Douglas Emmett Inc Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Douglas Emmett's Quarterly Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, you will receive instructions for participating in the question and answer session. I will now turn the conference over to Stuart McElhenney, Vice President of Investor Relations for Douglas Emmett.

Thank you. Joining us today on the call are Jordan Kaplan, our Chairman and CEO, Kevin Crummey, our CIO, and Peter Seymour, our CFO. This call is being webcast live from our website and will be available for replay during the next 90 days. You can also find our earnings package at the Investor Relations section of our website. You can find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today's call in the earnings package. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to us. Our actual results will be affected by known and unknown risks, trends, uncertainties, and factors that are beyond our control or ability to predict. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance, and some will prove to be incorrect. Therefore, our actual future results can be expected to differ from our expectations, and those differences may be material. For a more detailed description of some potential risks, please refer to our SEC filings, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. When we reach the question and answer portion in consideration of others, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Jordan.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. We had a very active quarter and made real progress on all four of our strategic priorities, which are leasing up our office portfolio, acquiring properties at attractive pricing, redeveloping properties to maximize value, and refinancing upcoming debt maturities. We sign 960,000 square feet of office leases with a good mix of new and renewal deals, and achieve positive absorption of approximately 60,000 square feet. Healthy office rents and low concessions helped us sign new leases that were 3% more valuable than the expiring leases they replaced. Of course, most of the positive impact of this leasing will occur over the next 12 months. Our apartment portfolio remains fully leased with increasing rents. On the acquisition front, we and a few of our joint venture partners acquired an extremely well-leased block of prime Beverly Hills medical office properties. Our redevelopment efforts are exceeding expectations. Studio Plaza in Burbank is now leased well over 50%, so we have moved it from development to in-service. Our apartment redevelopment projects are on track to add over 1,000 new units. Finally, we were financed over $800 million of debt this quarter. So with that, I will turn the call over to Kevin.

Thanks, Jordan, and good morning. As Jordan mentioned, in April, we and our joint venture partners acquired the Bedford Collection, a five-building, 246,000-square-foot medical office portfolio in the Beverly Hills Golden Triangle for $260 million. dollars. We managed the joint venture and hold a 13.3 percent equity stake. The entity was capitalized with $150 million of equity and $130 million of debt. In addition, during the quarter, we refinanced two office loans scheduled to mature later this year. In May, we refinanced a $400 million loan for four years and effectively fixed the interest at 6.15 percent until June 2029. And in June, we refinanced a $415 million loan for four years and effectively fixed the interest at 6.18 percent until July 2029. With that, I will turn the call over to Stuart.

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. During the second quarter, we signed 234 office leases totaling just under 960,000 square feet, including 93 new leases totaling over 375,000 square feet and 141 renewal leases totaling over 584,000 square feet. That's a healthy leasing volume for us, and it builds on the momentum we've been seeing over the past few quarters. On rental rates, the straight-line value of leases we executed in the quarter increased by 3.2 percent compared to the prior leases for the same space, with our typical 3% to 5% annual fixed rent bumps continuing to more than offset the impact of lower beginning cash rents. As Jordan mentioned, we have now moved Studio Plaza to our in-service portfolio. Since the first generation leases at Studio Plaza take longer to build out, this will have the effect of widening our lease-to-occupied spread for the next few quarters. In addition, while the leased rate at Studio Plaza is now well over 50%, its inclusion will mean lower reported leased and occupied percentages for our office portfolio until occupancy at Studio Plaza equals or exceeds our average office occupancy. Our lease transaction costs average $5.35 per square foot per year, well below the benchmark for other office REITs. Our residential portfolio continues to perform well, with cash same property NOI up 2% compared to the second quarter of last year. Demand remains very strong across our markets, with our portfolio still over 99% leased. With that, I will turn the call over to Peter to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. Compared to the second quarter of 2025, revenue increased from $252 million to $257 million. FFO increased but still rounded to $0.37 per share, and AFFO increased from $54 million to $56 million. Same property cash NOI decreased 1.2% for the quarter. At approximately 4.9% of revenue, our G&A remains the lowest among our benchmark group. We are now including Studio Plaza in our occupancy assumption for the full year. Despite being leased well over 50%, its occupancy has not yet reached the average for our portfolio. Solely as the result of including Studio Plaza for the full year, we are lowering our office occupancy guidance range to between 75 and 77 percent. Our operating income expectations have improved from our prior projections, but we anticipate that this improvement will be more than offset by the impact of higher market interest rates. Therefore, we now expect our 2026 diluted net income per common share to be between negative 20 cents and negative 16 cents and our fully diluted FFO per share to be between $1.39 and $1.43. For information on assumptions underlying our guidance, please refer to the schedule in the earnings package. As usual, our guidance does not assume the impact of future property acquisitions or dispositions, common stock sales or repurchases, financings, property damage insurance recoveries, impairment charges, or other possible capital markets activities. I will now turn the call over to the operator so we can take your questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are 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 the question, please press star, then two. Again, in consideration of other participants, please limit your queries to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Steve Sackwa with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Maybe Jordan or Stuart, could you maybe just comment a little bit more on the leasing activity? You've obviously now had two pretty solid quarters on the new lease side. And I'm just curious if there's any sort of larger deals that may be influencing that trend. And, you know, kind of what is your expectation for new leasing volume moving into the back half of the year?

We can both answer that.

Yeah, look, I'll jump in. I'd say we've had three really good quarters, actually, if you go back. That's what I was going to say. Three pretty good quarters in a row. We're building on the momentum here, so we're excited about what's going on in the leasing. Another great quarter with 960,000 feet. I think the Q1, if you look at Q1 with the record new leasing we did last quarter, that was chunkier. As we talked a little bit about that last quarter with some larger deals, this quarter was less so. We had pretty typical activity from that larger group that we call over 10,000 feet this quarter, so not super chunky. And I think we're very optimistic that we're going to have good momentum continue through the second half of the year.

And I agree with all that. I'm very happy with what our leasing group is doing. And, you know, I hope that we're getting a little wind at our back and we're going to continue. And it feels that way. But, you know, like I keep saying, I don't know if the proof's in one quarter, two quarters, three quarters, four quarters, but when I look at what we've done, I feel very good.

Okay, and then maybe just on the debt, I know you've got a couple of, you know, swap maturities coming up over the next kind of 12 months or so. You know, just kind of remind us your plans for those swaps, and, you know, is there anything you can do to sort of help mitigate or offset some of that higher interest expense, or kind of it is what it is?

I don't want to say it is what it is. That's for sure. Look, we don't choose to live in a world where we have a lot floating, right? So when you see something go to floating, it's probably during the last bit of the term of that loan, which means we're going to refi that loan. We've started working on refining that loan, and it can get refied at the beginning of that time or later in that time. We have a window to do it. I don't think we're going to stay floating. I'm not thrilled with where interest rates are. But, you know, we were just talking about that. And, you know, I'm really trying to think of a good way to deal with those interest rates because the rest of the company, the rest of what's going on, is so good that I feel that the changes in the increased cost of interest, you know, we were low leverage. None of our buildings are jeopardized. None of the ownership is jeopardized. But it's really kind of clouding our performance, and it bothers me as much as it bothers you guys, and we're really thinking about solutions to that.

Okay, thanks. That's it for me. Thanks.

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

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I'm sitting in for Lane today. So, you know, interesting portfolio transaction in Beverly Hills. Can you just talk more about any other interesting opportunities you're working on or that might be out there, you know, whether unique asset types or larger portfolio transactions? And then, you know, with the transaction market improving and investor expectations, you know, and investors maybe get more aggressive, how have return requirements changed, both in terms of what you're willing to get and what your investors are looking for?

Well, I got to tell you, because it's funny, we're looking at, to me, we had a great quarter. I was surprised the stock was off, because we were talking about, I'm like, this is the best time to be in real estate. We're working on a bunch of acquisitions. I will tell you that. Will we make them? I don't know that, but there are definitely some large ones, and it's getting a ton of our focus. and you know we've gone through very long periods where we've been accused of some early on after 2009 we only buy we don't develop then as we got later in the term we were only developing we never buy anything now we're back to buying which uh you know we are developing residential but i love buying deals at good pricing and i think the opportunity is extremely good right now this It's like a great time to be, other than interest rates are probably playing a part in the opportunity that's created. This is a great time to be in real estate because I believe in the markets. I believe in the real estate. And pricing has conspired in the way it hasn't since the early 90s to create opportunities to buy fantastic buildings. And we've been after forever. And we're super focused. It's what's driving most of my travel.

Okay. So I guess the second part of the question was just, you know, return expectations. You know, how are years changing given maybe markets are improving? And then how are your investors changing or what they're looking for changing?

Well, everybody's looking for better returns driven by where interest rates are and the lack of equity and debt that's generally available in the market, which is probably what's creating the opportunity. And at the same time, you know, it means we're not always in agreement with the seller. But we're obviously making deals. You're watching us do it. And we are making these deals in a good part, a very good part, with our JV partners who seem pretty happy with what's going on because they're continuing to ask what's next. So we have to get the what's next and get it organized and get it in front of them correctly, because there's definitely an appetite now, which you're seeing even for office in our markets.

Okay, thank you for that. And then I guess for my follow-up, it looks like there were some adjustments in the UCLA tenancy this quarter.

You have two more leases with them and one additional property, and some expirations were shifted. can you give us a general idea of how your conversations with them are going and how committed to their space in your portfolio they seem to be and then can you also comment on the 77,000 square foot Morgan Stanley expiration in 27 thank you sure yeah sure Jamie um so I think we're in good conversations with UCLA about the remaining expirations this year we feel good about that they they don't act like a single large tenant they have a bunch of leases with us uh and literally we've had it in in one quarter where they've given back space and leased space in the same quarter because they have a bunch of different departments departments that are kind of acting independently but we feel good about the space that's coming up uh same with morgan stanley next year i think there's productive conversations happening we're feeling good about the explorations uh that are next year for morgan stanley okay do you have a sense of when you might have an answer on morgan stanley like how early they tend to lock things in well generally we're not in the business of giving you guys details on individual tenants. I know they're on our big tenant list, so I understand why you're asking. I'll also mention that that's more than one lease with Morgan Stanley. That's not one large lease. They also have multiple leases with us, which is multiple leases in that 77,000 feet.

Okay. All right. Great. Thank you.

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

Hey, morning out there. Jordan, on your debt comment and where interest rates are, as you think about the company, clearly you guys run it on a pretty lowly levered overall perspective. But if you think about the individual asset financing that you do and the JV structures, Are you thinking that you and your partners would run the buildings with lower leverage? So, meaning as loans are maturing, you guys would either pay them off entirely or refinance them at lower LTVs. And that way, yeah, you can't do anything about interest rates, but you can do something about where the loan balances are. I'm just trying to think if you're thinking along those lines.

It's a little more complicated than that. But you're right. there might be ways, especially with the fact that we're buying at the same time and bringing in partners to reduce our exposure to the, you know, fluctuations in interest rate or into this higher level interest. We don't really have high level debt. I mean, you know, I think unlike many, many, many of my peers, especially ones that have non-recourse debt, we haven't been in a position of giving anything back. We have equity across the board. We're in good shape there. But obviously, interest has moved against us, and it's a cost that's hitting us now. I mean, it's funny because the great news is interest rates will go up and they'll go down. When they're dropping, it's going to be great because if you really look at our NOI, the way we've maintained our NOI and cash flow coming off the properties before interest, it's been outstanding. I mean, beyond outstanding and so as the properties lease up you're looking at a lot of NOI and a lot of income but interest obviously has been taking the cream off of that and then the question is do we want to do like some more permanent things and try and really just reduce our exposure to it or do we go hey it's a time it's a moment in time we're making acquisitions it's helping us get those done at great pricing and it won't always sit this way so we'll like take something it's Better than buying a building at a super high price, which you live with for the rest of your life, right? And so just thinking through all of that, I think it's really getting in the way of people realizing how well our markets and how well the company is doing operationally.

Okay. And then the second question is, you know, if you look at what's going on with Paramount and the state attorney general on that debate and whether, you know, maybe they do relocate or not, Is there any concern in L.A. that, you know, maybe the environment there isn't even as amenable to corporate Hollywood staying and maybe that that industry will start to morph to other markets? Or is the view that, no, this is just headline noise, nothing is going to change, and therefore all the Hollywood, you know, all the office users, you know, there's no disruption to that market? I'm just trying to think about how this plays out and obviously the saber rattling that's going on.

Well, I think the deal is going to close. I'll admit I'm at a little bit of a loss why our state government is against two California companies being here emerging. But putting that to the side, I think overall it's healthy for the people here. I think you've seen stuff from whether it be David or his father, they're pretty committed to California. You know, the talent is here. the directors are here uh you know they're frankly they're they have giant capital commitments to facilities here so i think it's been running at a low i you know now you're starting to see big movies come out you know i'm not sure what's going on there unfortunately or fortunately ever really impacts us a lot because the tenants we have are definitely living here like literally in our neighborhood and they're renting from us um because they're living here now when you talk about the studios we don't own any of that and so i want california to do well and i want you know all the industries to be able to be here but i'm not sure it impacts us that much though i do hope that the state gets out of the way and lets them merge because i think that the The new company is going to be produced even more, and I think they're going to lean into those big movies.

Thank you, Jordan.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from Rich Anderson with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Good morning out there. So on Studio Plaza moving into the operating portfolio, besides it making the marquee of your occupancy guidance now going forward, what was the impact from that on guidance, if anything? Is there a cap interest burn off as a result?

Like what, besides higher interest expense that you point out, what role did Studio Plaza play in the guidance, if any? so if studio plaza had debt it would have been included already but it doesn't have any debt so start with that and most of the stats for studio plaza have been included forever it's only the leasing or maybe some type of same store stats that you know so i mean you know we we really said it i mean the impact is on leasing i mean you you you know it had it had a slightly negative impact on leasing simply because it's obviously not leased as well as the rest of the portfolio but it's it's been extremely well leased and what i think has been a pretty good we redid the building and have leased it up to this point uh in what i think has been a pretty rapid fashion and it's moving along the clip we were asked to include it people who don't like it being on the outside so we included it yeah i think that you know part of the operational improvement we mentioned is seeing is offsetting some of the interest is include studio plaza it's going well there and and that's part of that okay um outside of studio plaza you know redev being you know among your four priorities you know you were once upon a time making 30 on your money

on, you know, sort of repositioning activities around the portfolio. Can you talk about and provide some color about that business, again, outside of Studio Plaza, you know, where it's happening, if you can provide that and what types of returns you're seeing today?

Sure. I think we, I don't know, 30% or whatever percent, but we have done a very good job over time. You know there's a market where they don't really let you build new office buildings, and it's extremely difficult to build apartment buildings. Now, we're talking about repositioning, not new. We're doing a lot, putting a lot of capital into building new apartments. But in terms of repositioning, there's repositioning being done on our resi portfolio. and and there's also always repositioning or or work done if we're always doing a certain number of lobbies we're always doing a certain number of elevators because we want all our buildings to stay at the top of the market I mean in terms of perception like a top 10 20 percent of the market and there's a huge ranking process for that and so we're constantly doing work I mean if If you follow the portfolio for a while, things that people don't even expect, like 12, 4, 2, 4, you know, it's got a whole new skin now, right? We redid the lobby at 100 Wilshire, which was, I mean, all these buildings were getting great rents before, too, by the way. But it keeps the building at the top of the market, and you get even more out of it because, you know, it takes what's at our bottom and moves it back up. And so we've been spending that capital for probably mine and Ken's whole career, although I will admit we amped it up over the last five, six, seven years, something in that range. And it has paid very good dividends for us to push up into that top, like I keep saying, 20% range.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Our next question comes from Upul Rana with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Great. Jordan, you talked about, you know, solid leasing activity over the past three quarters. You know, could you comment on where some of that tenant demand has changed the most over the past few quarters? Any industries that may have surprised you or either positively or negatively?

Surprise would not be the word. Now, I am happy that the larger tenants have come back, and they came back probably even a little more than three quarters ago, but you've really seen it reflected in our numbers. The small tenants were always kind of rolling along at a good clip, but it was still back, like when a large guy doesn't renew, it takes many small tenants to fill in the space. And so now that we're getting like a good dose of large guys and small guys, we're not being left with such kind of visible holes that we have to plug. But so I won't say I'm surprised because, as I've said many times, I've leaked in the market, but I'm really happy that that's moving along much better now than it certainly did doing COVID. And then it kind of had another little drag and started recovering. Then it had a little drag down when the Fed came out and said, okay, inflation is real and we're going to start raising rates. And now, you know, it feels like we saw a 2020, late 24, early 25 bottom, and it feels like we're on a good clip right now. You want to say something? Go ahead.

Yeah, just on the industries, Upal, if you look at our pie chart of our industries, you know, those top six categories that are probably largest have all had very good demand. It's remain very diverse across those industries, legal, financial services, real estate, still all good and active. And entertainment has been very strong, despite, you know, the headlines, we've been doing good entertainment leasing as well.

Yeah, I got to say, we keep getting asked about entertainment, I guess, vis-a-vis studios, but we're actually doing a lot of leasing to entertainment. I mean, you know, that was the solid tailwind between where Studio Plus is today. But, I mean, I realize that probably they're not using as much studio space.

That was helpful. And then, you know, you mentioned the benefit from this quarter's leasing won't be realized until the next 12 months. You know, you're leased, but now occupied a spread is now almost sitting at 500 base points. So, you know, maybe you can quantify how much of the analyzed NOI is embedded in these leases and, you know, have this already been signed. But, you know, are you just like, I'm just kind of curious, how should we think about this as we roll into 2027?

I don't, but maybe Peter has some kind of idea.

You know, look, you've got a sense of our average lease rate, and you know how much space it is. And if it moves in over the course of 12 months, you can kind of do that math. It's a very meaningful number. And, you know, we're very pleased with that trajectory and, you know, expect to continue to add that as, you know, as we continue to maintain high leasing volume over the next few quarters.

I have to say, I saw that 450 basis point spread or over 470. 470, yeah. And, I mean, you can't get better news than that. I will tell you, when that spreads wide, we're leasing a lot. And when that spread narrows to below 200, you go, well, there's not a lot of leasing going on because fast and aggressive leasing creates the spread. And so almost more than the fact that we're reporting very meaningful positive absorption is that spread gapping out that wide, which might be one of the widest I've ever seen, is an extremely good sign.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Dylan Pruszynski with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe, Jordan, just going back to your comments around the team being sort of active on working on a number of acquisitions, have you sort of seen pricing change at all in the last, call it, six to nine months? And I guess as you guys are sort of underwriting opportunities, are you able to share sort of the yield on cost you guys are sort of targeting?

So, able to get deals done now, I mean, pricing is down from, we'll call, whatever, 2017, 18, 19, okay, and probably even 20, 21, 22. So, pricing is down from that. And it's one, I'll say, I mean, in my life of, this is my 40th year, I've only seen guys guys selling buildings for less than they bought it for twice and one was in the early 90s and this is the second time so that by itself if you stand back you go this incredible opportunity now separately what's creating more of an opportunity is the fact that it's kind of wherever the beating's been long enough rates have been high for long enough whatever you want to call it they're starting to be a meeting but you know we're we're getting some people to trade at numbers that work for us our investor and them and they're like fine I'm out okay and that is the biggest thing right because we lived through that 2008 9 10 it was hard to buy stuff because rates were very low and people were just weren't willing to meet let's say the pricing that a bunch of you know grave dancers were sitting around and expecting in terms of equity yields. So not a lot buildings traded. No, what traded was debt pieces. Now, I actually think some really high quality real estate is going to trade. You're actually seeing it happen because we're doing it. We've already done two deals. And so I'm thinking this is a very good opportunity because separate from like getting someone to do something kind of out of whack with what the market is doing there's a real meeting at a good price point a good cost per foot and with a good yield and so i go okay that's everything good so don't waste this and we're out working to make sure we don't and and when you say good deal are you able to sort of share what you guys are sort of underwriting to at all well i think are all cash IRRs on a 10-year look are probably coming in 10% or better. We haven't seen that for a long time. I mean, the amount they use in all the rest of it has a big impact. So the real yields are obviously different.

That's helpful, Jordan. And maybe just one last one. Any update at all on sort of some of the insurance stuff going on at Berington Baza?

I don't have an update you guys would care about. There's an awful lot of paper moving, I can tell you that. I mean, everyone's asking for more and more and more and more. It's getting a lot of tension now. Great. Thank you.

Thanks.

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

Just given the opportunities you're seeing in office on the acquisition side, are you putting some of the residential developments, 8,000 to 10,000 units, sort of on the back burner for now? And in particular, I wanted to ask about 10900 Wilshire, which is one of the redevelopment projects. I think you said last quarter that was going to start this year. And I'm not sure that's still in the works. Wanted to get an update on that redevelopment as well.

I still think it's possible for it to start this year. I'll tell you, honestly, we purposely slowed it down because we've gotten some indications that there's some real interest from some large – Look, one way or another, that thing will have residential, okay? But I don't want to walk away from an opportunity to have a mixed-use project and the office can be more profitable, especially if some big tenants say, I'm going to take this for a while. So I don't want – so, you know, we need to give a little time, let it mature. So I said, slow it down. Let's just make sure we're not, like, doing something that we lose our ability to accommodate some larger leases that could be in there, and then we would have resi and large leases. You know, people a lot of times – we saw this in Hawaii that as people start seeing what we're going to do and the amenities are like, well, I don't mind having my office building in that because look at these crazy amenities, whether it be gym and a club on the top and a pool and whatnot. So we have to let that play out a little bit. It's not that we're not ready. All the money is funded. Everything's good to go on it. We just want to watch a little bit for a while. That's why we kind of slow down our language on it.

And given the opportunities you're seeing for investments and banks no longer redlining office as an asset class, have you thought about reestablishing a credit facility? I realize you have $355 million of cash on the balance sheet, but just to give you some additional flexibility.

I have. I do think about that. But I'm going to tell you something. Every time I think about doing that, and so, you know, we have a lot of buildings that don't even have loans on them, right? So I always have to compare borrowing cash on a credit line to just borrowing the money and then, like, arbitraging it into an interest-faring account until I need it and looking at that cost. And for better, or probably it's worse, but whatever, that calculation does not tell you to have a credit line. That calculation just says borrow the money and arbit it into an interest-sparing account because it's a lower cost. banks and people that are lending are still charging a lot for unused fees and a lot of fees around that because they really want their, you know, they want to have outstandings. And just click it off. Sorry about that. Sorry. Well, that was actually my phone, and I forgot to turn it off for this call. Just do it whenever I took it from Ken and shut it off. Okay, so it's just a calculation. And if we wanted more capital, we would be better off just borrowing it at the moment because of where the credit line market is.

I got it. Okay, thank you.

Our next question comes from Seth Berge with Citi. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks for taking my question, and good morning out there. I guess just going back to some of the acquisitions commentary, you mentioned it's a good time to be in real estate, and your last acquisition was kind of outpatient medical. Are we thinking about that all as office, or is there anything interesting in residential or other asset classes that you're focused on? And then just on the office piece, how many high-quality buildings are kind of out there that cater to those smaller tenants, similar to how your office portfolio is currently constructed?

I think there's going to be meaningfully sized real opportunities coming up, or they're coming up right now. And I want to have that. So, first of all, okay, we've been looking for office. I always loved medical office. and that medical office came up, and we did it, okay? We also did a large office building, which had an opportunity to be both resi and office. Actually, plan A was office, and then we said we'll flip to resi because we had them both built into our analysis. There are some fully leased office buildings that we're really chasing hard, and it's a sizable, they're sizable. It's us JV partners, real money. I would not say you should expect us to buy – apartments are still trading relative to the rest of the real estate in the world at very low cap rates at pretty good pricing. Now, there's a lot of new stuff trading because they might have financed it with construction loans that were relying on very low cap rates. that now they can't get out of their construction debt, so it's selling. But in terms of, like, making their hurdles, in terms of, like, rental rate, oh, you see it in our portfolio. I mean, the reds have gone kind of where and better, where people thought they'd go. And in general, things are extremely well leased up. So those are the value of debt. You just look at the deal like we would buy because we don't use a lot of debt. You'd go, well, the pricing is not necessarily that denuded. compare it to what it was even in 2019, 18, 20, whatever. So I just don't feel acquisition. It's as good an opportunity. Office, like I said, I think a guy that bought an office building in 17, 18, 19, he's selling it today, if he does, for less. He's gotten used to the fact of where rates are, where yields are, and therefore I go, great deal. But we're not seeing that in apartments.

And then just a quick follow-up on some of your return comments. Does that include kind of the economics of doing that in the JV structure?

No. That was a simple question, a simple answer. Do you have anything else?

The next question comes from Jana Gallen with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe following up on the apartments and your multifamily portfolio specifically, Can you talk to, you know, rent growth expectations for the second half of the year, given your high occupancies?

So I don't know if you remember, but if you go back and rents and our revenue was moving at a clip that I said every quarter, this is unsustainable. We've never seen anything like this. It's unsustainable. The long-term trend has been significantly less than what you saw the last couple of years. I would expect to go to the long-term trend. And that trend is a trend that you can calculate a hundred different ways going all the way back to, like, the 1990s in terms of growth of apartment rents. And I don't know why we would be so dramatically off track. Well, I do know why, but we've been very off track in terms of growth the last couple of years, which has been much higher than normal. And I would always expect it to go to normal.

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jordan Kaplan for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

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