Equity Lifestyle Properties Inc (ELS) September 15, 2026 Conference Transcript

Good afternoon. Welcome to Bank of America's 2026 Global Real Estate Conference. I'm Yana Gallen, B of A's Residential REIT Analyst. We're pleased to have with us Equity Lifestyle CEO, Marguerite Nader, President and COO, Patrick Wade, CFO, Paul C.V. Marguerite, we'll start with a few opening remarks, and then we can jump into Q&A. Sure. Thank you very much, Shanna.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today. So at this conference, we've been focused on a couple of highlights that are in our investor presentation. One on page five, our performance update, which shows that we're tracking in line with our guidance for the quarter and for the year. And page four of our presentation shows our core NOI and normalized FFO, both significantly outpacing the REIT industry average. We think that's important to highlight and continue to show you that as it grows. And then page six of our presentation shows that ELS significantly outpaces the REIT industry in normalized FFO growth, dividend growth, and exposure to floating rate debt. So those are some of the key items that we're talking about and making sure that investors are focused on during this conference.

Great. Thank you. Let me be starting a very big picture um you know how do you view the long-term demand outlook for manufactured housing giving given the ongoing affordability affordability challenges and then also the demographic tailwinds for your portfolio yeah um we've been talking about the baby boomers since we went public in february of 1993. uh we're at the tail end uh next five years or so of the baby boomers, 10,000 of them turning 65 every day.

We get to question a lot about what comes after. What comes after is Gen X and the millennials. Just to put those in perspective, baby boomers are about 70 million, Gen X about 65 million, millennials are 75 million. So relatively consistent trend and millennials are going to start retiring in about 20 or 25 years. As we see these cohorts age into our core demographic, this early mid 60s, they tend to behave very similarly. And I like to put into context, not too long ago, we were talking about millennials, always wanting to be in a 24 hour city, not moving into suburbs, not buying single family homes. While the millennials are moving into the suburbs, they are buying single-family homes, you are seeing family formation, household formation. It's just that it was delayed a few years behind the cohorts that came before them. So we feel very good about the long-term demographic trends and the tailwinds with respect to our portfolio and particularly with respect to where our portfolio is located. Our high-quality locations, predominantly in the Sun Belt and coastal locations, highly correlated with retirement destinations. The value proposition that we have, the lifestyle that we offer at our properties is really unmatched in each one of the sub-markets where we do business. So I think if you look at the demographics and then the locations of our portfolio, we're very in the position to deliver results for decades to come.

Great. And then, you know, you touched on some of your operational updates. You can maybe talk a bit more about the trends across your MH and RV communities you saw this summer and kind of your visibility into fall. It looked like from the August update that both MH and annual RV are exceeding the the midpoint of guidance as far.

Yeah, so if we think about the rental revenue streams, MH rent and RV and Marina annual, they represent about 85 percent of our overall revenue And the core MH rent year-to-date through August is showing 5.8% growth. The RV and Marina annual is a 5% growth. Both of those on a year-to-date basis are slightly ahead of our guidance for the third quarter. Everything's performing in line with our expectations in the quarter.

Is there anything you can maybe share on the summer season for RV, Labor Day weekend drop-up, and kind of the outlook for the fall?

Yeah, just broadly, when we provided our guidance update in July, we adjusted our expectations for season transient based on the reservation pacing that we saw at that time, and the season has developed as expected. So, it's right in line with our expectations, no surprises from the seasonal transient business based on what we've seen.

And maybe just, you know, touching on, you know, the Canadian customer that kind of, you know, passed on some of the vacations in, you know, the snowbird season last year. just kind of thoughts around lapping that those comps and and maybe the the marketing and outreach effort to either that cohort or other groups sure sure since the end of the winter season kind of those that made their early bird reservations in this summer season we haven't seen a lot of activity and we didn't really expect a lot of activity the customers over the summer months aren't, they're not thinking yet about their reservations for the winter.

What we've seen in the past is that booking window for that seasonal customer is about 60 days in advance. During this time, we have been contacting our customers, our employees at the properties are reaching out to those that have visited the properties in the past, engaging with them. We have marketing campaigns that remind them of the memories that they made at the properties in past winter seasons. And anecdotally, the sentiment has been favorable. People remember the good times. They want to come back to Florida and enjoy the time with their friends in the warmth and in the sunshine of the winter.

Can I just ask a high-level question, thinking about, again, the demographics, the changing demographics? And I asked a question on the last call. I could have asked it better, but I was, you know, the intent of the question was that, you know, you have this, you know, tremendous expertise in managing, operating, leasing to the 55-year-old plus. you have this great brand within that community. How can you grow? Are there other avenues of growth outside of the age-restricted MH, or is that still the path? I think I add something around, because you kept mentioning the 55-plus expertise and all these articles around housing from the home builders, right, that 55 plus community, the demand is super strong. So I wasn't sure if there was, you know, something that you guys could lean into or do to leverage all that you've created for the last 30 years.

Right. Well, you know, when you think about like the single family rental portfolios, we've had a single family rental portfolio inside of our portfolio for 25, 30 years. So that already exists, and we do that, and you'll see us lean into that program sometimes, and sometimes we'll focus on the sales a little bit more. So that opportunity, I think, is inside of our portfolio at any given point in time. We have our occupancy level is 95 percent. We have an additional 5 percent that we have flexed to be able to increase that, quote, single family rental inside of our community. I think the other thing that you're seeing in the industry is the build to rent. We also effectively do that in that we put manufactured homes in our communities with, we will decide that we want to rent them and then convert them to an owner. So we essentially are building them, although we're not the builder, but we have those inside of our communities already. And I think the thing that that is important to note about our communities is what happens at the community. It's a home that a person has in the community, but it's about what happens. It's about all the social interactions. And that is really what we focus on. And we haven't been able to figure out how to duplicate that in another setting. Difficult to do that in the multifamily setting. When you go through the door, you close the door and you're in your apartment and you don't, you don't see other people in the way you do in our communities. It's really different, and it's a really unique kind of magic that we have that we haven't really been able to figure out a way to replicate.

Okay, so it'll stay within the MH. And while, you know, I think as a team, we kind of think of rentals for the all ages as a bit of a risk, the rentals with the 55 plus is strong.

Right. And the rentals on the 55 plus, you've seen us grow from, you know, sub 2%, 3% before the great financial crisis. Then we started to increase our rental pool. We got up to about 8% to 9%. And then we said, you know, we think we have an opportunity here where we can do more sales. So we did that and we drove the rentals down and now we're at 3%. That's just a nice thing to have for a rainy day. It's a nice thing to be able to flex that up and be able to take advantage of that as just another lever to increase occupancy. It's difficult to do if you hadn't made the cuts along the way because then you're going from a 9 up to a 15 plus. So I think we're in a really good position to be able to do that. Additionally, what we've seen during these times is our ability to convert a renter to an owner is really, really good because of our lifestyle. and people come to our properties. They like the ability to come in and try it for a year because that doesn't seem like a really big obstacle for them. They come in, they try it for a year. They still have their home up north. And then all of a sudden they realize this is pretty neat. And they will either buy the home they're in or maybe just buy the home across the street or down the street, but they want to be part of that community. So that conversion program has been really good for us and good for us to experience and see it and then be able to build off that as we go into the future.

How do the rents for SFR, if you will, compare to an MHC rent and compare to the cost of the home that they're in?

Sure. So maybe, Patrick, you could walk through just how we set rates because that's all part of it.

Yeah. As we go through our annual budgeting process. We have about 40 regional managers. They all meet with their general managers in the MH properties. They review the comp set, obviously focused on competitive manufactured housing, but we also look at trends in multifamily and in single family as well because it's indicative of the housing market in each one of our properties. We then review that. My team, the revenue management team and our FP&A team review the the recommendations from the property operations teams and we set rates for the upcoming year. The comparison to single-family rental it's not unusual for us to be renting when my reference is renting a home in one of our communities that's typically in the $1,500 to $1,700 a month range and if you look at single-family rental in the same sub markets it's not unusual for it to be double that.

So just one follow-up on the bill to rent. Again, I know your expertise is at 55 plus. A lot of the banks have come out with goals to spend on future development. Maybe that's more entry-level homes, I'm not sure. But I guess, has anything come out of that? That is something that Bells could lean into and do?

We've certainly looked at those opportunities. I think, again, it's about that community that we're not seeing in a lot of the build-to-rent communities. You're not seeing that clubhouse, the features that we have, and the things that are driving our customers to those properties. It's more about just a place to live, which is not what we have. That's not what we really offer. That's not what we focus on. And it's not what drives people back to the property. It's about that sense of community, and we don't really see that inside of the bill to rent currently.

So does it mean, though, that then you could push harder on the expansions? Like, I don't know how hard you're already pushing, but...

I think that, as you know, about 90% of our expansion opportunities are on the RV side. So to the extent we have opportunities on the MH side, we are pushing hard at those. And the great thing about those opportunities are we're able to expand sites and use our existing amenity footprint. So it is really cost efficient. The customers, the residents like it. You bring in new homes. It has a little bit of something new in the community. And to the extent that it makes sense, we may put a smaller amenity package depending on how large the expansion is. But we will definitely continue to lean into those expansion efforts. On the MH side, they've been very good to us over the years. We have a couple of slides in our presentation that highlight that.

Just on the back-end version, just more, maybe more broadly, could you elucidate your strategic priorities, what's taking up management time and attention, and overlay that with the fact that maybe, you know, compared to expectations, things are progressing in line maybe slightly better. How might execution on those priorities accelerate that trajectory, you know, not just this year, but kind of next year and beyond?

So in October, we generally release our increases, our rate increases for the year. And I think consistent with past practice, we will be doing that. So that will give you an insight into where we are for 27 for rates, both for RV annual and MH annual. And that's a really good marker, I would say, as to what that means for 27, for the rest of 27. I think you've seen us do a really good job of controlling expenses where we see anything, where we see some volatility in revenue. We are adjusting. We are operating really efficiently to be able to reduce expenses where we see any shortfalls in revenue. I think one of the main drivers as I look into 27, maybe Patrick can talk about it a little bit, is just the MH occupancy number and growing that number. It's our largest line item, and the ability to grow that number is very important.

Yeah, so year-to-date, our occupancy has increased 70 occupied sites, and we came off of the prior year with some hurricane impacts that are behind us. and we're rebuilding occupancy in those properties as well. As Marguerite touched on both home renter and home buyer demand, we see good demand on both fronts. And leaning into some rental, particularly when we're looking at expansion sites, we have an expansion that was recently completed in Florida. It's 200 sites. It's an expansion on a 900-site base. As Marguerite mentioned, there's an additional satellite amenity section in that expansion to help not only provide a level of service to the customers who've been with us a long time, but to drive traffic into the new expansion. I think about leasing up that section, we'll focus on both rentals and sales. It wouldn't be unusual for us to have something like 20 or 30 percent of the original touches on those sites being occupied to be renters, which is relatively high compared to the balance of the portfolio, particularly when you consider that we're maintaining occupancy now with our rental load at about 3%. Then over time, we'll convert those renters to homeowners. And that's something that I think as we move into 2027, we'll be focused on particularly with our expansion sections. So, alongside of the rate growth that Marguerite highlighted, you know, occupancy growth is a place where, to answer your question, where management is spending its time. Yeah.

Just kind of switching gears to next year, where do you anticipate sending out renewal letters for the core MH in the fall?

We're in the process of doing that right now, and so we'll be releasing those numbers at the end of October. But as you can see in our presentation, we show how we've compared to COLA increases over time. And so we're waiting for some of the COLA CPI numbers to come out to be able to have some more definitive numbers. Okay. Thank you.

Can I ask one more follow-up on the expansions? I guess tying into some of the, you know, government's initiatives, are you seeing any municipalities change their view on expanding your MH communities like where they're now looking to do more MH?

So there's been a lot of discussion on the road to housing at the national level, but it really hasn't made its way down to the states and the local municipalities. We haven't seen any changes on their views on whether or not they want a manufactured home community next door to them or not. It just hasn't changed. Patrick is the chair of the Manufactured Housing Institute, so it's been a good year for him to be part of that as the road to housing has taken place. We're very pleased that he was at the helm during this because there's a lot going on. Maybe, Patrick, you could touch a little bit on that. Again, it's not translating down to the state level, but I think it's helpful to talk about.

Yeah, and I'd say it's also early in the process. It was just with respect to the impact of road to housing and I'll focus we get a lot of questions on chassis removal in the spec of homes so I'll just touch on that briefly the typical manufactured home is built on a chassis the home is then transported by the equivalent of a you know semi-tractor trailer so the tractor part is is transporting this home section to a community our communities are full of multi-section homes, so it ends up being two trucks in two sections. That home is really only mobile in the sense that it's built in a factory. It's transported to a site. Construction's completed and it's there for the rest of its useful life. The useful life to today's standards, a well-maintained home, 50, 60, 70 years, you maintain the home, it'll be there for decades and decades. At the level of the consumer, and I'll focus on land lease manufactured housing, we don't expect a significant change with respect to the spec of the home. There will be an aesthetic where it's much more like a traditional site-built single family home, and that's really driven by the fact that it's not supported on a chassis. When it's supported on a chassis, the home is set at a higher grade. If you're going to set it without a chassis, you can set it lower grade. There'll be typically some sort of a perimeter support. We think that that aesthetic will be better received by the local planning commission, zoning boards, who we speak to with respect to expanding certain of our properties. I think Marguerite touched on it, that in addition to the land that we already own adjacent into our properties, we frequently are looking for opportunities to expand by acquiring adjacent land. And that's when we come into situations where we're seeking to change zoning and achieve entitlements to expand a property. We have a development slide, I think it's slide 27, but the picture of the property that was expanded there, it's about an 800 site property. We did two expansions. We acquired two individual single family lots or zoned single family lots. on different sides of the property, went through the process of securing new entitlements, developed one, filled it up, that was about 40 sites, developed the second one, and we're in the middle of filling it up. That's the picture in the slide deck. And in both those instances, we were successful with traditional HUD housing, but it's an example of us acquiring adjacent land and getting the entitlements. We're pretty good at working our way through that process. We think the additional spec, the changes with respect to the the removal of the chassis can act as a tailwind for us to have the conversations about how this housing is very, very similar to the site built single family housing in the immediate neighborhoods. There's also an effort as in road for states to recognize the need for more affordable housing, particularly, excuse me, particularly factory built housing. And we've seen four, maybe five states now go through the process of updating their laws in order to comply with the road housing bill. That's a process that's going to play out across the country. Simple things like licensing, titling, how transactions occur in a home without a chassis needs to be clarified at the state level. Several of those states also include a requirement that factory-built housing, HUD-manufactured housing, be considered adjacent to traditional site-built single-family housing and just as a construct in the zoning code. Now, that still has to translate down to the local jurisdictions where those decisions are made, but just with respect to the spec and the aesthetic of the home. We think that's helpful. And with respect to the dialogue, including manufactured housing on addressing affordability, we think that's helpful for us to continue to expand our properties.

Besides the adjacent land expansion that we've been discussing, how is the team thinking about net new land developments?

And that new land development is broadly in the market? I think that many of the challenges remain. And in the context of demand coming to our properties and what the competitive set looks like for our portfolio, in our locations, maybe I'll start here. Our portfolio, very high-quality, age-qualified properties, predominantly in the Sun Belt and coastal locations, developed in the 70s, 80s, 90s. Economic development has occurred around our portfolio for decades. There really aren't large parcels in order to develop competing housing stock at the value proposition that we have. So we're in a unique position where competitive supply is limited in the submarkets where we own our typical property. You know, might there be an opportunity with some of the elements that I described earlier to address affordable housing in broader markets where they're not competing directly against us, given the quality of our locations? Yeah, I mean, that's a very real prospect for the factory-built housing industry.

And if you look at page 18 of our presentation, it just highlights that it is a supply-constrained asset class, and I think that we'll continue to be able to have this in our presentation for a long, you know, a long period of time because there's just not a lot of activity.

You're talking about one to two kind of manufactured home communities being built, so that will continue. the rv and the rv and the marina business arguably very different demand drivers and significantly different operating expertise required from a governance perspective why is there this ongoing reluctance to buy disclosure between between the two segments of rv and rv and marina together right well the marina segment is such a small piece of our business we've highlighted that it is, it acts very similar to the RV annual piece.

Their marina slips are all annual. So it's basically, it's very similar to it. We have highlighted over the last couple of calls about a marina in our core portfolio that was offline. And what we've been discussing during this conference is to let everyone know that those, that marina is back online. So that created a little bit of noise earlier in the year, but we're back on track on that. But that's the reality is that it's a very small piece of our business.

So it's small, but doesn't really address my question.

Well, that's the reason that we have it broken out like that. It's very similar to the RV annual. It acts exactly like the RV annual. And so that's why we group them together.

What's the, do you want to provide the percent?

Sure, it's 3%, 3 or 4%.

So it's a very smoke piece of the overall um and then maybe just uh this uh uh for me marina that's back online that happened in 3q yeah it's coming online in in three crew and then through the balance of the year uh as we went through uh reconstruction following damage from a hurricane uh i referenced on a couple previous calls some delays that we experienced um the last of those is really behind us and it was the construction timeline on custom fabricated concrete floating docks which are all on site and installed and really really nice and that all of our boaters are very excited to have the the marina back at full capacity so we'll see we'll see re-building occupancy through Q4 and into 2027.

What were the assumptions and guidance related to that particular issue?

We had an assumption for generation of revenue it was about a million dollars in 2026.

And we talked about that on the first quarter call that that was the reason for some of the volatility. It was a million dollars.

And so now it's coming on Q3. Is that even a positive?

It'll be a contributor in the third and the fourth quarter, a few hundred thousand dollars. It's not a significant contributor given the timing of the recovery.

Thank you. High level. Do you want to keep the marinas? Do you want to stay in that business?

Yeah. The marina business, you know, we got into the marina business several years ago because we thought and still believe that it acted an awful lot like our RV annual business. And it was just another way for us to invest capital. We've done that. The marinas have performed in line with our expectations. It's also good to have a marker out there. There's been, you know, some deals that have traded. It's good to be able to look at what we have and appreciate what we think the value is of it. But the marinas operate very nicely alongside our existing portfolio. They're in our existing areas of operation, and they're handled by our existing personnel. So, you know, and again, it's a very small piece of our business.

Just to close the loop on marinas real quick, it's still negative supply growth overall for the industry, correct? Right.

There is nothing. There is not really any new. Yeah. And then there's like, you know, a handful that decommissioned every year.

Is it a growth opportunity to get to grow?

Yeah. You know, when we got into the business, we looked at it and we said, there are certain things that we want to make certain that we do. We want it to be look as close to an RV annual property as possible, which means it has to be highly annualized. We want to make sure that it's not on a ground lease, that we own the land and we own, you know, not having to deal with a lease renewal, and that there's not a lot of high amount of ancillary food and beverage restaurant kind of business. Well, once you do that, you take your, you know, you take your opportunity in marinas and you really reduce them, reduce it down significantly. So I don't think it's something that, I've said this from the beginning, it's not something that we would, you'd see it growing any more than where we're at right now. You might see onesie-twosie kind of acquisitions, but not something at a grand scale because it's difficult to get those parameters. It's difficult to be in a place where you don't have to deal with the lease renewal. You don't have to worry about whether or not someone's going to buy, you know, a certain amount of food and beverage in order for you to make your quarter. We're really focused on that highly annualized base. Yes, switching gears a little, how do you hire gas and diesel prices impact your businesses? so gas prices we've looked at it over time on the rv front as to whether or not as rising gas as gas prices are rising is there going to be some indication of uh less demand at the properties and the reality you know if you consider year over year you've got about a dollar increase from last summer to this summer in in gas prices and um the the our rv customer their their rv is loaded up, the kids are ready to go, and the difference, the differential in that dollar gas price, because they're only traveling about 90 miles, is about $25 for the weekend. Now, $25 is a lot. They don't want to spend the $25, but the kids are already in the RV. They're going, and so we haven't seen a big change. Of course, we've always talked about that the change that we see in demand is weather-related. But when they already own the RV, they've already told the kids they're going to take the weekend, we see them going out and not being impacted. I think where you may see some impact if you had prolonged gas prices is more at the RV, you know, at the RV dealer. And you see that where they're saying, how much does it cost to fill this tank? But we're not seeing it kind of downstream.

And then maybe on expenses, They've trended better than expected year to date. How much more room do you have? Historically, you've been very good at flexing expenses. How do you kind of see that playing out in any headwinds for 27?

Yeah, I think, excuse me, the most important thing to remember, two-thirds of our expenses are in three categories. It's utility expense, payroll, and repairs and maintenance. Generally, we see those trending in line with CPI, maybe slightly ahead on some of the line items, but overall in line. I think that we have highlighted on past earnings calls and in conferences a correlation that we see in some of the savings that you mentioned driven by fluctuations in the transient business. And as we look ahead, you know, to the extent that we see greater demand, we see that RV business dynamic changing, more use of the property naturally lead to some higher utility expense and higher payroll expense, somewhat offsetting that accelerated revenue growth that we might see into the future. But that's kind of the main way to think about it is the revenue and the expense kind of moves in concert with each other.

And then maybe going back to the point on the MH rental program being kind of sub 3% now for your portfolio, would you consider increasing the size? And then maybe curious to kind of hammer on this point, at what kind of percentage do you think it changes your operating expense and maybe CapEx profile? Sure. Why don't I take the first part of it?

Maybe Paul can talk a little bit about the expenses. But growing that rental program is really something that we look at on a property-by-property basis. It's important to understand what's happening at the property and making certain that we have the quality of ownership, a quality of home ownership on a property-by-property basis. and this and we also look to as i mentioned earlier this conversion the ability uh to convert from a renter to an owner if we have a property we have a property manager we have a sales manager who's really good at being able to do that we will be more free with our capital to say let's put some more homes here because we know that this particular salesperson is doing a really good job of converting or this area north fort myers for instance really good area to convert people so So we're comfortable with saying you're going to come in for a year and then and then you're going to buy it or or and buy that home or buy the home kind of across the street. So it's really it's really on a property by property basis. But we have this is a long term plan for us as we were thinking about reducing the rental program, knowing that it was a tool for us to be able to increase it. should we find in certain areas where it makes sense for us to do that and then be able to convert to owners. But we're in a really good spot to be able to do that. And then relative to the expenses.

Sure. On the expenses, I mean, generally what we see in the rental business is activating a new site as a rental. The rental revenue for the incremental piece, which is renting the home, generally is offset by the expenses generated with maintaining the home. across the portfolio. So, for us, a big motivator to convert those customers to owners is there's not a lot that we're generating incrementally on the NLI line from that rented site as compared to the owned site.

So, it goes back to your earlier discussion where you said roughly 1,500, 1,700 a month for rental, and you said it's as much as half as competitive SFR down the road. So you're here to be offering a lot more in terms of community amenities. Why isn't your rent a lot higher if that's your competition?

Yeah, I mean, we look at that as a way to an entry point for you to get that to come in as a renter and then convert to a sale. So there's opportunities to increase that, but it's also it's experiencing this lifestyle, this new lifestyle. We want to make sure people appreciate what it is. They come in and then they make their decisions as to what to buy. tenure to turnover of the rental? So right now, it's about 18 months, the average length of stay on a rental.

And what roughly is the percentage of turnover at two?

So it's about 30%, 30% turnover into sales.

And fortunately, we're out of time, but I will have three rapid fire questions. We're asking all the reads at the conference. If long-term rates stay higher for longer, which has the biggest impact on your sector's earnings? Higher refinancing costs, lower transaction activity, or less new supply? Lower transaction activity. Over the next three years, will third-party capital become a more important source of growth for public REITs than balance sheet capital? Yes or no? No. For your sector, will 2027 same-store growth be higher, the same, or lower than 2026? For our sector, I would think higher. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much.