sentiment score to date in the first quarter. I will now turn over the call to Ben Fraker, Camden's Chief Financial Officer.

Thanks, Lori, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin with our capital markets activity from the quarter, followed by a review of our first quarter results and our outlook for the second quarter and remainder of the year. During the first quarter, we continue to take disciplined actions to further strengthen our balance sheet and enhance our long-term financial flexibility. We proactively recast our $1.2 billion unsecured revolving line of credit, extending its maturity four years while preserving attractive covenant terms and lowering all-in pricing by 15 basis points. The recast enhances our liquidity position and reflects the continued support we receive from our bank partners. During the quarter, we also issued $600 million of 10-year unsecured bonds at an all-in effective rate of 5%. This issuance allowed us to lock in long-term fixed rate financing, extend our weighted average debt maturity, and reduce near-term refinancing risk. As Alex previously mentioned, we were active with our share repurchases during and subsequent to the quarter. with share repurchases of $423 million at an average price of $104.08 per share. These repurchases, along with $271 million in repurchases completed in 2025, reflect our disciplined and opportunistic capital allocation approach as our shares trade at a significant discount to NAV. While we will continue to monitor our share price performance, our updated full year 2026 guidance assumes no other share repurchases. As a result of these actions, we ended the quarter with strong liquidity, well-laddered maturities, and leveraged metrics that remain comfortably within our long-term targeted ranges. Turning to our first quarter results, we delivered a solid start to the year. For the first quarter, core FFO was $1.70 per share, which exceeded the midpoint of our guidance by $0.04 per share, which we can attribute to the following items. The outperformance compared to guidance was driven by $0.01 from higher revenues from our operating properties, primarily attributable to lower than anticipated BAT debt and higher collections on delinquent rent. Another two cents resulted from property expense savings, which were largely timing related and not indicative of a change to our full year expense outlook. The remaining one cent of the beat was due to the timing of third party construction fee income, which we had previously expected to earn later in 2026. Operating conditions during the quarter tracked our expectations for lease trade out and occupancy. Additionally, outside of our core operating results, we recorded 58.2 million of non-core FFO charges, most of which were related to the previously disclosed $53 million class action lawsuit settlement detailed in the 8K furnished on April 9th. The remaining charges were primarily due to 4.9 million of anticipated investment losses from two climate technology funds. Turning to full year 2026 same store guidance, while we experienced better than expected bad debt and delinquency results during the first quarter, we believe it is premature to extrapolate one quarter's performance into a full year trend particularly given market variability. As a result, we are reaffirming the midpoint of our full-year same-store revenue guidance at 0.75%. Similarly, the first quarter expense outperformance was largely timing-related, so we are reaffirming the midpoint of our same-store expense guidance at 3%. With the midpoints of both revenue and expense guidance unchanged, the midpoint of our same-store NOI guidance remains unchanged at negative 0.5%. Our same store guidance continues to assume improving lease tradeout fundamentals as we enter peak leasing season, along with moderation and new supply pressure as the year progresses. With no change in our expected same store results and transaction volume and timing and range of our original plan, we are keeping the midpoint of our full year core FFO per share guidance of $6.75. We also provided earning guidance for the second quarter of 2026. We expect core FFO per share for the second quarter to be within the range of $1.65 to $1.69, representing a $0.03 per share sequential decline from the first quarter at the midpoint. This anticipated decline is driven by a $0.04 sequential decrease in same-store NOI as higher expected revenues during our second quarter are offset by the seasonality and timing of certain repair and maintenance expenses and the timing of our annual merit increases. This $0.04 same-store NOI decrease is partially offset by $0.01 of additional non-same-store NOI from our completed and projected net acquisitions. In closing, Camden remains in a strong financial position. Our balance sheet strength, ample liquidity, and disciplined capital allocation provide us with meaningful flexibility as operating conditions evolve. At this point, we will open up the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. The first question comes from Eric Wolf with Citi. You may go ahead.

Hey, thanks, and good morning. I think you said that April blends were modestly better than the first quarter, which it came in at, I think, around negative 1.4%. But you also said that April was generally in line with your expectations and what you had in guidance thus far. Could you maybe just talk about sort of the ramp that you expect for the rest of the year? I guess it would seem like based on your guidance that you expect a pretty big ramp. So I was just curious, you know, when you expect to see that and if you see any early signs of that increase in spreads based on your short-forward data.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's sort of frame it. Let's first talk about occupancy. So April occupancy is right around 95.4%. Now that compares to 95.1% in the first quarter. So that's a pretty considerable increase. And then when you look at blended rates, blended rates for us in April, and I'm certainly not giving interim data because I don't want our peers to smack me, but we are seeing blended rates up about 100 basis points in April as compared to what we saw in the first quarter. So all of that is in trend and absolutely positive if you look at how we're thinking this is going to lay out for the rest of the year what we're anticipating is is a is a pretty strong pretty strong third quarter and with the hope that at that point in time we've got enough of the new supply absorbed and then that leads into sort of an atypical better fourth quarter than what you would normally see because you've got supply coming down so dramatically so that's what's built into That's what's built into our number. I will tell you at this point in time, we are feeling pretty good about how April is shaking out. And we're certainly seeing several of our markets that I would classify as showing green shoots. Markets that are jumping out to me would be Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Nashville, Raleigh, and southeast Florida. And we think those are going to be the markets that are going to really lead us in this sort of return to normalcy as all this excess supply is absorbed.

The next question comes from Jamie Feldman with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Great. First, congratulations, everyone, on all the changes. Excited to see what comes next. I guess as we think about going back to those comments, can you talk about concessions? How have they been trending? And then as you think about the ramp you expect to see for the rest of the year, what's your expectations for concessions coming in and how that helps?

Yeah, I mean, as you know, we don't offer concessions. And so what we're doing is we have to look and see what's out there in the marketplace. And the good news is that we are seeing concessions come down fairly meaningful in most of our markets. And once again, that's really tied to supply. If you look at the vast majority of our markets, new supply is down 50% from its peak. And because of that, you're no longer in a situation where you've got a lot of developers that are trying to go from 0% occupied to 95% occupied and offering every single concession possible to get you there. So we are seeing concessions come down, as I said, pretty considerably in most of our markets. And really the easiest way and sort of the best comp that I have for that is the one asset that we've got in development, which is our village district community in Raleigh. And that particular community, remember that we always assume that you're going to give one month free in a new lease up, and that's to compensate for the fact that there's construction activity, et cetera, going on. And we are offering a concession there, but it's not much over that one month. And so what that really does tell you is that concessions are starting to get into check in our markets.

The next question comes from Austin Warschmidt with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, Lori, I think you indicated asking rates on renewal leases are going out in the mid 3% range. I think last quarter you were sending out around three to three and a half, you know, achieve closer to or just below, I think 3% was the number. Just curious kind of what the take rates been, you know, from the asking versus achieved. And if you think that starts to narrow a little bit as you get into the peak leasing season, it sounds like things have picked up a bit.

Yeah, so we, you know, we saw that, in the first quarter we were going out with the range in the mid threes and I think we reported that last quarter and what we saw is just a little bit of price sensitivity in the first few months of the year but we're now starting to see in our May, June, July lease renewals that are going out that we're able to get a little bit more of an increase in those numbers and with our renewals being so high we're feeling pretty good about kind of landing right around the same range of usually 50 bps on where people sign. And so as we have the opportunity to push in markets where we're getting a little more pricing power, we'll continue to do so. In the markets where there's more concessions and supply, we may not be able to get to those top line numbers that we're going out at, but we feel pretty good about the conversations we're having out there And just, you know, it has a lot to do with how well we take care of our residents and explaining to them, you know, the costs that are associated with moving and the product we provide and the service level we provide. Those conversations typically go pretty well. So we're feeling good. Our teams are very focused on explaining what the concession market is and how our net pricing equates to that. So I think, you know, we're feeling good about, as we said earlier, going out with the mid threes and a little higher if we get into our peak summer.

The next question comes from Steve Sokwa with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. I guess I wanted to ask maybe kind of a size portfolio question. Obviously, there's been some stories about industry consolidation, and I'm just wondering at your portfolio size, as you sort of think about the data you gather from your existing assets, Do you think that data would be better if you were two, three, four times bigger? And, you know, how are you using other data sources to kind of think about pricing today?

Yeah, so the first thing I'll tell you is we try not to comment on rumors about mergers and acquisitions that are out there. So that's point number one. Point number two, We're very fortunate and the investor community is very fortunate that leadership at all these companies are really good. And so whatever decision other companies make, we've got to believe is right for them. For us, the way we sort of think about this is that bigger is not better. Better is better. And if you look at a long-term trends, there's absolutely no correlation between the size of the company and total shareholder return. So that's the big picture way of looking at it. And then when you look at data, Here's what I'll tell you. With the scale we have, we've got enough information, we've got enough data to make the appropriate decisions across every aspect of our business. And I do not think that if we were in a situation where all of a sudden we were two or three times the size we are, that we would see any type of significant increase in our ability to collect data, analyze data, and utilize data. I think we are, this is a world where We've got perfect clarity into all of our information, and remember that we're a pretty good-sized company, and we've got a lot of units that we can look at, and we can see how those units are behaving, and we can see how our consumers are behaving. And so I'm not really sure that there's any real significant improvements on the data side to come from being considerably bigger.

The next question comes from Yana Gallin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Maybe a question on acquisitions as you prepare to deploy the disposition proceeds. Can you talk about, you know, cap rates in the Sunbelt markets, how you typically underwrite year one rent growth, and if you're seeing more opportunity in, you know, kind of core product, or are you looking at maybe unstabilized or lease-ups?

Sorry, could you repeat your question? You kind of cut out in the middle, and I missed a few, the first part of your question.

Sure. Sorry about that. So just on acquisitions, curious how you, you know, what cap rates you're seeing out there, how you think about underwriting year one rent growth. And in terms of what's out there, is it kind of more opportunity in core assets or in unstabilized or lease up assets?

Sure. So obviously, transaction volumes are still clearly below sort of pre-COVID levels. but today are trending in line with where we were in 2025. And we are, you know, evaluating a number of opportunities as we look to redeploy the proceeds from our California transaction. Not seeing a lot in terms of lease up acquisition opportunities this year. those types of opportunities. I think sellers who have properties in lease up are really trying to get them to a point of stabilization before they go to the market to create as much liquidity for that asset as they possibly can. And that's, you know, and then from a pricing standpoint, cap rates have really been stable over probably the last 18 months. And I'll tell you that the trades for newer, well-located businesses properties in the Sun Belt, those cap rates are in the 4.5% to 5% range and have been for some time. And that's certainly what we're seeing.

Pardon me. The next question comes from Rich Anderson with Cantor Fixed Gerald. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning and congrats to everyone for all the moves. Very exciting. So my question is on sort of the cadence of the quote-unquote recovery from here. I think, you know, if we were sitting here at this time last year, we probably would have thought by now we would be seeing more in the way of, you know, real, you know, CPI plus lease type growth, and particularly out of the new lease category. It seems like that that got delayed a year, given the tail of supply. But I'm curious if you could comment about what you think the cadence of the growth recovery will be you know as we get into 2027 is it more of like a hockey stick like we saw in 2022 I would hope not or more of a gradual improvement based on whatever you know forces are at work as as supply burns off I'm just curious how you envision you know sort of the cadence from from that third quarter strength that you talked about and onward thanks

Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I'll tell you is if you go back and you look at 2025, if you remember, we had a little bit of a head fake because in 2025, April looked fantastic. And then all of a sudden, things just stopped pretty quickly. And a lot of that was tied to the factors that we know, Liberation Day, et cetera. If you look at what we are assuming, we are assuming that this recovery could look a lot like what we saw coming out of the GFC. And if you look at What we saw coming out of the GFC, we saw several years of just really, really considerable growth. You look at 2011, I think our NOI was up about 7%. 2012, it was up 9%. 2013, it was up 6%. So you could see something similar to that. Now, if you look at the cadence, we certainly are, and I know you said you hope it's not a hockey stick. We are anticipating sort of a hockey stick in the latter part of 2026 as we as we get through this absorption. Then when you get into 2027, at that point in time, clearly not going to give any guidance, but I would anticipate if you just look back at what we saw coming out of the GFC, then it becomes a steady but strong growth on a go-forward basis.

So, Rich, I would just add to that some numbers around the completions in Camden's markets. The cadence looks like In 2025, we had 200,000 completions. That drops to about 140, 150 this year. That drops to 135 in 2027 and down to 120 in 2028. And the thing that's important about that is it's very hard to change the trajectory of that completion number because if it's not already under construction, it's not coming by 2027.

The next question comes from Brad Heffern with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks, everybody. Congratulations on all the promotions. Glad to see the music is sticking around amid all the changes. Going back to the 1Q blend, you know, typically we see a jump sequentially in the first quarter. Your peers have generally reported that. Last year was 100 basis points higher or so in the first quarter. Sounds like that was already assumed in guidance, but I'm just wondering if you can talk through why you didn't expect or see that sort of normal seasonal pattern.

So the first thing is music's not going anywhere. We love our music, and I expect to see that to the point whenever I'm handing it over to somebody else, that music will continue. So if you think about the first quarter – what we were doing in the first quarter was making sure that we were setting ourselves up appropriately for the rest of the year. And we feel good about the way our first quarter, um, unfolded. It was in line with our expectations. It was in line with our guidance. Um, you know, it's interesting because there's obviously going to be a lot of comparison between, between the multifamilies. And we, we completely understand that, uh, we are all in different markets. If you look at the markets in which we overlap with our competitors, um, and in particular, one of our competitors, um, we outperformed in most of those markets. And so however you get there on the revenue side, our revenue results we feel really good about, and we feel that we're doing the right thing to set ourselves up for a successful second, third, and fourth quarter of this year. And when we look at our April results, our April results are doing very well, as we just talked about, and so we feel very good about how our trend is looking.

The next question comes from Hendel St. Juiced with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Congrats on the promotions, and thanks for taking the question. My question is on the buybacks capital deployment. As you said, you repurchased the $650 million that you outlined on prior calls. We have another couple hundred million or so capacity in the buyback. Can you talk about more kind of capital allocation from here, your level of interest in maybe more buybacks? Are they more dependent on incremental dispositions beyond the SoCal portfolio sale? Could you shift a bit of capital from maybe – acquisitions to more buyback. So some thoughts here on capital deployment, the options on the table, and then remind us the tax limitations regarding kind of 1031s. Thanks.

Sure. So between 2025 and 26, we bought back $693 million in advance of our California sale at an average price of $105 and change. That represents a 6.4% FFO yield. So that's been an excellent source and allocation of our capital. Like I said in my prepared remarks, we're going to continue to monitor our share price performance, but as of now for our transaction plan, we have no additional share repurchases in our 2026 guidance. And as far as taxable room, we have planned for $1 billion in acquisitions, which is about the amount we need to maximize the use of proceeds to offset any additional special distributions we would need to make.

But I will point out, just because we do not have any other share repurchases in our guidance, that does not mean that we will not do any additional share repurchases. We have plenty of capacity in our balance sheet, plenty of capacity with our leverage once the California transaction closes, that we can absolutely do more share repurchases. And so that is absolutely something that is up there for opportunities for us as we go forward.

The next question comes from John Kim with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. On the Southern California portfolio sale, I know you don't want to get into the details of it, but I wanted to ask about the rationale of selling to one buyer for the entire portfolio rather than splitting up the portfolio where you might have gotten better pricing. And given the amount of interest that you've gotten on this sale, why not more actively pursue acquisitions ahead of closing of it?

Yeah, we had a lot of interest and we had a lot of interest on both the portfolio side, individual asset side, and then sub portfolio sides. We believe at this point, what we have done with picking the one buyer that we have picked is we have limited our execution risk while maximizing proceeds. Now it is important to note that there were a lot of buyers clustered together And so we did make a choice going with a particular buyer because of the strength of that buyer. But to your point, whether we could have maximized proceeds by splitting it up, maybe we could have gotten a little bit more, but it would have introduced additional risk that we didn't think made sense to us. And then, as I did point out in prepared remarks, even though we have picked a buyer and we're still in the diligence process, the good news is, is that there were several buyers, and there are several buyers that are around. I think there are several buyers really hoping that our current buyer sort of falls out, but we don't think that's going to happen. And then when it comes to opportunities for more acquisitions, we are really active right now. Since the last couple of weeks, we've actually been awarded another $250 million worth of acquisitions, so that gets us up to pretty close to halfway towards our billion-dollar goal. there is a lot out there. And I will tell you right now, we are the prettiest buyer in the market. Everybody is coming to us. Everybody is showing us opportunities because they know that we have the capacity to close and they know that we are for real. And so I'm expecting that we're going to come out with a really, really great additional portfolio to enhance what we have today from this process. So feeling really good about the acquisition opportunities, feeling really good about the California process and how it's progressing.

The next question comes from Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning down there, and congrats all around, Alex, Lori, and Ben. I guess you guys will have to leave the Camden Company skits at those off-sites. So question for you about the demand and supply. You and a number of the other Sunbelt players have all commented that you know, certain markets are rebounding and showing strength. But overall, as you outlined, it's still going to be a tough market until later in the year. Is this a matter of there were a lot of projects from last year that just had slow lease ups? Is this stuff that leaked into this year? Or is it that you need faster jobs? Basically, what I'm asking is, is this a jobs issue? Or this is a supply issue? And if it's a supply, was this just projects that got delayed from last year or slower lease ups? Or just trying to better understand the dynamics here.

Alex, I'm going to hit the most important point first. Rick and Keith are not going to be let out of skits. I fully anticipate seeing them and seeing them dressed up on a continual basis. This is entirely a supply story. Demand in our markets are incredibly strong. As I laid out in the prepared remarks, you can look at domestic in-migration, you can look at job creation, you can look at corporate headquarter relocation. All of those favor our markets over the coast. This is merely a matter of absorbing the existing supply that's out there. And that is why we feel very good about how the latter part of 2026 should sort of end up because you will have that excess supply being absorbed. To a point that was made earlier, if you look at our markets, our market supply is down 50% over its peak. If you look at most of our markets and you just look at a year-over-year basis, you've got supply just on a year-over-year basis down anywhere between 20% to 60%. What that tells you is once that supply is absorbed, we are going to have very, very healthy revenue growth.

The next question comes from Adam Kramer with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Derek Metzler here with Adam Kramer. My question is about the difference in Class A versus Class B or affordable by comparison product and urban versus suburban product. And as supply comes down, and obviously it's mostly Class A, high-quality product supply that's coming down, how do you see the outlook for the class A versus class B and other products in your portfolio and across your markets performing over, you know, the next few quarters or years in the kind of better supply environment?

Yeah. So A's versus B's for us right now is pretty flat. Where we're seeing the delta is suburban versus urban. And if you look at on the revenue side, And you just look at last quarter, our urban assets actually were 70 basis points better than our suburban assets. Once again, and to the earlier question, this isn't entirely a supply story. If you look at our markets, apartment supply is falling fastest in urban areas. And because of that, that is where we're seeing the additional pricing power. And it's statistics like that that make us feel very good about our ability to get positive rent growth as we move through the year because we do know that once you get past the supply falling in the urban areas, it's going to fall in the suburban areas as well. We'll get it all absorbed, and that is what should lead to continued strength as we go throughout the year.

The next question comes from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. This is Amy. I'm with Michael. We wanted to touch on Houston where occupancy was down pretty materially year over year in the quarter. So wondering what the outlook is for that market and if you think that the recent higher gas prices could have any positive impact there.

For Houston, Houston's a really interesting market because if you look at all of the fundamentals in Houston, they are fantastic. When you actually look at the results though, they're not as great. And there are some really interesting data around the consumer sentiment that seems particular to Houston. Houston's consumer sentiment has fallen pretty dramatically in 26 as compared to 25. I think a lot of that is around just some of the effects of immigration, which does have a huge impact to Houston. And I think that that negative customer sentiment is having an impact in the way the Houston consumer spends their money. And obviously that's impacting rent. But if you get past the sentiment issue, and what we know about sentiment is humans are incredibly resilient and they have an ability to return to the positive really fast. And once they get past that sentiment issue, they're very strong. In Houston in particular, we've got a lot of job creation. We've got a lot of population growth. We know our consumer well. is doing really well. In fact, our rent-to-income in Houston is 16%. It's one of the lowest in our entire portfolio. So the consumer is there. The consumer has the ability to spend more money. Supply has come down pretty dramatically. Houston will get better. It's just a sentiment issue.

Let me add to that a little bit. When you think about consumers today, and Houston is a great example of that, and I echo Alex's issue about immigration because Immigration is a big issue, and it's definitely stressing a lot of folks out, especially since Houston is the most diverse city in America. We have a minority majority of Hispanic people that live here, and 25% of our population is foreign-born in Houston. But consumer in general is interesting. When you think about consumer sentiment generally across the country, it's not great. But if you look at Job growth, you look at wage growth, you look at consumer spending is good. So the consumer is kind of stressed about a lot of things. And the things that they're stressed about are, number one, inflation continues to be an issue. And when you think about inflation in housing, so in Houston, for example, housing prices have gone up 60% since the pandemic. In Houston, Texas, people go, well, it used to be affordable here. that's bothering consumers but if you'll get it nationwide it's the same issue housing costs are up apartment rents of course have been flat for 36 months but but housing prices continue to be up interest rates are up so all those things have kind of created this and this uncertainty by the way politically has created this uncertain this this tension in the consumer that the interesting part is the consumer is actually doing really well and so so the the feeling they have is bad The underlying consumer strength is good, but to Alex's point, that tension or that stress or that feeling of uncertainty and bad that the consumer has is making them slower to make or is causing them slower to make housing decisions and to move around, so you have less moving around than you would normally have. The other thing I think is really interesting is that when you look at what's happened to college students people who have graduated from college this year and last year is that there's been sort of a failure to launch for about 10 or 12% of those graduates. If you look at stats on people living at home that were not living at home before pre-COVID, we have about a 900,000 increase in 20 to 25-year-olds that are living at home or roommate today. So it's a really interesting kind of weird place, even though the world's good. From a consumer perspective, they're fairly uncertain.

The next question comes from Rich Hightower with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. I guess I want to combine two categories into one question for a second. So if I think about the earlier question about sort of the benefits of scale and data and how that informs revenue management. And then, of course, the fact that you and several of your peers have sort of put the real page lawsuit stuff in the rearview mirror at this point. And I know that revenue management around that topic has already sort of changed throughout the industry. But just maybe help us understand when you combine those two threads, what has changed about the way units get priced, how you use information how the marketplace, you know, the competitive marketplace uses information in a different way and, you know, has anything really changed fundamentally on the ground since then?

So, if you look at, we'll hit real pace first of all. All of that litigation, we did come to an agreement in terms, but it's not in the rearview mirror yet. We've got a little ways to go. And so, hopefully we can stop talking about that in the next couple of quarters completely. If you look at the way revenue management works, revenue management really does rely a lot on your existing data, on your existing units, the amount of tours you give, how long that particular unit has been on the market, the occupancy of your particular community. And so fundamentally, sure, there's been some changes in the way revenue management works. But we do not think that any of those changes will have any negative impact on us whatsoever. The other thing that's really important is if you look at the way we do it, is we have a full-time department called the Revenue Management Department that does nothing all day long but price our individual units. Revenue management, the software is a tool. It is a tool that our humans use. And so our humans are constantly going through repricing every single day, looking at recommendations, etc., One of the things that we used to say five, ten years ago was whenever we bought an existing community that was using Yieldstall or some other revenue management software but only just had it turned on without any additional human interaction, we used to say we loved to buy those because we knew we could come in and we could absolutely use our talents, use our resources, use our institutional knowledge and use our data and make it better, make it perform far better than than revenue management software on its own. So do not think there's going to be any delta, any differential here whatsoever. And the reality is that we've all been using a quote-unquote compliant software now for quite some time. And so feel good about the resources we have and feel good about the way we will price our real estate and do not expect to see any negative impact whatsoever.

Yeah, and I would just add that, you know, the benefit we have today is, the fact that there are new operating models. There are new tools. We have AI. We have a BI team that is continuing to work with our on-site teams and that revenue team to provide data via our dashboards and gain more insight that we've just never even had the ability to, you know, make in-the-moment real-time decisions about what's happening in the field. And so by the by the nature of how we've evolved as an organization and our revenue team who's been involved since the very beginning, they have such good insight into what's happening with all of our properties and getting the weekly, daily information that allows us now to even price better with that information and those tools. But as Alex shared, this has always been based on what we do internally with our clients Our strategy and our strategies change. And sometimes, you know, what's happening in a sub-market, what's happening in a local community is driven by some of the outside circumstances, but it's our on-site teams and the data we have about our occupancy and our traffic and our leasing velocity that dictates how we price and how we look at our renewals.

The next question comes from David Julian. with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to go back to the tax refund benefit. Do you think that's been a big driver of the April sequential improvement in blends? Just because up until this point, it doesn't sound like we were seeing the typical seasonal uplift we would usually expect. And how do you think about the duration of that benefit into future months?

It's really interesting when you look at the data. So you saw this large increase in tax refunds, and what happened was folks spent it on a couple of things. One of them, which is to quote somebody else here, somebody else that is really un-American, is that they used it to pay down debt. And so that's sort of a one-time benefit. And then they used it for a lot of discretionary spend. think going to restaurants, think retail shopping. So they're absolutely spending the money. I don't think that that's the driver of what you're seeing in the April uptick. I think the driver of what you're seeing in the April uptick is us hitting the typical leasing season and the continued absorption of supply. So I don't think that's the factor whatsoever, but I clearly do think it was a large component of our of our bad debt significant outperformance in the first quarter.

The final question comes from Alex Kim with Zellman and Associates. Please go ahead.

Hi, congrats to everyone for the respective moves, and thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask a little about the development environment today and some of the economics that you're seeing, particularly in relation to your capital allocation strategy. Where does development sit in relative to acquisitions and then, you know, potentially looking at share repurchases. And then, you know, just a bit more specifically on Ken and Baker, given that, you know, Denver seems to be a bit slower in the timeline for, you know, its recovery in revenue and in operating fundamentals. Thanks.

If you look at the best uses of our capital today, number one is share repurchases. Obviously, we're limited on how much we can buy back if we're using dispositions to fund that. Once you get past that, developments and acquisitions are sort of a toss-up. At one point, I would have said developments, absolutely. Three years ago, developments, absolutely better than acquisitions. Today, what we're seeing is that you can buy real estate at a discount to replacement cost almost everywhere. And so what that means is that acquisitions becomes an incremental better cost of capital if you're just looking at it excuse me, better use of capital if you're just looking at it from 10,000 feet. Then when you start to dial it back and you start to really dig into the numbers, there are certain environments and certain locations where developments make more sense. And so we certainly are continuing to do our developments. We'll talk about Baker in a second, but we do have other land sites that we control. At this point in time, we control three additional land sites that we have not purchased. Those three additional land sites we intend to buy this year, and those will be developments, and those will be developments that we believe are going to create pretty significant value for our shareholders. But keep in mind that we're talking about three development land sites versus buying a billion dollars of stabilized assets. So that should answer the question right there about what do we think is a better use on a broad stroke. When you look at Baker, Baker has been sitting there on our development pipeline for quite some time. And the reason why it's been sitting there and not started is at this point in time, the math isn't that great. And we are in no hurry to go start something that we do not believe is the right thing to do for our shareholders. So we'll continue to evaluate Baker. Baker is in the sort of central business district or central business area of Denver. As everybody knows, that area is really soft right now. So we need to see some improvements in that area. And if we see improvements in that area, we will start that development, and if we don't, we won't. We are committed to doing what is right for our shareholders and making sure that we use our capital to create the best investments.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rick Campo for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us today, and look forward to seeing all of you really soon. Hope everybody has a great weekend. Take care.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.