Invitation Homes - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered resilient fundamentals: total revenues $674.5M (+4.4% YoY), GAAP diluted EPS $0.27 (+16.5% YoY), Core FFO per share $0.48 (+3.5% YoY), AFFO per share $0.42 (+4.0% YoY). Same-store NOI rose 3.7% on 2.5% same-store core revenue growth and flat same-store core OpEx, with average occupancy at 97.2%.
• Versus Wall Street: revenue beat S&P Global consensus ($664.4M*) and EBITDA was roughly in line ($369.2M* vs $367.9M actual); EPS comparability is limited for REITs that are fundamentally judged on FFO (S&P Primary EPS consensus $0.177* vs GAAP diluted $0.27).
• Guidance reaffirmed: FY 2025 midpoints unchanged—Core FFO $1.91, AFFO $1.61, SS NOI growth 2.0%; management flagged incremental insurance savings (~3.5% YoY reduction implied by renewal) not yet reflected in OpEx guidance.
• Balance sheet catalysts: S&P affirmed BBB and raised outlook to Positive; term loan repriced to SOFR +85 bps (-40 bps), extending maturity to April 2030; net debt/TTM Adjusted EBITDAre 5.3x with ~$1.36B liquidity.
• Operations heading into peak season: renewal rent growth 5.2%, new lease rate growth turned positive through March (1.3%) and preliminary April (2.7%), occupancy slightly ahead of plan; management remains cautious on summer seasonality and pockets of supply in Phoenix/Texas/Central Florida.

Note: *Values retrieved from S&P Global.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Same-store NOI +3.7% YoY on 2.5% core revenue growth and flat same-store core OpEx, evidencing operating discipline and scale efficiencies.
• Bad debt improved to 0.7% of gross rental revenue (best post-pandemic), while turnover fell to 5.0% and occupancy was a healthy 97.2%.
• Rate momentum: “new lease rate growth has accelerated each month of 2025… March 1.3% and preliminary April 2.7%,” with solid renewal growth (5.2%); management reiterated FY25 guidance.
  Quote: “New lease rate growth has accelerated each month of 2025 so far… preliminary April new lease rate growth at 2.7%” — Dallas Tanner, CEO.

What Went Wrong

• New lease rent growth was slightly negative (-0.1%) in Q1 given supply pockets; blended remained 3.6% and renewal strong, but supply in Phoenix/Texas/Florida remains a watch item.
• Operating overhead rose YoY: property management expense $36.7M (+17.6% YoY) and G&A $29.5M (+25.9% YoY), partly tied to scaling third-party management and share-based comp changes.
• Management maintained a cautious tone for summer (expecting occupancy moderation and longer days to re-resident to optimize rate) despite a strong start, reflecting measured guidance posture.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Scott McLaughlin, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Scott McLaughlin (SVP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. I'm joined today from Invitation Homes with Dallas Tanner, our Chief Executive Officer, Charles Young, our President, Jon Olsen, our Chief Financial Officer, and Scott Eisen, our Chief Investment Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions from our covering sell-side analysts. During today's call, we may reference our Q1 2025 Earnings Release and Supplemental Information. We issued this document yesterday afternoon after the market closed, and it is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.invh.com. Certain statements we make during this call may include forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of our business, financial results, liquidity and capital resources, and other non-historical statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated.

We describe some of these risks and uncertainties in our 2024 annual report on Form 10-K and other filings we make with the SEC from time to time. Except to the extent otherwise required by law, we do not update forward-looking statements and expressly disclaim any obligation to do so. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures during the call. You can find additional information regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures in yesterday's earnings release. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dallas Tanner. Please begin, Dallas.

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to share another quarter of solid performance, further demonstrating the resilience of the single-family rental market and the strength of our operating platform, as well as the dedication of our associates and the trust our residents place in us every day. During the Q1, our same-store portfolio delivered 97.2% average occupancy, 3.6% blended rent growth, and 3.7% year-over-year increase in NOI. Core FFO per share grew 3.5% year-over-year, and AFFO per share grew 4%. These metrics underscore our ability to achieve solid rent growth, sector-leading occupancy, and strong financial performance, even in a volatile environment. I am grateful to our team for the terrific start to the year. The demand for single-family homes is driven by several factors. We've often discussed the favorable demographics, the shift towards value and convenience and flexibility over long-term commitments, and the high cost of homeownership.

On average, in our markets, it's currently over $1,000 per month less expensive to lease a home than it is to own. Whether that's due to elevated mortgage rates or rising homeowners' insurance premiums and property taxes, we provide a valuable alternative to the 14 million individuals and families who choose the leasing lifestyle. Housing is a fundamental human need, and we believe there is a strong desire for well-located, high-quality, professionally serviced homes for lease. We've observed this to be true in many recent cycles, including in Houston during the energy crisis, across all of our markets during the pandemic, and in my previous business in Phoenix during the global financial crisis prior to co-founding Invitation Homes. In general, in periods of economic uncertainty, SFR occupancy has tended to remain steady, and rents have held flat or even increased slightly.

In short, we believe Invitation Homes can deliver stable, sticky, and growing property cash flows in both prosperous and challenging times. Consistent with our corporate DNA, we believe that capital recycling and prudent portfolio growth are essential parts of our overall strategy. Our approach of partnering with homebuilders to redeploy disposition proceeds into new, well-located homes has shown to be both effective and accretive. During the quarter, we acquired 577 wholly owned homes for approximately $194 million, nearly all of which were newly built, while strategically disposing of 454 homes, many to first-time homeowners. Additionally, we're helping our partners develop nearly 2,000 additional homes in many of our West Coast and Sunbelt markets. This provides us with a reliable pipeline of future growth opportunities, with virtually none of the risks of on-balance sheet development, which we believe is an advantage in the current environment.

In addition to new BTR communities and scattered site development, we continue to evaluate stabilized portfolio acquisitions and are exploring several opportunities that we hope to be able to discuss later this year. As always, we remain dedicated to maintaining a disciplined capital allocation strategy, consistently focusing on investments that meet our risk-adjusted return criteria. We continue to target a 6% average yield on cost that's supported by the significant economies of scale we and our partners enjoy. Our ability to de-risk larger communities and acquire brand-new scattered site homes, combined with the synergies we create through best-in-class operations, further support this objective. Looking ahead, we remain committed to our priorities with a measured outlook. We believe our consistent operating performance, execution of our strategic initiatives, and diversified acquisition pipeline form a robust foundation for sustainable growth.

Despite the occasional volatility and uncertainty in the financial markets, Invitation Homes is dedicated to focusing on long-term value and opportunities. With that, I've concluded my prepared remarks. Charles, over to you, please.

Charles Young (President)

Thanks. As Dallas mentioned, we posted a strong Q1, achieving 3.7% same-store NOI growth, driven by core revenue growth of 2.5%. Thanks to the hard work of our associates, our peak leasing season kicked solidly into gear with new lease rate growth that's accelerated each month since December. In addition, bad debt has continued to improve, underscoring both the strength of our customer and the defensive nature of housing generally. Other sources of property income, such as value-add services like smart home and bundled internet, continue to enhance our overall revenue performance while also providing desirable offerings to our residents. On the expense front, we maintained our disciplined approach to cost controls during the Q1. Same-store core operating expenses were flat year-over-year, in part due to our team's continued focus on leveraging operational efficiencies and scale advantages across our portfolio.

Additionally, we experienced milder weather in most of our markets during the Q1 versus the same time last year, which helped us achieve a 2% reduction in repair and maintenance expense year-over-year. Turnover expenses also contributed to our favorable overall expense result, decreasing 5.1% year-over-year in the Q1, driven by the large number of residents who opted to renew their leases with us. This positive trend in renewals was further supported by our same-store leasing performance year-over-year. During Q1, we posted a 5.2% increase in renewal rents, and new lease rents generally held steady. This resulted in blended rental rate growth of 3.6% for the quarter. In addition, average occupancy remained healthy at 97.2%, reflecting sustained demand for our homes. Our average length of stay is now 38.5 months, with a nearly 80% renewal rate during the Q1, which we believe validates our long-standing resident-centric approach.

Drilling in now to a few of our specific markets, our Western U.S. markets are experiencing strong occupancy and robust renewal and new lease rate growth, with the exception of Phoenix, which we've previously called out, along with Texas and Florida, where we continue to keep a close eye on some of the ongoing supply pressures. Nevertheless, we've seen some encouraging signs in these markets so far this year, with solid absorption and steady improvement, including a return last month to positive new lease rate growth. Meanwhile, the Midwest has been performing well, and our Southeast markets are achieving solid results that are in line with expectations. As we move further into peak leasing season, preliminary same-store results for the month of April reinforced the encouraging trends I just outlined. Blended rent growth was 4% in April, composed of 4.5% renewal rent growth and 2.7% new lease rent growth.

In addition, April occupancy remained very healthy at an average of 97.4%. These higher year-to-date occupancy levels are slightly ahead of our initial expectations, primarily due to lower-than-expected turnover. As Dallas mentioned earlier, it's common for SFR residents to stay put during times of uncertainty. We'll continue to monitor how this trend might affect our usual seasonality patterns, especially as we anticipate some moderation in occupancy this summer when move-outs typically peak. With all of this in mind, we believe we remain well-positioned to capture market rate growth. Looking ahead, we're optimistic about maintaining this positive trajectory. Our teams are well-prepared to capitalize on seasonal demand while maintaining our high standards for resident quality and service. I'll now turn the call over to you, Jon.

Jon Olsen (CFO)

Thanks, Charles. Today, I'll provide a review of our balance sheet and financial results for the Q1 of 2025, and then discuss some high-level thoughts on our guidance for the remainder of the year. I'll start with our balance sheet. As of March 31, our total available liquidity stood at nearly $1.4 billion, comprised of unrestricted cash on our balance sheet and undrawn capacity on our revolving credit facility. Our net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio was 5.3 times, and we have no debt reaching final maturity until 2027. As of quarter end, 87.5% of our debt was fixed rate or swapped to fixed rate, 83% of our debt was unsecured, and approximately 90% of our wholly owned properties were unencumbered. As we announced in last night's earnings release, Standard & Poor's recently reaffirmed our BBB flat credit rating while also upgrading our outlook from stable to positive.

We've been glad to see the rating agencies acknowledge the strength of our balance sheet over the past year, reflecting our steady progress. In addition, earlier this week, we closed a repricing amendment for our $725 million term loan that was originally scheduled to mature in June 2029. The amended term loan has a final maturity date in April 2030 and now bears interest based on the five-year pricing grid, which results in amended pricing of SOFR plus 85 basis points. Based on the new pricing grid, this amendment lowers our borrowing cost by 40 basis points compared to the original term line and further optimizes our debt maturity ladder. Turning now to our Q1 financial results, we delivered Core FFO of 48 cents per share, representing a solid 3.5% increase year-over-year. Similarly, AFFO grew 4% year-over-year to 42 cents per share.

Looking ahead, we are confident in our ability to navigate the macroeconomic landscape supported by our well-qualified and resilient customer base. We believe our business is both defensive and growth-oriented, which should benefit shareholders in times of uncertainty, thanks to the effective execution of our strategy, strong customer retention, and diligent expense management. That being the case, we are pleased to reaffirm our full-year 2025 guidance provided in late February. In closing, our business remains strong, supported by our solid balance sheet, stable operating performance, and thoughtful growth initiatives. Our well-structured capital position continues to provide the flexibility to pursue appropriate investment opportunities while maintaining our commitment to disciplined growth and steady value creation for our shareholders. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we're ready to begin the question and answer session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now begin our question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then one again. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. In the interest of time, we ask that participants limit themselves to one question and then re-queue by pressing star one to ask a follow-up question. One moment, please, while we pull your questions. Your first question comes from the line of Michael Goldsmith of UBS. Your line is open.

Michael Goldsmith (US REITs Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Seems like the renewal rate in the Q1 was 5.2%, and in April, it dipped to 4.5%. Just trying to understand what are the dynamics that would drive the renewal rate down sequentially and if there's any other factors that were weighing on that. Thanks.

Charles Young (President)

Yeah. Thanks for your question. This is Charles. We signaled this last quarter. This is kind of the typical kind of flow of renewals throughout the year. They're going to peak in Q1, which you saw really strong. There's usually and typically a little bit of moderation into the summer, and we're starting to see that a little bit as we go into Q2. It's not going to move much from here. Month by month, it's going to go up and down. We expect at the end of the year, it's going to come back up. This is exactly unfolding exactly as we expected. As you look at it combined with the new lease rate, blends have been going up every month since December. This is in line with what we thought.

As you go into the summer, you get a little higher turnover, and that's kind of natural of what you see on the renewal process.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Wolfe of Citigroup. Your line is open.

Eric Wolfe (Director and REIT Equity Analyst)

Thanks. Home builder commentary has been somewhat subdued thus far. I was just wondering if you could talk maybe about the new home builders that are approaching you now, given some of the weakness from the retail buyer, how much you could scale up the partnerships. Secondly, to what extent some of this weaker home builder commentary gets you worried about some of the shadow supply impact that maybe you saw last year. Thanks.

Scott Eisen (CIO)

Thanks, Eric. Hey, it's Scott Eisen. Yeah, look, our dialogue with the home builders continues to be strong. We've obviously really built out our relationships with them over the last two years. We continue to engage daily, weekly with the national and regional home builders. I'd say that in terms of our forward flow for the C of O, we continue to sift through lots of opportunities, and we selectively choose the forward purchase communities that make sense for us in our buy box locations and demographics. That flow continues, and I think we're pleased with what we see from the builders. I think there's probably been a little bit of an increase in the dialogue we've had with them on the end-of-month tapes. I think opportunistically, we're seeing some ability to buy some homes, two, three, five homes at a time at the end of month.

We're seeing some ability to execute there. I'd say, generally speaking, the dialogue is strong and continues to be strong.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Sakwa of Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Steve Sakwa (Senior Managing Director)

Yeah. Maybe just following up on that question. How are you thinking about your yield hurdles, just kind of with more volatility, bond market pricing? I guess is a 6% yield still adequate in today's environment, and do you have any ability to sort of push that up?

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Hi, Steve. Dallas. As Scott mentioned, look, we're—he used the word sifting. We're getting to see more deal flow. There's no doubt about that right now than maybe where we were a year ago. All things being equal, in terms of how we're underwriting yield on cost and what is our cost to capital to be able to lean in there, I would say it's sort of the following. We've been pretty active, as you know, disposing and culling assets that are sort of in the low fours on a run rate, cap rate basis, reinvesting at a six. I think Scott and I hope that sort of forward opportunities may get a little bit better. We're certainly seeing more volume, which typically would lead to a conversation around seeing better pricing. We can't obviously speak for each builder or what they're dealing with.

I think for Jon and I, as we sit around and think about our sources and uses and how we want to grow both on balance sheet and in our joint venture partnerships, we're trying to be as deliberate as we can around what is the highest and best use of our cost to capital at any given point. We've got somewhere around, call it a billion and a half of dry powder between our revolver and cash. We can dispose of more assets. We'd love to see the spreads get wider, to your point. I think development and development costs aren't necessarily coming in, right? It's more around finding stuff where a seller or a partner is willing to build at a margin that's just a bit more accretive than it was maybe a year or two below.

Look, to your point on the bond markets, and Jon can speak more on this later, it's been hard to sort of think about in the spot where long-term debt is, or as we think about how to sort of think about that as another source of capital over time. Right now, we're going to use as much of our disposition proceeds in cash and just keep kind of evolving out of older homes into newer product, both at the community level and also scattered.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jana Galan of Bank of America. Your line is open.

Jana Galan (Director)

Thank you. Good morning. Congratulations on the bad debt achieving a new post-pandemic low. I was curious, do you think you have further opportunity to bring it down, or is it better to be more cautious now in this macro environment?

Charles Young (President)

I appreciate the question. Yeah, we're proud of the work that the teams have done to bring bad debt in. It's been a good effort. It's also a reflection of the quality of our resident. We're off to a good start. We'll see how the summer goes. There's a macro backdrop that's out there. Right now, teams are executing. As we look across the markets, it's really kind of improvement across the board. Some of our historically low bad debt markets are getting back to their levels that we expected. The markets that we're keeping an eye on are Atlanta, Chicago, Southern California, a little bit of Carolinas, all improving. As we look at the court times and kind of that process, that's something we keep an eye on. We're cautiously optimistic that we're going in the right direction here.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Austin Wurschmidt of KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Austin Wurschmidt (Senior REIT Analyst of Equity Research)

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate all the detail on April leasing trends. I am just curious, if I recall correctly, around mid-May of last year, maybe into June, you had started to see some softening in trends. I am just wondering, when you look at your dashboards, the leading indicators, if there is anything that suggests the momentum you have seen year to date could be moderating into the peak leasing season or if the runway looks clear as far out as you are able to see. Thanks.

Charles Young (President)

Yeah. Look, the year's unfolding as we expected. Demand is still healthy. We're looking at all of our dials, as you talked about. New visitors to the website from Q4 to Q1 are up. Demand is still here. You see we're absorbing well. We're holding occupancy while getting new lease rate growth every month. The way this typically unfolds is that there'll be some continued acceleration as we look at the new lease side into the summer. We typically peak out somewhere around June-ish, plus minus, could go July, August. It varies each year. The most important thing is renewals are steady. Talked about it earlier. They're strong. You get a little bit of, like we just talked about, moderation in the summer, but they're going to stay where they are, if not slightly higher, and then accelerate at the end of the year.

You put that all together, we're seeing exactly what we want. Look, occupancy has held strong in Q1. That's going to come down a little bit. You get into move-out season, and we're trying to make sure that we're optimizing and capturing market rate on rent. We like the setup coming off of Q1, and we think we're here to capture all that we can going into the peak leasing season.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Haendel St. Juste of Mizuho Securities. Your line is open.

Haendel St. Juste (Managing Director and Senior REIT Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Understanding the importance of the renewal rates you were just talking about, I want to talk about turnover here for a moment. Turnover continues to come in really, really low. As a matter of fact, lower than last year, which was a really low year. Maybe you could talk a bit about what you sense as the drivers of this increasingly lower turnover, and then maybe some color around what's embedded in your guide for turnover this year. If this lower trend of turnover continues, could this be a source of upside to the SFR guide? Thanks.

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Thanks, Haendel, for the question. This is Dallas, and I'll ask Charles to add a little color here to my comments. I think you got to take a step back. I think as you think about the business, the industry, our company, what the SFR resident has sort of proved out over the last decade is that they're by nature a lot stickier than maybe what we see in some of the other subsectors, excluding MH. I mentioned in my prepared remarks, through both sort of famine and feast, excuse me, the customer has sort of been extremely sticky and has continued to show propensity to renew. That being said, Charles signaled this in the fall of last year. We've seen renewal rates as high as 80%, which we would not expect.

I want to emphasize that point that Charles just made in the previous question. We know that has to come in. Traditionally, pre-pandemic, we're sort of in the low to mid-70s in terms of how often we renew. Through the pandemic, it's sort of creeped up into the 70s and the high 70s. I would just also add there's this mortgage dynamic that's going on right now that's really interesting. If you just think about the setup with both how the company's performing, what the customer's likely feeling and seeing in the marketplace, our move-out to homeownership buying is as low as it's ever been on our surveys. That continues to sort of lend itself to this thesis that the customer is going to stay longer and longer.

What's been equally sort of supportive in both our backdrop and the setup as we go into summer, as Charles mentioned, is that this new lease acceleration is doing what we thought it would do going into summer. While we would expect to have less renewal, we certainly are renewing more earlier in the year than we underwrote originally, to your point, Haendel. We got to see how that plays out through summer. I do not want to set Charles up to be the good guy or the bad guy in terms of what every customer does with their decision-making through summer. We have seen, and Charles just alluded to it, we can see out 69 days, and it feels pretty good. Maybe I hand that to Charles to add a bit more perspective. Just the backdrop and the setup is really favorable right now.

Charles Young (President)

Yeah. Look, I think it's a combination of residents enjoying our product. They're staying longer. We're up to 38.5 months. We're providing value-add services that make it easy for them to stay with us. You have the macro backdrop, as Dallas talked about. It does vary market by market. Overall, it's a good start, Haendel. In Q1, turnover was slightly lower than we expected. That's why you're seeing some of the strong occupancy. We're going into the kind of move-out season, if you will, and there'll be some step up in that turnover. We're going to keep an eye on it. I'll let Jon speak to where we are on our guide. Right now, we feel like we're on track on turnover, maybe a little bit ahead of it.

We got some months left here to see how it plays out.

Jon Olsen (CFO)

Yeah. Haendel, it's Jon. It's a good question. As Charles noted, we're maybe slightly ahead of where we expected to be in terms of turnover. I would remind everyone that turnover combined with days to re-resident is really the driving force in terms of how those statistics flow through to occupancy. I think when we laid out our guidance, we sort of articulated our expectation that days to re-resident would be marginally higher this year than in the last few. That is primarily driven by longer days on market as we go out and try to optimize and capture the market rate that's available. I think it's too early in the year to really be able to say whether there is upside relative to the guide based on what we're seeing vis-à-vis turnover. As Dallas and Charles both said, we're really pleased with the Q1 results.

Our customer is sticky. The business is quite stable. We are looking forward to getting into the meat of peak season and seeing where we go from here.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Tricarico of Scotiabank. Your line is open. Daniel, perhaps your line is on mute. Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Feldman of Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Cooper Clark (VP of Equity Research)

Hello. This is Cooper Clark on for Jamie. Thanks for taking the question. Could you talk about the strong OpEx performance in 1Q and how much, if any, of the lower growth was timing related, and also what numbers might have come in lower versus what you assumed in guidance outside of the positive update on your insurance renewal?

Charles Young (President)

Hey, Cooper. This is Charles. Yeah, I think I mentioned on the call the reduction in R&M kind of quarter over quarter is really what drove the good performance on OpEx. This year, that cost to maintain overall, we've been tracking in the right direction. Quarter to quarter can really vary based on weather when it comes to R&M. We saw much more mild kind of early part of the year here than we did last year. That is the big driver. Overall, though, we are controlling what we control. Our teams are executing well. We have such a great platform when it comes to our scale and density, procurement, all that we do. That just shows up in how we do things. I would also say the execution on turns has been strong in addition to R&M. We're turning well in terms of time.

As you think about the turnover, we just talked a little bit about that being lower. That's another driver of why the R&M number is slightly lower.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of John Pawlowski of Green Street. Your line is open.

John Pawlowski (Managing Director)

Hey, thanks for the time. Jon, can you provide some color around the large increase year-over-year on share-based comp? I think it was up about 30%. Is this $40 million kind of plus or minus annual rate a reasonable assumption moving forward?

Jon Olsen (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks for the question, John. I think we made some changes to the way our share-based comp program works. We used to have sort of periodic performance-based plans that would run for a period of years and then get replaced. As we laid out in the proxy, we've moved away from that approach. Now we're going to have more performance-based grants annually rather than the lumpy every few-year OPP plan or outperformance plan. Happy to go into more detail on that offline. That's what's driving the difference.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Kramer of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

John Pawlowski (Managing Director)

Great. Good morning, guys. Thanks for the time. I just wanted to ask about the kind of state of build-to-rent competition here. I know you guys have talked about it in the past. I think you guys were pretty early on to kind of talk about the competitive pressure there for new BTR deliveries. Where are we today in that process? I think you guys had talked about kind of deliveries that would be down pretty significantly year-over-year in 2025. Is that kind of still the base case here? What are you seeing with regards to second-half of the year 2025 deliveries, maybe even into 2026 deliveries, just generally kind of the state of BTR competition?

Charles Young (President)

Yeah, this is Charles. Look, we signaled this last year that we saw some supply coming in middle of the year in Phoenix, Texas, and Central Florida. The good news is those deliveries are down. We are working through it. We are absorbing well. You can see it in our results. Those markets specifically, while behind some of the Western markets and the Midwest, as I talked about in my prepared remarks, they are turning positive on the new lease side. Occupancy is holding steady, if not increasing. We are working through it. I cannot tell you exactly how long it is going to take. We are keeping an eye on it. The good news is, as we are looking forward, we are not seeing a lot of new deliveries come on. It is down substantially, but we need to absorb in those markets.

The other markets, we can have more of a balance of supply and demand, maybe a slight uptick in terms of overall, given kind of what's going on with mortgage rates. The reality is they're acting as we would expect when you think about Atlanta and the Carolinas, Chicago, the California market, Seattle, Denver, in line with kind of a balanced supply and demand. Demand is still here for our product, as you can see from our turnover and all of our metrics. We expect that we're going to work through it in these markets. We'll keep an eye on it and keep you guys updated.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Brad Heffern of RBC. Your line is open.

Brad Heffern (Director)

Yeah. Thanks, everybody. On third-party management, you obviously got a lot over the finish line right when the program was launched, but it's been kind of quiet since mid-last year. Is there anything to read into that? What would you attribute the lull to? Are you continuing to have lots of conversations around the offering?

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Great question. This is Dallas. First, as we laid out last year, as we started to announce the program, we said that we were going to be really specific about who, when, what, which portfolios. It has to make sense. We do not want to create noise in our own business. We want to try to do things that are both accretive internally on how we can operate a more efficient business and also look for the right sort of portfolio overlap, etc. They have to be strategic partners. We are having a number of conversations. We always do. We have not seen anything yet that is truly fitting to that strategic bucket. I would say that, like I said last summer, we are fine if this stays at three clients, candidly. We would also be fine if it were 10 clients if it were the right portfolio.

Our goal is just to do things that make our business better, that create strategic value-add for the company. I think that this will be a continued industry that will evolve. I think our opportunity set will get wider over time.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Julien Blouin of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Julien Blouin (VP of Real Estate Global Investment Research)

Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. Could you sort of help us understand how we should think about the defensiveness of the SFR sector if the macro were to deteriorate? I mean, it tends to be relatively more resilient when we look at sort of recent instances. Does maybe even the large affordability gap versus homeownership make it that much more resilient than in the past, sort of becoming a trade-down option for some homeowner families that fall on hard times?

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

It's a great question. I think you sort of led with the answer, which is when you think about the customer base of who we have, it's a number of healthcare professionals, teachers, people that work across a variety of subsectors and industries. They're looking for three basic things that we see over and over in our data. They want space. They want access to a yard for their kids, for their pets, for their animals. They want proximity to good transportation corridors that make their commute times reasonable. They ultimately want access to grade schools and can be in a school district or proximity to school districts they might otherwise not be able to afford.

That, as the backdrop generally, regardless of the cycle, would tend to continue to promote this concept or idea that if I can have that quality of life, that quality of a leasing lifestyle at a fraction of the cost of ownership, there is a value opportunity there for our customers. Now, if the market starts to shift, to double-click on your question, you look at us relative to multifamily or some of the other sectors, on a rent per sq ft basis, we're far more affordable. On a quality of sort of space and the cost to move, or if they need to have somebody live with them, i.e., maybe a parent who's aging out, those are all additional value-adds to the leasing lifestyle. We have talked about this in the past. Our bucket of customers sort of fit into three buckets. One is out of need.

One is because they have a transitional event happening in their life. The third is they're preferential, and they want the leasing lifestyle versus maybe an ownership lifestyle. Look, I do think we're defensive. To Jon's prepared remarks earlier in the call, I think the value proposition of Invitation Homes is that while there can be uncertainty in the market, it can definitely act as a defensive opportunity. More or less, we're still going to see pretty significant opportunities for growth. Look, we sit in a really favorable backdrop both on the revenue and the defensive side, but also on the expense side. We have not talked about this, but we had fundamental headwinds with property tax and a number of these things as we had rapid home price appreciation.

Those are going to be continued tailwinds for us on the expense side as well. All things being equal, we can't see perfectly in the future. We have now had two or three sort of cycles that we've lived through where there's been economic uncertainty, and the company's been resilient through each of those cycles in its own way.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Rich Hightower of Barclays. Your line is open.

Rich Hightower (Managing Director of US REIT Research)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question here. I guess to continue a little bit of that same line of questioning, obviously, I guess the for-sale market for housing in this country is pretty much broken for a lot of reasons. I think that they've probably been articulated on these calls. Do you guys have—it's kind of a wonky question—do you have a sense of pent-up demand for people who really would prefer to own? They just can't afford the monthly payment because of mortgage rates. If that math ever changes, what's the risk to Invitation's current demand set, if you've ever thought about it that way?

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Oh, good question. We think about it that way all the time. Don't forget, we built this business in an incredibly low mortgage rate environment, 2%, 3%, 4% mortgages. We had 96%-97% occupancy through all those sort of chapters. Even in a low cost of ownership environment, it does not change the fact that there are 47 million households, at least in the U.S. That is sort of always a plus on our business. I think to your point around if mortgage rates were to go through the floor and that spurs homeownership activity, we view that as a positive. Our business is typically run between about, call it, 18%-27% of our customers moving out and clicking the box saying, "I'm moving out because I'm going to purchase a home." We view our company as a normal part of that housing continuum.

We're okay there. I think the retention and the renewals that Charles talked about earlier are probably more indicative of it being a little bit higher and elevated right now, which is net-net a positive. It is just a near-term positive. It is not anything that we would view as sort of ordinary course to be an 80% renewal business. I think if homeownership picks up, as I mentioned before, hugely positive for a couple of reasons for our business. One, it is a healthier market overall. We prefer that, candidly, where there is enough supply in the market and enough transaction volume where you get a better sense of values. Two, if home price appreciation starts to pick up, that is actually a proxy for where rents typically go. In our business, as the values of our assets increase, typically you will see that the rents are increasing as well.

SFR supply, obviously, sort of is indicative of what happens there. Today you're seeing more resale supply tick up in the marketplaces, more options for people, which we view as a good thing. I think the calculus is that right now people are wanting to sort of stand pat, hunker down, and bet on predictability versus anything.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jesse Lederman of Zelman & Associates. Your line is open.

Jesse Lederman (Associate Director of Equity Research)

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask a little bit on property management expense. Looks like it's been a little bit higher the last couple of quarters and on an apples-to-apples basis from 1Q 2024, it's up about 80 basis points. Apples-to-apples meaning you also had 3PM at that point as well. Can you maybe talk about what's driving the increase, if it's the wholly-owned portfolio or the third-party property management portfolio and any moving pieces there? Thanks.

Jon Olsen (CFO)

Hey, Jesse, it's Jon. That's a good question. I would remind you that we phased on, we onboarded our third-party management clients over the course of last year. If you're comparing Q1 2025 to Q1 2024, Q1 2024 was not reflective of the headcount addition, some of the technology investments we made in order to put ourselves in a position to service these new third-party management customers. That's really what the primary increase is related to.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Juan Sanabria (Managing Director)

Hi, good morning. Question on tariffs. Curious what you think may happen during the peak leasing season, the summer season with HVACs, and should we anticipate any increase in costs as a result of presumably higher replacement costs and what have you given proposed tariffs at this point?

Charles Young (President)

Yeah. Look, this is Charles. We're monitoring the situation closely. It's too early to tell kind of where and if it's going to flow through. You're asking the right question. There's a pause. We'll see where it all comes out. The reality is we're in a really great position given our scale, size, our procurement, our national programmatic partnerships that we have. We have dual partnerships when you talked about HVAC and appliances. We have kind of backup between a couple of options. This gives us some of the best pricing in the industry. That being said, we're going to have to watch how it flows through. HVAC and appliances are probably the area on the R&M side we'd pay attention to. You also need to talk about this is a small part of our overall kind of book. We're turning homes.

Labor is a bigger part of our cost structure, if you will. While there could be some impact, I think we're going to be mitigated by our scale and size and our programs and our partnerships. Ultimately, we're going to have to see how it flows through. We're not building ground-up homes here. We're not taking a bunch of materials. It becomes a smaller part of who we are and how we operate. We're going to keep an eye on it. It's a kind of fluid situation.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Tricarico of Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Daniel Tricarico (Associate Director and Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. You can hear me, right?

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Yep.

Daniel Tricarico (Associate Director and Research Analyst)

Dallas, last call you talked about finding ways to complement the core SFR business and to possibly enter new markets. It's only been two months, but curious if you have an update on the work being done on any of those initiatives.

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Oh, yeah. I think we mentioned, I mean, we're now operating in San Antonio, broader parts of Nashville. We've talked about some of the other markets that we'd love to get in over time. We're certainly looking. We're trying to ultimately, it's not just about how many markets we can be in. Obviously, when we take a step back and we talk with our board about strategy and what the company should look like 5 or 10 or 15 years from now, we want to have a great risk-adjusted basis where we've got conviction on the growth and the profile and the demographic of those markets. I think we'll continue to try to scale up in the markets we're in too. I think nobody should lose sight of that.

We'd love to get all of our markets to sizes like Phoenix and Atlanta and Miami where we have real scale and we continue to drive greater cost efficiencies both with our service platform and how Charles and Tim and the team drive down costs and also on the revenue front. It ultimately allows Scott and his team to underwrite better on new product and new construction and the conviction we have around rents and what they're doing. I expect us to continually add markets over the coming years, but look for us to sort of double down and double-click on these Sunbelt and Southeast markets where we know that they're going to have a propensity for better growth for longer.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Linda Tsai of Jefferies. Your line is open.

Linda Tsai (Senior Analyst of US REIT Team)

Yes. Hi. I think last quarter you said you expected FY25 occupancy to end at 96.5%. Just wondering if that's your current expectation still.

Charles Young (President)

Yeah. Good question. Probably in light of kind of the high occupancy we showed in Q1. That is typical of how the book kind of operates throughout a year. We are going into move-out season. This is the heavier kind of lease expiration part of the year. You will see turnover start to tick up slightly and occupancy come down. As Jon mentioned earlier in the call, we are trying to capture as much of the market rate that is out there. We may be staying on the market a little longer. Our budget has us going up on days to re-resident year-over-year because we are expecting that there is a little bit more supply than there has been during the COVID periods. We talked about specifically in a few of our markets, we are absorbing some of the supply that is there.

Again, we're absorbing well, but that's in our underwriting that we're going to see it come down. We'll see how it plays out through the rest of the year. You'll see it come down from here, Q2, Q3, and then towards the end of the year, typically it starts to come back up. Each year has its own cycle. We'll see how it plays.

Operator (participant)

Your last question comes from the line of Jade Rahmani of KBW. Your line is open.

Jason Sabshon (Assistant VP of Equity Research)

This is actually Jason Sabshon for Jade. Have you seen an increase in any move-outs due to lower mortgage rates and home builder incentives? Thanks.

Charles Young (President)

No, this is Charles. We really haven't. Our reason to move out for purchase is as low as we've really seen. It's in the mid-teens. Look, we know the home builders are buying down rate. I think they've been performing well based on that. In our book, we're not seeing a lot of move-out for purchase at this point. We're going to keep an eye on it.

Operator (participant)

This completes our question and answer session. And now, I'd like to turn the conference back over to Dallas Tanner for any closing remarks.

Dallas Tanner (CEO)

Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. A final word of thanks to all of our associates. What a great quarter. We look forward to seeing many of you next month at Nareit. Thanks. Take care.

Operator (participant)

The conference has concluded. You may now disconnect.